Hence the notion of a "waste," once attached to the austral creation, is evoked in his poetry by settings "disnatured" by retrograde actions a nd human blindness, (16) whose recurrent figure is the unmarked resting-place of a murdered man: Only one tuft of grass did wave Above that sterile desert Grave Bestrewn with leaves and withered sprays, And only one blue flower did gaze Timidly up, as near I trod, From 'twixt the dry lips of a broken clod.
(16.) The coinage "disnatured" is Harpur's, and occurs most frequently in conjunction with the human mind, as in "Eden Lost" (PW, p.