AN OLD INN BY THE SEA

by: Odell Shepard (1884-1967)

LL night long we had heard the voice of the Sea

Roaming the corridors.

Across the worn and hollow floors

There went a ghostly tread incessantly.

The walls of our old inn,

By windy winters eaten grey and thin,

Trembled and shook, the wild night long,

With resonant, vague, hoarse-throated song

Like a storm-strung violin.

 

All night we heard vast forces throng

To onset in the dark, indomitably strong,

An army under sable banners flying.

And then, above the din

Of far wild voices crying

And farther, wilder voices dreadfully replying,

Slowly, far down the unseen mysterious shore,

With fearful sibilance and long unintermittent roar,

We heard another, mightier tide begin!

 

Then our hearts shook, there on the world's wide rim

Fronting eternity and neighboring the Abyss.

Had we not cowered all night from the face of Him,

The King of Terrors, from the coil and hiss

Of the pale snakes of death

Writhing about our very door?

Had we not borne his clammy breath

Upon our hair

Nightlong, and his stealthy footstep on the stair,

His vast voice everywhere?

Had not each echoing wall and hollow floor,

Worn by his winds so grey and spectre-thin,

Resounded like the shell of a fragile violin

That screams once at its death and never more?

Had He not homage of our fear enough before

He sent this last dark cohort crashing in?

• Purchase books by Odell Shepard