Poems (May)/The palace of echoes

by Edith May

THE PALACE OF ECHOES.

So tall the cloud-hung turrets rise,
They seem to pierce the secret skies,
And they who tread their heights declare
That angel forms are sentries there.

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And rippling to the palace door,
A dull, deep wave flows evermore,
For they who pass, and they who come,
Must leap or swim those waters dumb.
 
 

Within the portals dark and grand,
Stands silence with uplifted hand,
And wakeful echoes, biding there,
Keep watch beside the palace stair.
 
 

Strange fancies paint the ceilings dim;
A lamb, a stag, a lion grim,
Are by a blindfold maiden led,
Held in a chain of poppies red.
 
 

Above, through chambers vast and high
Tread lightly still, for echoes shy
Wheel fluttering at the rash footfall,
Like bird and bat from roof and wall.
 
 

There where the deep-browed windows rise,
The masquing light of noonday skies
Through many a stained and clouded pane
Drops in a faint prismatic rain.
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Mantled and dumb, a ghostly rout
Wheels through the chambers, in and out;
Now in the cumbrous robes of sadness,
Now crowned, and flushed with festal madness.
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Tread light above the sounding floor,
Along the dark, still corridors,
For they whose look is death, 'tis said,
Lie chained below in dungeons dread.
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No daybeam breaks the purple gloom
That shrouds and fills yon inner room.
Dropt from the lintel to the floor,
Thick draperies cloak the low-arched door.
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With veiled brows, a spectral band,
Within, a few pale masquers stand;
Echoes that haunt the palace halls
Beat with faint wings the outer walls.

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Paler than stars that front the day,
One silver cresset wastes away;
A marble naiad, fair and dim,
Keeps watch beside a fountain's brim.