Lyrics
[haunting instrumental solo]
[verse 1]
There is a house beside a way,
Where dwells a ghost of Yesterday:
The old face of a beauty, faded,
Looks from its garden: and the shaded
Long walks of locust-trees, that seem
Forevermore to sigh and dream,
Keep whispering low a word that's true,
Of shapes that haunt its avenue,
Clad as in days of belle and beau,
Who come and go
Around its ancient portico.
[chorus]
Oh, whispers down this olden lane,
Gone but not forgotten lives,
Of rustling silks and hoops in vain,
Of times when lovers softly sighed.
By each locust tree that harkens age,
Memories of a world that's far,
Hear, whispering softly on the page,
"Allure" that's sainted in the past's domain —
Unchanging beauty bygone now yet ageless!
[verse 2]
At first, in stock and beaver-hat,
With flitting of the moth and bat,
An old man, leaning on a cane,
Comes slowly down the locust lane;
Looks at the house; then, groping, goes
Into the garden where the rose
Still keeps sweet tryst with moth and moon;
And, humming to himself a tune,
—"Lorena" or "Ben Bolt" we'll say,—
Waits, bent and gray,
For some fair ghost of Yesterday.
[chorus]
Oh, whispers down this olden lane,
Gone but not forgotten lives,
Of rustling silks and hoops in vain,
Of times when lovers softly sighed.
By each locust tree that harkens age,
Memories of a world that's far,
Hear, whispering softly on the page,
"Allure" that's sainted in the past's domain —
Unchanging beauty bygone now yet ageless!
[verse 3]
The Yesterday that holds his all —
More real to him than is the wall
Of mossy stone near which he stands,
Still reaching out for her his hands —
For her, the girl, who waits him there,
A lace-gowned phantom, dark of hair,
Whose loveliness still keeps those walks,
And with whose Memory he talks;
Upon his heart her happy head,—
So it is said,—
The girl, now half a century dead.
{End}
