Alone--alone--a desolate dreary wild,
Herbless and verdureless; low swampy moss,
Where tadpoles grew to frogs, for leagues begirt
My solitary path. Nor sight nor sound
Of moving life, except a grey curlew--
As shrieking tumbled on the timid bird,
Aye glancing backward with its coal-black eye,
Even as by imp invisible pursued--
Was seen or heard; the last low level rays
Of sunset, gilded with a blood-red glow
That melancholy moor, with its grey stones
And stagnant water-pools. Aye floundering on,
And on, I stray'd, finding no pathway, save
The runlet of a wintry stream, begirt
With shelvy barren rocks; around, o'erhead,
Yea every where, in shapes grotesque and grim,
Towering they rose, encompassing my path,
As 'twere in savage mockery. Lo, a chasm
Yawning, and bottomless, and black! Beneath
I heard the waters in their sheer descent
Descending down, and down; and further down
Descending still, and dashing: Now a rush,
And now a roar, and now a fainter fall,
And still remoter, and yet finding still,
For the white anguish of their boiling whirl,
No resting-place. Over my head appear'd,
Between the jagged black rifts bluely seen,
Sole harbinger of hope, a patch of sky,
Of deep, clear, solemn sky, shrining a star
Magnificent; that, with a holy light,
Glowing and glittering, shone into the heart
As 'twere an angel's eye. Entranced I stood,
Drinking the beauty of that gem serene,
How long I wist not; but, when back to earth
Sank my prone eyes--I knew not where I was--
Again the scene had shifted, and the time,
From midnight to the hour when earliest dawn
Gleams in the orient, and with inky lines
The trees seem painted on the girding sky.