Page:Dorothy Canfield--Hillsboro People.djvu/219

 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 right;

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?