The Tavern by Edwin Arlington Robinson

WHENEVER I go by there nowadays

And look at the rank weeds and the strange grass, / The torn blue curtains and the broken glass, / I seem to be afraid of the old place; / And something stiffens up and down my face,

For all the world as if I saw the ghost

Of old Ham Amory, the murdered host, / With his dead eyes turned on me all aglaze.

The Tavern has a story, but no man

Can tell us what it is. We only know

That once long after midnight, years ago, / A stranger galloped up from Tilbury Town, / Who brushed, and scared, and all but overran

That skirt-crazed reprobate, John Evereldown.