Winter Nightfall

The old yellow stucco         Of the time of the Regent         Is flaking and peeling:         The rows of square windows         In the straight yellow building         Are empty and still;         And the dusty dark evergreens         Guarding the wicket         Are draped with wet cobwebs,         And above this poor wilderness         Toneless and sombre         Is the flat of the hill.         They said that a colonel         Who long ago died here         Was the last one to live here:         An old retired colonel,         Some Fraser or Murray,         I don't know his name;         Death came here and summoned him,         And the shells of him vanished         Beyond all speculation;         And silence resumed here,         Silence and emptiness,         And nobody came.         Was it wet when he lived here,         Were the skies dun and hurrying,         Was the rain so irresolute?         Did he watch the night coming,         Did he shiver at nightfall         Before he was dead?         Did the wind go so creepily,         Chilly and puffing,         With drops of cold rain in it?         Was the hill's lifted shoulder         So lowering and menacing,         So dark and so dread?         Did he turn through his doorway         And go to his study,         And light many candles?         And fold in the shutters,         And heap up the fireplace         To fight off the damps?         And muse on his boyhood,         And wonder if India         Ever was real?         And shut out the loneliness         With pig-sticking memoirs         And collections of stamps?         Perhaps.    But he's gone now,         He and his furniture         Dispersed now for ever;         And the last of his trophies,         Antlers and photographs,         Heaven knows where.         And there's grass in his gateway,         Grass on his footpath,         Grass on his door-step;         The garden's grown over,         The well-chain is broken,         The windows are bare.         And I leave him behind me,         For the straggling, discoloured         Rags of the daylight,         And hills and stone walls         And a rick long forgotten         Of blackening hay:         The road pale and sticky,         And cart-ruts and nail marks,         And wind-ruffled puddles,         And the slop of my footsteps         In this desolate country's         Cadaverous clay.