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| THIS is a barren, desolate scene, | |
| Grim and gray, with scarce a tree, | |
| Gashed with many a wild ravine | |
| Far away as the eye can see; | |
| Ne’er a home for miles to be found, | 5 |
| Save where huddled on some grim peak | |
| A village clinging in fear looks round | |
| Over the country vast and bleak, | |
| As if it had fled from the lower ground, | |
| Refuge from horrors there to seek. | 10 |
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| Over the spare and furzy soil | |
| With never a waving grain-field sowed, | |
| Raggedly winds with weary toil | |
| The shining band of dusty road,— | |
| Down through the river’s rocky bed, | 15 |
| That is white and dry with summer’s drought, | |
| Or climbing some sandy hillock’s head, | |
| Over and under, in and out, | |
| Like a struggling thing by madness led, | |
| That wanders along in fear and doubt. | 20 |
| |
| What are those spots on yon sandy slope | |
| Where the green is frayed and tattered with gray? | |
| Are they only rocks, or sheep that crop | |
| The meagre pasture? one scarce can say. | |
| This seems not a place for flowers,—but behold! | 25 |
| How the lupine spreads its pink around, | |
| And the clustered ginestra squanders its gold | |
| As if it loved this barren ground; | |
| And surely that bird is over-bold | |
| That dares to sing o’er that grave-like mound. | 30 |
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| It is dead and still in the middle noon; | |
| The sand-beds shine with a blinding light, | |
| The cicali dizzen the air with their tune, | |
| And the sunshine seems like a curse to smite; | |
| The mountains around their shoulders bare, | 35 |
| Gather a thin and shadowy veil, | |
| And shrink from the fierce and scorching glare— | |
| And close to the grass so withered and pale | |
| Hovering quivers the glassy air, | |
| And the lizards pant in their emerald mail. | 40 |
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| Think of this place in the dreary gloom | |
| Of an autumn twilight, when the sun | |
| Hiding in banks of clouds goes down, | |
| And silence and shadow are coming on;— | |
| White mists crawl,—one lurid light | 45 |
| Glares from the west through a broken cloud— | |
| Rack hurries above—the dubious night | |
| Is creeping along with its spectral crowd; | |
| Would it, I ask, be a startling sight | |
| To meet a ghost here than in a shroud? | 50 |
| |
| One of the thousand murdered men | |
| Who have stained the blasted soil with blood? | |
| Dues the lupine get its color then | |
| From some victim pashed to death in the mud? | |
| Has the yellow ginestra the hue of the gold | 55 |
| From the traveller here in terror torn? | |
| Was yon bird but a sprite, singing so bold, | |
| That in life a maiden’s form had worn, | |
| And at night steals back in its shape of old | |
| To haunt the darkness pale and forlorn? | 60 |
| |
| Look at that castle whose ruins crown | |
| The rocky crest of yonder height, | |
| Still frowning over the squalid town, | |
| That cowers beneath as if in affright. | |
| From his eyrie there to glut his beak | 65 |
| The robber swooped to his shuddering prey, | |
| And the ghosts of the past still haunt the peak | |
| Though robber and baron have passed away. | |
| And, hark! was that the owl’s long shriek, | |
| Or a ghost’s that flits through the ruins gray? | 70 |
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| ’T is blood and gold wherever I gaze, | |
| And tangled brambles, stiff and gray,— | |
| A scowling, ugly, terrified place, | |
| A spot for murder and deadly fray. | |
| On such a barren, desolate heath, | 75 |
| When shadows were deepening all around, | |
| The sisters weird before Macbeth | |
| Rising, hovered along the ground, | |
| And echoed his inward thought of death, | |
| And vanished again behind a mound. * * * * * | 80 |
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