Coward Memory by Ellen Glasgow

A street half flecked with shade and sun, / A last year's leaf along it blown, / A gray wall where green lichens run; / Like water falling on dry stone, / A robin's ripe notes dropping one by one.

Sad sun and shade and sadness over all / The distance blended into solemn hues, / On the warm air suspended as a pall / The sweetness dying violets diffuse, / While from a single tree the ashen elm flowers fall.

At the street's sudden end a shining square, / The sunny threshold of an open door, / Thick with the dust of an untrodden stair / That leads beyond me to the upper floor -- / Then memory halts -- it dares not enter there.