| |
| A DROWSY pain, a dull, dead pain, | |
| Preys on my heart, and clouds my brain; | |
| And shadows brood above my dreams, | |
| Like spectral mists o’er haunted streams. | |
| |
| There is no fire within the grate; | 5 |
| The room is cold and desolate, | |
| And dampness on the window-panes | |
| Foretells the equinoctial rains. | |
| The stony road runs past the door, | |
| Dry and dusty evermore; | 10 |
| Up and down the people go, | |
| Shadowy figures, sad and slow: | |
| And the strange houses lie below. | |
| |
| Across the road the dark elms wait, | |
| Ranged in a row before the gate, | 15 |
| Giving their voices to the wind, | |
| And their sorrows to my mind. | |
| |
| Behind the house the river flows, | |
| Half unrest and half repose; | |
| Ships lie below with mildewed sails, | 20 |
| Tattered in forgotten gales; | |
| Along each hulk a whitish line, | |
| The dashing of the ancient brine: | |
| Beyond, the spaces of the sea, | |
| Which old Ocean’s portals be: | 25 |
| The land runs out its horns of sand, | |
| And the sea comes in to meet the land. | |
| |
| Sky sinks to sea, sea swells to sky, | |
| Till they meet, and mock the eye; | |
| And where they meet the sand hills lie; | 30 |
| No cattle in their pastures seen, | |
| For the yellow grass was never green: | |
| With a calm and solemn stare | |
| They look to heaven in blank despair; | |
| And heaven, with pity dumb the while, | 35 |
| Looks down again with a sickly smile. | |
| |
| The sky is gray, half dark, half bright, | |
| Swimming in dim, uncertain light, | |
| Something between the day and night. | |
| And the winds blow, but soft and low, | 40 |
| Unheard, unheeded in their woe; | |
| Like some sick heart, too near o’erthrown | |
| To vent its grief by sigh or moan, | |
| Some heart that breaks, like mine, alone! | |
| |
| And here I dwell, condemned to see, | 45 |
| And be what all these phantoms be, | |
| Within this realm of penal pain, | |
| Beside the melancholy main; | |
| The waste which lies, as legend saith, | |
| Between the worlds of Life and Death; | 50 |
| A soul from Life to Death betrayed, | |
| A Shadow in the World of Shade! | |
| |
