Explore "Tales of a Wayside Inn" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
A cold, uninterrupted rain, / That washed each southern window-pane, / And made a river of the road; / A sea of mist that overflowed / The house, the barns, the gilded vane, / And drowned the upland and the plain, / Through which the oak-trees, broad and high, / Like phantom ships went drifting by; / And, hidden behind a watery screen, / The sun unseen, or only seen / As a faint pallor in the sky; -- / Thus cold and colorless and gray, / The morn of that autumnal day, / As if reluctant to begin, / Dawned on the silent Sudbury Inn, / And all the guests that in it lay.
Full late they slept. They did not hear / The challenge of Sir Chanticleer, / Who on the empty threshing-floor, / Disdainful of the rain outside, / Was strutting with a martial stride, / As if upon his thigh he wore / The famous broadsword of the Squire, / And said, "Behold me, and admire!"