Student Gone, But His Memories Remain

At four o'clock in late October I sat alone in the country school-house back from the road 'mid stricken fields. And an eddy of wind blew leaves on the pane, and crooned in the flue of the cannon-stove, with its open door blurring the shadows, with the spectral glow of a dying fire...
— From Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters