A Spellbound Palace
Thomas Hardy
1840 to 1928
Drag the words to the correct places to complete the poem. To reset the game, click on the "Reset Game" button located below the poem. This will clear all the words you've placed in the blanks, returning them to the word bank and resetting the poem to its original state with empty blanks.
(Hampton Court)
On this kindly yellow day of mild low-travelling winter sun
The stirless depths of the yews
Are ______ with misty blues:
Across the spacious pathways stretching spires ______ shadow run,
And the wind-gnawed walls of ancient brick ______ fired vermilion.
Two or three early sanguine finches tune
______ tentative strains, to be enlarged by May or June:
______ a thrush or blackbird
Comes now and then a word,
While an enfeebled fountain somewhere within is heard.
Our ______ wait awhile,
Then draw beneath the pile,
When an ______ court outspreads
As 'twere History's own asile,
Where the now-visioned fountain its attenuate crystal sheds
In passive lapse that ______ to ignore the yon world's clamorous clutch,
And lays ______ 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 ______ Minister, at a bold self-centred pace:
Sheer in the ______ they pass; and thereupon all is still,
Save the ______ fountain tinkling on with thin enfeebled will.