DESERTED
The old house leans upon a tree
Like some old man upon a staff:
The night wind in its ancient porch
Sounds like a hollow laugh.
The heaven is wrapped in flying clouds
As grandeur cloaks itself in gray:
The starlight flitting in and out,
Glints like a lanthorn ray.
The dark is full of whispers. Now
A fox-hound howls: and through the night,
Like some old ghost from out its grave,
The moon comes misty white.
Bert Leston Taylor
Bert Leston Taylor was born at Goshen, Massachusetts, November 13, 1866, and educated at the College of the City of New York. He had been engaged in journalism since 1895, conducting his column “A Line o’ Type or Two” in the Chicago Daily Tribune. He was the author of two novels as well as A Line-o’-Verse or Two (1911) and Motley Measures (1913), a pair of delightful light verse collections.
Taylor died of pneumonia March 19, 1921.