Low lies a land, swept by a languid breeze, Where aged mosses cling to wearied trees, As somber rivers seek their destined seas.
Where listless cypresses in cadence sway Above dark swamps, as in the sodden gray Of morn, some lonely heron glides away.
Far are the sweep and strident stress of sound; There muted silence, unperturbed, is found, And hushed inertia is all around.
Spence paints a single, unmoving scene: a low, marshy landscape where cypress trees droop with old moss and rivers drift toward the sea. A lone heron glides off through the gray light of early morning. That's about all that happens, and that's the point. The poem is less a story than a held breath.
The speaker never says "I feel," but the feeling is everywhere in the word choices. "Languid," "wearied," "listless," "somber," "sodden" all suggest tiredness and heaviness, as if the whole place were half asleep. The final stanza makes the contrast explicit. Loud, harsh sounds belong to somewhere else, "far" away, while here there is only "muted silence" and "hushed inertia."
The mood is calm but a little melancholy, a stillness that can feel either peaceful or slightly sad. The poem's three-line stanzas, each built on a single repeated rhyme, add to this: the sounds keep returning to themselves, like the slow sway of the trees.