The Missed Train

How I was caught
Hieing home, after days of allure,
And driven to an inn-small, obscure-
At the junction, fret-fraught!
How civil my face
To get them to chamber me there-
A roof I had passed scarce aware
That it stood at the place.
And how all the night
I had dreams of the unwitting cause
Of my lodgment. How lonely I was;
How consoled by her sprite!
Thus onetime to me
Dim wastes of dead years bar away
Then from now! But the like haps to-day
To young lovers, may be.
Years, years as gray seas,
Truly, stretch now between! Less and less
Shrink the visions then great in me.-Yes,
Then in me. Now in these.