The old house leans upon a tree
Like some old man upon a staff:
The night wind in its ancient porch
Sounds like a hollow laugh.
The heaven is wrapped in flying clouds
As grandeur cloaks itself in gray:
The starlight flitting in and out,
Glints like a lanthorn ray.
The dark is full of whispers. Now
A fox-hound howls: and through the night,
Like some old ghost from out its grave,
The moon comes misty white.
_Bert Leston Taylor_
Bert Leston Taylor was born at Goshen, Massachusetts, November 13,
1866, and educated at the College of the City of New York. He had
been engaged in journalism since 1895, conducting his column “A Line
o’ Type or Two” in the Chicago _Daily Tribune_. He was the author of
two novels as well as _A Line-o’-Verse or Two_ (1911) and _Motley
Measures_ (1913), a pair of delightful light verse collections.
Taylor died of pneumonia March 19, 1921.