Poems of Madison Cawein Vol. 3 — The Old Inn

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 crowd into a crack.

--To me The shadows seem too scared to flee.

Of ragged chimneys martins make Huge pipes of music; twittering, here They build and brood.

--My footfalls wake Strange stealing echoes, till I fear I’ll see my pale self drawing near, My phantom self as in a glass;

Or one, men murdered, buried--where?

-- Dim in gray, stealthy glimmer, pass With lips that seem to moan “Alas!

” THE MILL-WATER