And when the trickling cliffs of slate
The color from the sunset borrow,
Methinks an eye all red with sorrow
Looks down on me disconsolate.
The arbor peak with jagged edge
Wears many a vine-shoot long and meagre
And from the moss beneath the hedge
Creep forth carnations, nowise eager.
There from the moist cliff overhead
The muddy drippings oft bedew them,
Then creep in lazy streamlets through them
To sink within a fennel-bed.
Along the roof o'ergrown with moss
Has many a tuft of thatch projected,
A spider-web is built across
The window-jamb, else unprotected;
The wing of a gleaming dragon-fly
Hangs in it like some petal tender,
The body armed in golden splendor
Lies headless on the sill near-by.
A butterfly sometimes may chance
In heedless play to flutter hither
And stop in momentary trance
Where the narcissus blossoms wither;
A dove that through the grove has flown
Above this dell no more will utter
Her coo, one can but hear her flutter
And see her shadow on the stone.
And in the fireplace where the snow
Each winter down the chimney dashes
A mass of bell-capped toad-stools grow
On viscid heaps of moldering ashes.
