Poems of Thomas Bailey Aldrich / [by Thomas Bailey Aldrich] [electronic text]

HAUNTED.

A NOISOME mildewed vine Crawls to the rotting eaves; The gate has dropped from the rusty hinge, And the walks are stamped with leaves.

Close by the shattered fence The red-clay road runs by To a haunted wood, where the hemlocks groan And the willows sob and sigh.

Among the dank lush flowers The spiteful fire-fly glows, And a woman steals by the stagnant pond Wrapt in her burial clothes.

There's a dark blue scar on her throat, And ever she makes a moan, And the humid lizards gleam in the grass, And the lichens weep on the stone;

And the Moon shrinks in a cloud, And the traveller shakes with fear,

And an Owl on the skirts of the woodHoots, and says, Do you hear?

Go not there at night, For a spell hangs over all— The palsied elms, and the dismal road, And the broken garden-wall.

O, go not there at night, For a curse is on the place; Go not there, for fear you meet The Murdered face to face!