The Old House.

Quaint and forgotten, by an unused road,     An old house stands: around its doors the dense          Blue iron-weeds grow high;     The chipmunks make a highway of its fence;     And on its sunken flagstones slug and toad          Silent as lichens lie.     The timid snake upon its hearth's cool sand     Sleeps undisturbed; the squirrel haunts its roof;          And in the clapboard sides     Of closets, dim with many a spider woof,     Like the uncertain tapping of a hand,          The beetle-borer hides.     Above its lintel, under mossy eaves,     The mud-wasps build their cells; and in the floor          Of its neglected porch     The black bees nest. Through each deserted door,     Vague as a phantom's footsteps, steal the leaves,          And dropped cones of the larch.     But come with me when sunset's magic old     Transforms the ruin of that ancient house;          When windows, one by one, -     Like age's eyes, that youth's love-dreams arouse, -     Grow lairs of fire; and glad mouths of gold          Its wide doors, in the sun.     Or let us wait until each rain-stained room     Is carpeted with moonlight, pattened oft          With the deep boughs o'erhead;     And through the house the wind goes rustling soft,     As might the ghost - a whisper of perfume -         Of some sweet girl long dead.