With apologies to William Wordsworth
I wandered vaguely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of horrid carbuncles;
Beside the sea, beneath no trees,
Eyesores staring me in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand there stood in my sight,
Cowering at this dismal blight.
The waves beside them wept; but they
Did make the sparkling waves to flee:
A poet could not but cry,
In such a hellish company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What horror the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with anguish fills,
And curses all those cubicles.