Listless he eyes the palisades
⁠And sentries in the glare;
'Tis barren as a pelican-beach—
⁠But his world is ended there.

Nothing to do; and vacant hands
⁠Bring on the idiot-pain;
He tries to think—to recollect,
⁠But the blur is on his brain.

Around him swarm the plaining ghosts
⁠Like those on Virgil's shore—
A wilderness of faces dim,
⁠And pale ones gashed and hoar.

A smiting sun. No shed, no tree;
⁠He totters to his lair—
A den that sick hands dug in earth
⁠Ere famine wasted there,