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. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...MONADNOC by RALPH WALDO EMERSON HORATIUS [AT THE BRIDGE], FR. LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME by THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY WOMAN'S BEAUTY by LASCELLES ABERCROMBIE PEARLS OF THE FAITH: 38. AL-KABIR by EDWIN ARNOLD WRITTEN TO GAALDINE PRISON CAVES TO A.G.A. by EMILY JANE BRONTE |