I remember, when a youngster, all the happy hours I spent
When to visit Uncle Hiram in the country oft I went;
And the pleasant recollection still in memory has a charm
Of my boyish romps and rambles round the dear old-fashioned farm.
But at night all joyous fancies from my youthful bosom crept,
For I knew they'd surely put me where the "comp'ny" always slept,
And my spirit sank within me, as upon it fell the gloom
And the vast and lonely grandeur of the best spare room.

Ah, the weary waste of pillow where I laid my lonely head!
Sinking, like a shipwrecked sailor, in a patchwork sea of bed,
While the moonlight through the casement cast a grim and ghastly glare
O'er the stiff and stately presence of each dismal haircloth chair;
And it touched the mantel's splendor, where the wax fruit used to be,
And the alabaster image Uncle Josh brought home from sea;
While the breeze that shook the curtains spread a musty, faint perfume
And a subtle scent of camphor through the best spare room.

Round the walls were hung the pictures of the dear ones passed away,
"Uncle Si and A'nt Lurany," taken on their wedding day;
Cousin Ruth, who died at twenty, in the corner had a place
Near the wreath from Eben's coffin, dipped in wax and in a case;
Grandpa Wilkins, done in color by some artist of the town,
Ears askew and somewhat cross-eyed, but with fixed and awful frown,
Seeming somehow to be waiting to enjoy the dreadful doom
Of the frightened little sleeper in the best spare room.

Every rustle of the corn-husks in the mattress underneath
Was to me a ghostly whisper muttered through a phantom's teeth,
And the mice behind the wainscot, as they scampered round about,
Filled my soul with speechless horror when I'd put the candle out.
So I'm deeply sympathetic when some story I have read
Of a victim buried living by his friends who thought him dead;
And I think I know his feelings in the cold and silent tomb,
For I've slept at Uncle Hiram's in the best spare room.