Poem for Thursday and Savage Bridge

Ghost House
By Robert Frost

I dwell in a lonely house I know
That vanished many a summer ago,
   And left no trace but the cellar walls,
   And a cellar in which the daylight falls
And the purple-stemmed wild raspberries grow.

O'er ruined fences the grape-vines shield
The woods come back to the mowing field;
   The orchard tree has grown one copse
   Of new wood and old where the woodpecker chops;
The footpath down to the well is healed.

I dwell with a strangely aching heart
In that vanished abode there far apart
   On that disused and forgotten road
   That has no dust-bath now for the toad.
Night comes; the black bats tumble and dart;

The whippoorwill is coming to shout
And hush and cluck and flutter about:
   I hear him begin far enough away
   Full many a time to say his say
Before he arrives to say it out.

It is under the small, dim, summer star.
I know not who these mute folk are
   Who share the unlit place with me—
   Those stones out under the low-limbed tree
Doubtless bear names that the mosses mar.

They are tireless folk, but slow and sad—
Though two, close-keeping, are lass and lad,—
   With none among them that ever sings,
   And yet, in view of how many things,
As sweet companions as might be had.

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Wednesday was not terribly eventful, though the weather was gorgeous, which helped me stay mellow. I did a bunch of work on web pages while continuing my Upload All The Photos project, drove Adam to the cross country meet that got postponed from Tuesday because of the tornado warning, saw lots of bunnies, squirrels, and chipmunks stocking up on the acorns and seeds that seem suddenly to have fallen all over the neighborhood.

Paul was given a bootleg Madonna concert, which we watched after dinner and it was awesome (on her current tour she segues from "Express Yourself" into "Born This Way," a delightful way of pointing out that the latter is a total ripoff of the former). Then we watched the sad ending of the Nationals' double header; they won the first game and were tied in the ninth but blew it. Jon Stewart, at least, was on fire with his "Bullsh*t Mountain" segment.

Here are photos of the last surviving Bollman iron truss bridge -- in Savage, Maryland by the mill -- invented in 1850 by a Baltimore engineer for the B&O Railroad. This one is a National Historic Landmark: