Classic Poem

My fancy shuns all fair historic land;
No white Alhambra, vested by orange trees,
Or laughing Como, can my sorrow please;
For me Greece is not fair, Rome is not grand.

Merry with birds and buds, each sunny strand
That I behold can no regret appease,
And I am mute before the glory of seas
That kiss green shores where marble temples stand.

I seek the landscape of my dreams, a spot
Scorched barren by the lightning's lurid blight,
Alike by timorous man and beast unsought,
Where stars, and sun, and hope, and God are not,
And where the sad, unalterable night
Is dark and desolate as my every thought.