THE PALACE OF ART. I BUILT my soul a lordly pleasure-house, I said, "O Soul, make merry and carouse, A huge crag-platform, smooth as burnish'd brass, Thereon I built it firm. Of ledge or shelf And "while the world runs round and round," I said, Still as, while Saturn whirls, his stedfast shade Sleeps on his luminous ring." To which my soul made answer readily: In this great mansion, that is built for me, Four courts I made, East, West and South and North, In each a squared lawn, wherefrom The golden gorge of dragons spouted forth And round the cool green courts there ran a row And round the roofs a gilded gallery That lent broad verge to distant lands, From those four jets four currents in one swell In misty folds, that floating as they fell I And high on every peak a statue seem'd A cloud of incense of all odour steam'd 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 fail'd, Burnt like a fringe of fire. Likewise the deep-set windows, stain'd and traced, From shadow'd grots of arches interlaced, Full of long-sounding corridors it was, Thro' which the livelong day my soul did pass. Full of great rooms and small the palace stood, From living Nature, fit for every mood For some were hung with arras green and blue, Where with puff'd cheek the belted hunter blew One seem'd all dark and red-a tract of sand, One show'd an iron coast and angry waves. And one, a full-fed river winding slow By herds upon an endless plain, The ragged rims of thunder brooding low, And one, the reapers at their sultry toil In front they bound the sheaves. Behind Were realms of upland, prodigal in oil, And hoary to the wind. And one, a foreground black with stones and slags, Beyond, a line of heights, and higher All barr'd with long white cloud the scornful crags, And highest, snow and fire. And one, an English home-gray twilight pour'd Softer than sleep—all things in order stored, Nor these alone, but every landscape fair, Or gay, or grave, or sweet, or stern, was there, Or the maid-mother by a crucifix, In tracts of pasture sunny-warm, Beneath branch-work of costly sardonyx Sat smiling, babe in arm. Or in a clear-wall'd city on the sea, |