COWARD MEMORY
Reading edition
A street half flecked with shade and sun, A last year’s leaf along it blown, A gray wall where green lichens run; Like water falling on dry stone, A robin’s ripe notes dropping one by one. Sad sun and shade and sadness over all The distance blended into solemn hues, On the warm air suspended as a pall The sweetness dying violets diffuse, While from a single tree the ashen elm flowers fall. At the street’s sudden end a shining square, The sunny threshold of an open door, Thick with the dust of an untrodden stair That leads beyond me to the upper floor— Then memory halts—it dares not enter there.