A speaker describes a desolate hillside sloping toward a loud, gray sea, where the wind is violent and even a daisy gets ripped from the ground and thrown into the waves. Into this hostile place comes a bent old man, climbing slowly and muttering about his dead wife, his hungry children, and the bad turns his life has taken. He carries a rope and curses God, sneering that God is deaf, blind, or simply lazy.
The speaker refuses to say plainly what happens next, but points to a bent tree at the hilltop and remembers a demonic jabbering as the old man fell. The rope and the tree imply suicide, though the act is left half-unsaid. The whole scene feels weighted with grief, bitterness, and supernatural dread. The speaker seems shaken and pitying, as if the landscape itself conspires with despair and something demonic grins at human suffering.