Alone and built of a pallid stone
Across the levels looked her house
And tattered plot, where nought had grown
But withered trees which creaked their boughs.
No fruit or blossom or petal blown
Was there to gladden mournful eyes,
But all was drab and monotone
Beneath a reign of leaden skies.
A red, red weed was all the flower,
Which crawled serpiginous about
The marsh, unchanged from hour to hour
Until the evening blotted out
The landscape which she called her own.
And, save for a ridge of bent and sand,
Which rose between them and the sea,
The marshes stretched on either hand,
And, ever looking, wearied she
Of low sad purple and sombre brown
And, where the rivulets trickled down,
Moss-tracks of vivid green,
And stiff grey grasses which bend and sigh,
As the marsh wind wails and passes by,
And quagmires in between
The firmer ground — and over all
She heard the curlews’ dreary call
As they piped eternally.