Abandoned by Madison Cawein — Read

/ The hornets build in plaster-dropping rooms, / And on its mossy porch the lizard lies; / Around its chimneys slow the swallow flies, / And on its roof the locusts snow their blooms. / Like some sad thought that broods here, old perfumes / Haunt its dim stairs; the cautious zephyr tries / Each gusty door, like some dead hand, then sighs / With ghostly lips among the attic glooms. / And now a heron, now a kingfisher, / Flits in the willows where the riffle seems / At each faint fall to hesitate to leap, / Fluttering the silence with a little stir. / Here Summer seems a placid face asleep, / And the near world a figment of her dreams.