The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851

Their antlers mirrored with the tangled boughs;
My rivers flow beyond, with guardant ranks
Of silver-liveried poplars, on their banks;
Barges are fretting at the castle piers,
Rocking with every ripple in the tide;
And bridges span the stream with arches wide,
Their stony 'butments mossed and gray with years;
An undulating range of vales, and bowers,
And columned palaces, and distant towers,
And on the welkin mountains bar the view,
Shooting their jagged peaks sublimely up the blue!

IV

I saunter up the walks;
My sandals wetted through
With dripping flowers and stalks,
That line the avenue;
My broidered mantle all bedabbled with the dew!
I climb a flight of steps with regal pride,
And stroll along an echoing colonnade,
Sweeping against its pillared balustrade,
Adown a porch, and through a portal wide,
And I am in my Castle, Lord of all;
My faithful groom is standing in the hall
To doff my shining robe, while servitors,
And cringing chamberlains beside the doors
Waving their gilded wands, obsequious wait,
And bow me on my way in royal pomp and state!

V

My chamber lies apart,
The Castle's very heart,
And all things rich and rare,
From land, and sea, and air,
Are lavished with a wild and waste profusion there!
The carpeting was woven in Turkish looms,
From softest wool of fine Circassian sheep;
Tufted like springy moss in forests deep,
Illuminate with all its autumn blooms;
The antique chairs are made of cedar trees,
Veined with the rings of vanished cennturies
And touched with winter's frost, and summer's sun;
Sofas and couches, stuffed with cygnet's fleece,
Loll round inviting dreaminess and ease;
The gorgeous window curtains, damask red,
Suspended, silver-ringed, on bars of gold,
Droop heavily, in many a fluted fold,
And, rounding outward, intercept, and shed
The prisoned daylight o'er the slumbrous room,
In streams of rosy dimness, purple gloom;
Hard by are cabinets of curious shells,
Twisted and jointed, hornéd, wreathed, and curled,
And some like moons in rosy mist impearled,
With coral boughs from ocean's deepest cells;
Cases of rare medallions, coins antique,
Found in the dust of cities, Roman, Greek;
Etruscan urns, transparent, soft, and bright,
With fawns and dancing shepherds on their sides;
And costly marble vases dug from night
In Pompeii, beneath its lava tides:
Clusters of arms, the spoil of ancient wars;
Old scimitars of true Damascus brand,
Short swords with basket hilts to guard the hand,
And iron casques with rusty visor bars;
Lances, and spears, and battle axes keen,
With crescent edges, shields with studded thorns,
Yew bows, and shafts, and curvéd bugle horns,
With tasseled baldricks of the Lincoln green:
And on the walls with lifted curtains, see!
The portraits of my noble ancestry;
Thin featured, stately dames with powdered locks,
And courtly shepherdesses tending flocks;
Stiff lords in wigs, and ruffles white as snow,
Haught peers, and princes centuries ago,
And dark Sir Hugh, the bravest of the line,
With all the knightly scars he won in Palestine!

VI

My gallery sleeps aloof,
Soft-lighted through the roof,
Enshrining pictures old,
And groups of statues cold,
The gems of Art, when Art was in her Age of Gold!
Not picked from any single age or clime,
Nor one peculiar master, school, or tone;
Select of all, the best of all alone,
The spoil and largesse of the Earth and Time;
Food for all thoughts and fancies, grave or gay;
Suggestive of old lore, and poets' themes;
These filled with shapes of waking life, and day,
And those with spirits and the world of dreams;
Let me draw back the curtains, one by one,
And give their muffled brightness to the sun:

THE PICTURES

Helen and Paris on their bridal night,