The Tavern

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