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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409635" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Tales Of A Wayside Inn : Part 2. Prelude</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409635" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">A cold, uninterrupted rain,<br>That washed each southern window-pane,<br>And made a river of the road;<br>A sea of mist that overflowed<br>The house, the barns, the gilded vane,<br>And drowned the upland and the plain,<br>Through which the oak-trees, broad and high,<br>Like phantom ships went drifting by;<br>And, hidden behind a watery screen,<br>The sun unseen, or only seen<br>As a faint pallor in the sky;--<br>Thus cold and colorless and gray,<br>The morn of that autumnal day,<br>As if reluctant to begin,<br>Dawned on the silent Sudbury Inn,<br>And all the guests that in it lay. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409635" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Full late they slept. They did not hear<br>The challenge of Sir Chanticleer,<br>Who on the empty threshing-floor,<br>Disdainful of the rain outside,<br>Was strutting with a martial stride,<br>As if upon his thigh he wore<br>The famous broadsword of the Squire,<br>And said, 'Behold me, and admire!' </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409635" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Only the Poet seemed to hear,<br>In drowse or dream, more near and near<br>Across the border-land of sleep,<br>The blowing of a blithesome horn,<br>That laughed the dismal day to scorn;<br>A splash of hoofs and rush of wheels<br>Through sand and mire like stranding keels,<br>As from the road with sudden sweep<br>The Mail drove up the little steep,<br>And stopped beside the tavern door;<br>A moment stopped, and then again<br>With crack of whip and bark of dog<br>Plunged forward through the sea of fog,<br>And all was silent as before,--<br>All silent save the dripping rain.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409635" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Then one by one the guests came down,<br>And greeted with a smile the Squire,<br>Who sat before the parlor fire,<br>Reading the paper fresh from town.<br>First the Sicilian, like a bird,<br>Before his form appeared, was heard<br>Whistling and singing down the stair;<br>Then came the Student, with a look<br>As placid as a meadow-brook;<br>The Theologian, still perplexed<br>With thoughts of this world and the next;<br>The Poet then, as one who seems<br>Walking in visions and in dreams;<br>Then the Musician, like a fair<br>Hyperion from whose golden hair<br>The radiance of the morning streams;<br>And last the aromatic Jew<br>Of Alicant, who, as he threw<br>The door wide open, on the air<br>Breathed round about him a perfume<br>Of damask roses in full bloom,<br>Making a garden of the room. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409635" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">The breakfast ended, each pursued<br>The promptings of his various mood;<br>Beside the fire in silence smoked<br>The taciturn, impassive Jew,<br>Lost in a pleasant revery;<br>While, by his gravity provoked,<br>His portrait the Sicilian drew,<br>And wrote beneath it 'Edrehi,<br>At the Red Horse in Sudbury.' </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409635" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">By far the busiest of them all,<br>The Theologian in the hall<br>Was feeding robins in a cage,--<br>Two corpulent and lazy birds,<br>Vagrants and pilferers at best,<br>If one might trust the hostler's words,<br>Chief instrument of their arrest;<br>Two poets of the Golden Age,<br>Heirs of a boundless heritage<br>Of fields and orchards, east and west,<br>And sunshine of long summer days,<br>Though outlawed now and dispossessed!--<br>Such was the Theologian's phrase. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409635" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Meanwhile the Student held discourse<br>With the Musician, on the source<br>Of all the legendary lore<br>Among the nations, scattered wide<br>Like silt and seaweed by the force<br>And fluctuation of the tide;<br>The tale repeated o'er and o'er,<br>With change of place and change of name,<br>Disguised, transformed, and yet the same<br>We've heard a hundred times before. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409635" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">The Poet at the window mused,<br>And saw, as in a dream confused,<br>The countenance of the Sun, discrowned,<br>And haggard with a pale despair,<br>And saw the cloud-rack trail and drift<br>Before it, and the trees uplift<br>Their leafless branches, and the air<br>Filled with the arrows of the rain,<br>And heard amid the mist below,<br>Like voices of distress and pain,<br>That haunt the thoughts of men insane,<br>The fateful cawings of the crow. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409635" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Then down the road, with mud besprent,<br>And drenched with rain from head to hoof,<br>The rain-drops dripping from his mane<br>And tail as from a pent-house roof,<br>A jaded horse, his head down bent,<br>Passed slowly, limping as he went. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409635" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">The young Sicilian--who had grown<br>Impatient longer to abide<br>A prisoner, greatly mortified<br>To see completely overthrown<br>His plans for angling in the brook,<br>And, leaning o'er the bridge of stone,<br>To watch the speckled trout glide by,<br>And float through the inverted sky,<br>Still round and round the baited hook--<br>Now paced the room with rapid stride,<br>And, pausing at the Poet's side,<br>Looked forth, and saw the wretched steed,<br>And said: 'Alas for human greed,<br>That with cold hand and stony eye<br>Thus turns an old friend out to die,<br>Or beg his food from gate to gate!<br>This brings a tale into my mind,<br>Which, if you are not disinclined<br>To listen, I will now relate.' </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409635" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">All gave assent; all wished to hear,<br>Not without many a jest and jeer,<br>The story of a spavined steed;<br>And even the Student with the rest<br>Put in his pleasant little jest<br>Out of Malherbe, that Pegasus<br>Is but a horse that with all speed<br>Bears poets to the hospital;<br>While the Sicilian, self-possessed,<br>After a moment's interval<br>Began his simple story thus.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><a href="http://poems.citatepedia.com/">poem</a> by <strong><a rel="author" href="http://authors.citatepedia.com/by.php?a=Henry+Wadsworth+Longfellow">Henry Wadsworth Longfellow</a></strong></div>