wrung my hair, stamped them feet

I painted a portrait, and named it Dejection;
My aims were to mirror on canvas the river
That drained assorted tales from a section
Of forest. On broad boats of leaves
Fallen in its current it speeded down
The whispers of trees once green, sent them down
To dusky, dying, soundless seas.

It fell that in the middle of the river I composed this picture.

Things weren't as I imagined them.
Yea, the woods were not gorgeous,
And the stream's bends were imperfect,
And the trailing leaves uncrisp, and rotted, and stale.
I wandered more, and noted that scores on scores
Of brown skulls of spring clogged the scene,
Where aged ribs of flowers stuck fast, collected,
Then slowly congealed the ebb and swirl,
Coercing the current into pools, where, coagulate,
Sorrowful made the fair waters stagnate,
Froze their motion, decayed the river's resolve,
Its impeccable keening for grander shores forgot,
Destroyed in slow measure the life, the hope,
The pure liquid pulsate of its soul.

More evil the wood, then, that imprisoned the river there,
and in chains of Autumn fallen forbid it drain!
How earth sullied that clear crystalline stream,
Until languorous and weepy, overgrown with algae
So sickly green the stopped-up river seemed
That I, absorbed in morose rapture,
thinking this spot a grazen pasture,
Stepped; I sunk, and in the mud was bound.

And I had my brush, but had no pigment;
So drawing from the wounds of the river
In muddy pustule I painted my picture.