You Avoid The House In Lively Dread Of A Lone Housekeeper,
But You Make Your Way On By The Stables;
You remember that gable
with all its neatly nailed trophies of fitchets and hawks and owls,
now slowly falling to
Pieces; you remember that stable, and that -
but the doors are all fastened that used to be standing ajar, the
paint of things painted is blistered and cracked, grass grows in
the yard; just there, in October mornings, the keeper would wait
with the dogs and the guns - no keeper now; you hurry away, and gain
the small wicket that used to open to the touch of a lightsome
hand - it is fastened with a padlock (the only new looking thing),
and is stained with thick, green damp; you climb it, and bury
yourself in the deep shade, and strive but lazily with the tangling
briars, and stop for long minutes to judge and determine whether
you will creep beneath the long boughs and make them your archway,
or whether perhaps you will lift your heel and tread them down
under foot. Long doubt, and scarcely to be ended till you wake
from the memory of those days when the path was clear, and chase
that phantom of a muslin sleeve that once weighed warm upon your
arm.
Wild as that, the nighest woodland of a deserted home in England,
but without its sweet sadness, is the sumptuous garden of Damascus.
Forest trees, tall and stately enough if you could see their lofty
crests, yet lead a tussling life of it below, with their branches
struggling against strong numbers of bushes and wilful shrubs.
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