And round the roofs a gilded gallery That lent broad verge to distant lands, Far as the wild swan wings, to where the sky Dipt down to sea and sands. From those four jets four currents in one swell In misty folds, that floating as they fell And high on every peak a statue seemed A cloud of incense of all odor steamed So that she thought, " And who shall gaze upon While this great bow will waver in the sun, For that sweet incense rose and never failed, Burnt like a fringe of fire. Likewise the deep-set windows, stained and traced, Would seem slow-flaming crimson fires From shadowed grots of arches interlaced, Full of long-sounding corridors it was, That over-vaulted grateful gloom, Through which the livelong day my soul did pass, Well-pleased, from room to room. Full of great rooms and small the palace stood, For some were hung with arras green and blue, Showing a gaudy summer-morn, Where with puffed cheek the belted hunter blew His wreathed bugle-horn. One seemed all dark and red a tract of sand, Who paced forever in a glimmering land, One showed an iron coast and angry waves. And one, a full-fed river winding slow And one, the reapers at their sultry toil. And one, a foreground black with stones and slags, Beyond a line of heights, and higher All barred with long white cloud the scornful crags, And highest, snow and fire. And one, an English home-gray twilight poured Softer than sleep - all things in order stored, Nor these alone, but every landscape fair, As fit for every mood of mind, Or gay, or grave, or sweet, or stern, was there, Not less than truth designed. In tracts of pasture sunny-warm, Beneath branch-work of costly sardonyx Sat smiling, babe in arm. Or in a clear-walled city on the sea, Or thronging all one porch of Paradise, Or mythic Uther's deeply-wounded son And watched by weeping queens. Or hollowing one hand against his ear, To list a footfall, ere he saw The wood-nymph, stayed the Tuscan king to hear Of wisdom and of law. Or over hills with peaky tops engrailed, Or sweet Europa's mantle blew unclasped Or else flushed Ganymede, his rosy thigh Sole as a flying star shot through the sky Nor these alone: but every legend fair Not less than life, designed. |