A single sleighbell, tinkling down
The virgin road that skirts the wood,
Makes poignant to the lonely town
Its silence and its solitude.
A single taper's feeble flare
Makes darker by its lonely light
The cold and empty farmsteads square
That blackly loom to left and tight;
And she who sews, by that dim flame,
The patient quilt spread on her knees,
Hears from her heirloom quilting-frame
The frolic of forgotten bees.
Yea, all the dying village thrills
With echoes of its cheerful past,
The golden days of Salem Hills;
Its only golden days? Its last?