A Spellbound Palace

(Hampton Court) 

On this kindly yellow day of mild low-travelling winter sun 

The stirless depths of the yews 

Are vague with misty blues: 

Across the spacious pathways stretching spires of shadow run, 

And the wind-gnawed walls of ancient brick are fired vermilion. 

Two or three early sanguine finches tune 

Some tentative strains, to be enlarged by May or June: 

From a thrush or blackbird 

Comes now and then a word, 

While an enfeebled fountain somewhere within is heard. 

Our footsteps wait awhile, 

Then draw beneath the pile, 

When an inner court outspreads 

As 'twere History's own asile, 

Where the now-visioned fountain its attenuate crystal sheds 

In passive lapse that seems to ignore the yon world's clamorous clutch, 

And lays an insistent numbness on the place, like a cold hand's touch. 

And there swaggers the Shade of a straddling King, plumed, sworded, with sensual face, 

And lo, too, that of his Minister, at a bold self-centred pace: 

Sheer in the sun they pass; and thereupon all is still, 

Save the mindless fountain tinkling on with thin enfeebled will.

-o0o-