 | Marah |  |
166
MOONLAND
1
Dim, lonesome, melancholy Moonland, hail!My tired heart's home is in thy lap at last,
And I have learn'd to love thy features pale
As passions past.
2
To me thy colourless cold sea and shoreHave grown congenial, and thy sullen air,
And ghostly winds that sighingly explore
Boughs all but bare.
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3
Flowers in thy hueless herbage flourish not.But here dwell, hid in hollows of grey sand,
Dwarf pansies; and marsh-mallow blossoms spot
The inner land;
4
Where, at the setting of thine unseen sun,Small fenny pools gleam out of the dark plain,
Staring at night, and after day is done
Its glare retain.
5
Land of long silences, low whisperings,And sorrowful lights! Familiar things, that seem
Themselves elsewhere, look here like other things,
As in a dream.
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6
What are they, crouching yonder, crook'd so low?Mere clumps of rock their misty forms may be,
But wither'd hags, whose wicked trades I know,
They seem to me.
7
That sallow sand-drift, where the shingles halt,A wasted remnant of myself appears.
This stagnant tarn has in its ooze the salt
Of human tears.
8
And all the land is loaded with a weightOf resignation to some torpid woe.
The heavens are smileless, the fields desolate,
The waters slow.
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9
Time makes not any effort to divertAught here from its monotonous attitude
Of dull distress. Each feature is inert,
Each sound subdued.
10
What now it looks, the landscape seems to sayThat from the world's beginning it has been,
And that its league-long lamentable grey
Was never green.
11
Yet this, too, is illusion, like the rest!The soil's fixt features Nature's fitful will
Has changed and changed: and the immutablest
Is changing still,
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12
Thro' transmutations every moment wroughtBy heat and cold, or damp and drowth; and those
That in commixture with my own sick thought
It undergoes.
13
For 'tis not only by the tide-wave's toilThat yonder coast has been so scoop'd and hack'd,
Not only rains and rays that this lean soil
Have scarr'd and crack'd.
14
My life's spent passions, sorrows, tears, and sighsIn the land's hurt have had their dismal part;
And the chief cause of its dejection lies
In my own heart.
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15
I know not how it was, nor why it is,But well I know that, whatsoe'er it be,
The region round me has become like this
Because of me.
16
Thou know'st it, too, sad Moonland! That is whyThou dost remind me of it everywhere.
Thy cold sun has the gaze of a grey eye,
Thy sullen air
17
The breath of a lost presence, miss'd how much!Thy faint winds whisper words I understand
Too well! Thy stillness stirs me with the touch
Of a dead hand.
| Marah | |