Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, A SPELLBOUND PALACE (HAMPTON COURT), by THOMAS HARDY


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A SPELLBOUND PALACE (HAMPTON COURT), by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: On this kindly yellow day of mild low-travelling winter sun
Last Line: Save the mindless fountain tinkling on with thin enfeebled will.
Subject(s): Hampton Court Palace, England


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 aisle,
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 stillness 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.





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