And service wore a nearer, feudal guise--
Witness the stone where "Rose,
A faithful servant," lies.
_Parnassus_ stretches east, beyond that
The plantation once called _Ararat_;
But they have gone,
Forgotten as an ancient drinking song;
And the old houses, dull and roofless,
Gape, with their doorways
Like a dumb mouth toothless,
With snake-engendering rooms that wall in fear,
Silent, down forest roadways loved by deer.
Sometimes at nights
These skeletons of houses flash with lights,
And shadow-horsemen ride,
Chasing wraith-deer
With eery cry of hounds
And shuddering cheer;
While the moon makes her rounds,
Glimmering through windows dead
As the dead eyes in a dead man's head;
And there is heard a misty horn--
Down in the woods,
Among the moss-draped solitudes,
The voodoo rooster crows,
While owls hoot on forlorn.
But _Back River_ wears a different face;
It has not changed;--
Time seems to love the place;
Though all about it he has ranged,
Here he has not
Touched with his wand of rot--
Something of its immortal live-oak sap suffuses
Its sturdy men and houses and transfuses
Change into state.
Pages:
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92