Alone!

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.