Explore "A Ghost of Yesterday" by Madison Cawein on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
/ There is a house beside a way, / Where dwells a ghost of Yesterday: / The old face of a beauty, faded, / Looks from its garden: and the shaded / Long walks of locust-trees, that seem / Forevermore to sigh and dream, / Keep whispering low a word that's true, / Of shapes that haunt its avenue, / Clad as in days of belle and beau, / Who come and go / Around its ancient portico.
/ At first, in stock and beaver-hat, / With flitting of the moth and bat, / An old man, leaning on a cane, / Comes slowly down the locust lane; / Looks at the house; then, groping, goes / Into the garden where the rose / Still keeps sweet tryst with moth and moon; / And, humming to himself a tune, / -- "Lorena" or "Ben Bolt" we'll say, -- / Waits, bent and gray, / For some fair ghost of Yesterday.