Through iron-weeds and roses
And bronzing beech and oak,
Old porches it discloses,
Above the briars and roses
Fall's feeble sunbeams soak.
Neglected walks that tangle
The dodder-strangled grass;
Its chimney shows one angle
Heaped with dead leaves that spangle
The paths that round it pass.
The early mists that bury
And hide them in its rooms,
From spider closets — very
Dim with old webs — will hurry
Out in the raining glooms.
They haunt each stair and basement;
They stand on hearth and porch;
Lean from each paneless casement,
Or in the moonlight's lacement
Fly with a phantom torch.
There is a sense of frost here;
And gusts that sob away
Of something that was lost here,
Long, long ago was lost here,
But what, they can not say.
There croons no owl to startle
Despondency within;
No raven o'er its portal
To scare the daring mortal
And guard its cellared sin.
The creaking road descries it
This side the dusty toll;
The farmer passing eyes it;
None stops t’ philosophize it,
This symbol of a soul.