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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,