How does the description of Tom's house affect the mood of the story? What words are significant?

From the text:

They lived in a forlorn looking house, that stood alone and had an air of starvation. A few straggling savin trees, emblems of sterility, grew near it; no smoke ever curled from its chimney; no traveler stopped at its door. A miserable horse, whose ribs were as articulate as the bars of a gridiron, stalked about a field where a thin carpet of moss, scarcely covering the ragged beds of pudding stone, tantalized and balked his hunger; and sometimes he would lean his head over the fence, look piteously at the passer by, and seem to petition deliverance from this land of famine.

The mood of the story in relation to the description of the house revolves around words such as forlorn, starvation, straggling, sterility, miserable, and piteously. All of the words speak to unhappiness, isolation, and most of all lack of life. It's like the house and its surroundings are dying a slow, miserable death.