THE RUINED CABIN
There's a pathos in the solemn desolation
Of the mountain cabin sinking in decay,
With its threshold overgrown with vegetation,
With its door unhinged and mouldering away.
There's a weird and most disconsolate expression
In the sashless windows with their vacant stare,
As in mute appeal, or taciturn confession
Of a wild and inconsolable despair.
With its ridgepole bent and broken in the centre,
From its roof of dirt and weight of winter snows;
Where the only voice to greet you as you enter
Is the wind which down the crumbling fireplace blows;
Where the chipmunk chatters in loquacious wonder,
As unwonted steps invade his solitude;
Where the mountain rat secretes his varied plunder
In the chimney corners, primitive and rude.
Where the spider spins his web in grim seclusion,
To entrap the fly and vacillating moth;
From the rotten floor, in poisonous profusion
Spring the toadstools, with their foul and fungous growth.
Void of symmetry and semblance of equation,
Through the chinkless cracks, the silvery moon and stars
And the sun, at each matutinal invasion,
Shine as through a dismal dungeon's grated bars.
But no predatory hand in wanton malice
Hath in vandal hour this dereliction wrought,
But the hand which crumbles pyramid and palace,
The hand of Time with rust and ruin fraught;
Thus the proud or unpretentious habitation
Shall succumb to age and melancholy mould;
All are subject to the same disintegration,
For the occupant and house alike grow old.