A Spellbound Palace
Thomas Hardy
1840 to 1928
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(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.