"Le monde est l'oeuvre d'un grand Architecte qui est mort avant de l'avoir acheve." -- B. CONSTANT. THE king is dead who planned these terraces; The turf has grown to meadow-grass again; The lake is rank beneath the untended trees, And down the mouldering statues drips the rain. The king is dead. Ay, he, with all his kind, Is absolutely vanished, lost, and gone, And not a trace of him remains behind; But the forsaken palace lingers on. How desolate! The weary waters drowned In mist, the empty alleys chill and frore, The vast and melancholy pleasure-ground Where the forgotten monarch comes no more. How like an older Folly, planned no less For beauty, where a greater monarch trod, And now, grown old, in its extreme distress Abandoned by the long-departed God! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...SMOTHERED FIRES by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON SONNET: IN ABSENCE FROM BECCHINA by CECCO ANGIOLIERI DA SIENA MEMORIAL TABLET (GREAT WAR, 1918) by SIEGFRIED SASSOON HILL MAN'S BURIAL by LILLIAN M. (PETTES) AINSWORTH THE PIAZZA OF ST. MARK AT MIDNIGHT by THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH BRUCE: IN PRAISE OF FREEDOM by JOHN BARBOUR THE MARVELOUS MUNCHAUSEN by WILLIAM ROSE BENET |