Red-winding from the sleepy town,
One takes the lone, forgotten lane
Straight through the hills. A brush-bird brown
Bubbles in thorn-flowers sweet with rain;
Light shivers sink the gleaming grain;
The cautious drip of higher leaves
The lower dips that drip again.—
Above the tangled tops it heaves
Its gables and its haunted eaves.
One creeper, gnarled to bloomlessness,
O'er-forests all its eastern wall;
The sighing cedars rake and press
Dark boughs along the panes they sprawl;
While, where the sun beats, breaks a drawl
Of hiving wasps; one bushy bee,
Gold-dusty, hurls along the hall
To hum into a crack.— To me
The shadows seem too scared to flee.
Of ragged chimneys martins make
Huge pipes of music; twittering here
Build, breed, and roost.— My footfalls wake
Strange stealing echoes, till I fear
I'll meet my pale self coming near;
My phantom face as in a glass;
Or one men murdered, buried — where?
Dim in gray, stealthy glimmer, pass
With lips that seem to moan “Alas.”