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For Nautifish: My Inn


pameladallaire

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Copyright law in Canada is life + 50 years. This Toronto poet, Bernard Freeman Trotter, was killed in action in France, 1917. That leaves the copyright free to use for your Inn.

 

MY INN:

 

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

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.

 

Toronto, 1911.

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