Classic Poem

WHEN your feet are burning,
Soiled with the highway's dust;
When your soul is yearning
For the rest which it knows is just;
When the sweat-drops blear your eyesight, and night rolls up the linn —
Beyond the road's last turning
You'll find my Inn.

Like a bower in Maytime
All year the flowers blow,
And there is no haytime,
For green the grasses grow.
And the sunshine is your brother, and the birds are all your kin,
And all the work is playtime
At my Inn.

When the tempest lowers
O'er the world, and thunders crash,
Then friendly showers
Tap merrily on the sash;
For there's never a storm comes blowing to trouble you with its din
In the fair vale of flowers
Where hides my Inn.

Would you enter lightly?
Step quickly to the door,
Howe'er unsightly,
Travel-stained and sore.
For the door is always open, has neither bolt nor pin:
You are ever welcomed rightly
At my Inn.

Be it late or early,
You will not lack for cheer:
From the well-spring, pearly,
They'll bring you vintage clear:
For there's never an empty barrel, nor ever an empty bin —
And the lettuces grow curly
At my Inn.

If you'd rest or slumber,
The beds are clean and soft;
Cast off your cumber,
Mount you up aloft.
And there you may sleep till doomsday with the clothes tucked round your chin:
For the hours have no number
At my Inn.

Oh! a place of pleasure
Is this sweet Inn of mine,
Where you get full measure
For all that toil of thine.
And they never ask a penny — to pay twice were a sin! —
Bring only your heart's treasure
To my Inn.

Be you faint or weary?
On ever to the end!
Tho' the way be dreary,
Somewhere you'll reach that bend;
And beyond the road's last turning, where the flowered paths begin,
You'll see lights twinkling cheery
From my Inn.