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| A Fair and Stately Palace |
By good angels
tenanted,
Once a fair and
stately palace —
Radiant palace —
reared its head.
In the monarch
Thought’s dominion,
It stood there!
Never seraph
spread a pinion
Over fabric half
so fair!
Banners yellow, glorious,
golden,
On its roof did
float and flow
(This — all this
— was in the olden
Time long ago)
And every gentle
air that dallied,
In that sweet
day,
Along the
ramparts plumed and pallid,
A wingèd odor
went away.
Wanderers in
that happy valley,
Through two
luminous windows, saw
Spirits moving
musically
To a lute’s
well-tunèd law,
Round about a
throne where, sitting,
Porphyrogene!
In state his
glory well befitting,
The ruler of the
realm was seen.
Was the fair
palace door,
Through which
came flowing, flowing, flowing
And sparkling
evermore,
A troop of
Echoes, whose sweet duty
Was but to sing,
In voices of
surpassing beauty,
The wit and
wisdom of their king.
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| Through the red-litten windows see... |
Assailed the
monarch’s high estate;
(Ah, let us
mourn! — for never morrow
Shall dawn upon
him, desolate!)
And round about
his home the glory
That blushed and
bloomed
Is but a
dim-remembered story
Of the old time
entombed.
And travellers,
now, within that valley,
Through the
red-litten windows see
Vast forms that
move fantastically
To a discordant
melody;
While, like a
ghastly rapid river,
Through the pale
door
A hideous throng
rush out forever,
And laugh — but
smile no more.
By Edgar Allan
Poe, 1839
from the April issue of American Museum magazine
The Art:
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