The Lone Lilac
Only a cellar broken
Down to a dimpled mound,
Of the olden time a token
In the brier entangled ground.
And a lonely lilac vagrant
As a sunbeam lost in gloom,
Close by like a garland fragrant
At the door of a crumbling tomb.
Full many a tree appearing
Has ploughed through the sodden loam
Where once was a fertile clearing
Protecting a friendly home.
And sweet as the perfume welling
From the lilac over the way,
Was life in that quaint old dwelling
In that long forgotten day.
Under the eaves, enfolded
It mothered its little brood;
But the sills long since have molded
To dust in that solitude.
Now through the locusts treading
(A grove from a single one)
Like the virile banyan spreading
Neath the burning Indian sun.
We can vision those fields in culture;
And the beds once bright with flowers,
Where a crow now sits like a vulture,
And broods through the sunlit hours.
While stark through the verdure risen
Like the tides in the distant bay,
Through a cleft in its leafy prison
Peers the lilac over the way.
Anon as the breezes bluster,
Then die and are strangely mute,
The echoing memories cluster
Like strains from a far off lute.
We can almost hear the fingers
Strumming an elfin lay -
For the soul of that home still lingers
In the lilac over the way.