Poems (Cary)/Old Stories

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OLD STORIES.
No beautiful star will twinkle To-night through my window-pane,As I list to the mournful falling Of the leaves and the autumn rain.
High up in his leafy covert The squirrel a shelter hathAnd the tall grass hides the rabbit, Asleep in the churchyard path.
On the hills is a voice of wailing For the pale dead flowers again,That sounds like the heavy trailing Of robes in a funeral train.
Oh, if there were one who loved me— A kindly and gray-haired sire,To sit and rehearse old stories To-night by my cabin-fire—
The winds as they would might rattle The pane, or the trees so tall—In the tale of a stirring battle My heart would forget them all.
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Or if, by the embers dying, We talked of the past, the while,I should see bright spirits flying From the pyramids and the Nile.
Echoes from harps long silent Would troop through the aisles of time.And rest on the soul like sunshine, If we talked of the bards sublime,
But, hark! did a phantom call me, Or was it the wind went by?Wild are my thoughts and restless, But they have no power to fly.
In place of the cricket humming, And the moth by the candle's light,I hear but the deathwatch drumming— I've heard it the livelong night.
Oh for a friend who loved me— Oh for a grey-haired sire,To sit with a quaint old story To-night by my cabin fire!
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