XI.

A gnawing rage, an aimless heat,
Have scored and set his grating face;
His eyes like ghosts the gazer greet,
The guards of misery's dwelling-place;

XII.

A sun-dial pillar left alone,
On which no dial meets the eye;
A black mill-wheel with grass o'er-grown,
That hears no water trickle by;

XIII.

Dark palsied mass of severed rock,
Deaf, blind, and sere to sun and rain;
A shattered gravestone's time-worn block
That only shows the name of—Jane.

XIV.

'Tis thus he sits from hour to hour,
Amid the breeze beneath the sky;
And still, when beats the noisy shower,
The cottage doorway keeps him dry.

XV.

With open door he shelters there,
A pace behind his outward seat;
And, fixed upon his old arm-chair,
Looks through the rain from his retreat.

XVI.

Upon his daughter's grave he stares,
As if her form he thought would rise,
For all to him the semblance wears
Of mist that has his daughter's eyes.

XVII.

He heeds not passing beast nor men,
Nor wain at hand, nor distant plough;
Not e'en a burial draws his ken—
He is no longer Sexton now.

XVIII.

But while, like some grey stump, he sits,
Dried up at root, and shorn of all,
Still Nature round him works and flits,
And fills and lights her festival.

XIX.

And e'en around his daughter's grave,
Where Life for him in Death is cold,
Fair growth goes on, and grasses wave,
And shooting flies their revels hold.

XX.

And, lo! at last the old man's gaze
Is brightened with a gleam of sense,
A butterfly all yellow plays
Above the grave, nor wanders thence.