NOW comes the fierce North-Easter,bound About with clouds and racks of rain,And dry,dead leaves go whirling round In rings of dust,and sigh like pain Across the plain.
Now Twilight,with a shadowy hand Of wild dominionship,doth keep Strong hold of hollow straits of land,And watery sounds are loud and deep By gap and steep.
Keen fitful gusts that fly before The wings of storm when day hath shut Its eyes on mountains,flaw by flaw,Fleet down by whistling boxtree-but Against the hut.
And ringed and girt with lurid pomp,Far eastern cliffs start up and take Thick steaming vapours from a swamp That lieth like a great blind lake Of face opaque.
The moss that like a tender grief,About an English ruin clings -What time the wan autumnal leaf Faints,after many wanderings On windy wings -That gracious growth,whose quiet green Is as a love in days austere,Was never seen -hath never been -On slab or roof,deserted here For many a year.
Nor comes the bird whose speech is song -
Whose songs are silvery syllables That unto glimmering woods belong,And deep,meandering mountain dells By yellow wells.
But rather here the wild-dog halts,And lifts the paw,and looks,and howls;And here,in ruined forest-vaults,Abide dim,dark,death-featured owls,Like monks in cowls.
Across this hut the nettle runs;
And livid adders make their lair In corners dank from lack of suns;And out of foetid furrows stare The growths that scare.
Here Summer's grasp of fire is laid On bark and slabs that rot,and breed Squat ugly things of deadly shade-The scorpion,and the spiteful seed Of centipede.
Unhallowed thunders harsh and dry,And flaming noontides mute with heat,Beneath the breathless,brazen sky,Upon these rifted rafters beat With torrid feet.
And night by night,the fitful gale Doth carry past the bittern's boom,The dingo's yell,the plover's wail,While lumbering shadows start,and loom,And hiss through gloom.
No sign of grace -no hope of green,Cool-blossomed seasons marks the spot;But,chained to iron doom,I ween,'Tis left,like skeleton,to rot Where ruth is not.
For on this Hut hath Murder writ,With bloody fingers hellish things;And God will never visit it With flower or leaf of sweet-faced Springs,Or gentle wings.
