The Old Inn

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,     Where breezes bend the gleaming grain,     And cautious drip of higher leaves     The lower dips that drip again.     Above the tangled trees it heaves     Its gables and its haunted eaves.     One creeper, gnarled and blossomless,     O'erforests all its eastern wall;     The sighing cedars rake and press     Dark boughs along the panes they sprawl;     While, where the sun beats, drone and drawl     The mud-wasps; and one bushy bee,     Gold-dusty, hurls along the hall     To buzz into a crack. To me     The shadows seem too seared to flee.     Of ragged chimneys martins make     Huge pipes of music; twittering, here     They build and roost. My footfalls wake     Strange stealing echoes, till I fear     I'll see my pale self drawing 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.'