Whenever I go by there nowadays <br />And look at the rank weeds and the strange grass, <br />The torn blue curtains and the broken glass, <br />I seem to be afraid of the old place; <br />And something stiffens up and down my face, <br />For all the world as if I saw the ghost <br />Of old Ham Amory, the murdered host, <br />With his dead eyes turned on me all aglaze. <br /> <br />The Tavern has a story, but no man <br />Can tell us what it is. We only know <br />That once long after midnight, years ago, <br />A stranger galloped up from Tilbury Town, <br />Who brushed, and scared, and all but overran <br />That skirt-crazed reprobate, John Evereldown.<br /><br />Edwin Arlington Robinson<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-tavern/
