| ONCE there was a cabin here, and once there was a man; | |
| And something happened here before my memory began. | |
| Time has made the two of them the fuel of one flame | |
| And all we have of them is now a legend and a name. | |
| |
| All I have to say is what an old man said to me, | 5 |
| And that would seem to be as much as there will ever be. | |
| “Fifty years ago it was we found it where it sat.”— | |
| And forty years ago it was old Archibald said that. | |
| |
| “An apple tree that’s yet alive saw something, I suppose, | |
| Of what it was that happened there, and what no mortal knows. | 10 |
| Some one on the mountain heard far off a master shriek, | |
| And then there was a light that showed the way for men to seek. | |
| |
| “We found it in the morning with an iron bar behind, | |
| And there were chains around it; but no search could ever find, | |
| Either in the ashes that were left, or anywhere, | 15 |
| A sign to tell of who or what had been with Stafford there. | |
| |
| “Stafford was a likely man with ideas of his own— | |
| Though I could never like the kind that likes to live alone; | |
| And when you met, you found his eyes were always on your shoes, | |
| As if they did the talking when he asked you for the news. | 20 |
| |
| “That’s all, my son. Were I to talk for half a hundred years | |
| I’d never clear away from there the cloud that never clears. | |
| We buried what was left of it,—the bar, too, and the chains; | |
| And only for the apple tree there’s nothing that remains.” | |
| |
| Forty years ago it was I heard the old man say, | 25 |
| “That’s all, my son.”—And here again I find the place to-day, | |
| Deserted and told only by the tree that knows the most, | |
| And overgrown with golden-rod as if there were no ghost. | |
