Poems / by Madison Cawein ; with a foreward by William Dean Howells [electronic text]

ABANDONED

THE hornets build in plaster-dropping rooms, And on its mossy porch the lizard lies; Around its chimneys slow the swallow flies, And on its roof the locusts snow their blooms. Like some sad thought that broods here, old perfumes Haunt its dim stairs; the cautious zephyr tries Each gusty door, like some dead hand, then sighs With ghostly lips among the attic glooms. And now a heron, now a kingfisher, Flits in the willows where the riffle seems At each faint fall to hesitate to leap, Fluttering the silence with a little stir. Here Summer seems a placid face asleep, And the near world a figment of her dreams.