Poems (Scudder)/The Deserted Palace
THE DESERTED PALACE
The slender columns rising Above the dusky water Are pomegranate marble, The low archways between Are wreathed with drooping poppies And hundred-petalled daisies Each wrought in creamy stucco Dimmed by the shadows' green.
But row on row above them Stare round-browed glassless windows From walls whose ancient whiteness The sun and rain have streaked With lemon, rose and lilac; And on the shallow stairway A thousand shells are lying With strangest colors freaked.
For some of satin paleness Are flecked with deep carnation, And fragile, spiky Venus-combs Meant for the mermaids' hair, And brittle scallops mottled And rayed like pansy-petals, And tiny, pink-lipped conches— Who could have brought them there?
The pavement's rare mosaics Are cruelly scarred and shattered, I guess a nymph, a triton, A writhing, scaly shape Each crowned with blue sea-lilies; Here fair-haired Ariadne Bewails her faithless Theseus, There's proud Europa's rape.
The panelled ceilings likewise Though weather-stained and mouldy, Reveal in dim presentments Huge shapes, half god, half beast, Of gorgon, sphinx and titan—Now, should I have the courage To sleep in that great chamber That looks toward the east?
What should I see at midnight Against the pale walls painted With clustered grapes and roses Quick flitting here and there? A ghostly cavaliere Superb in tawny velvet Wide ruffed and jewel cinctured, Or phantom lady fair?
Or should I hear ere sunrise Slow climbing from the gateway, That low gate to the westward That fronts upon the sea, A Something upward dragging From step to step its heavy, Cold, glistening coils—and nearer— Oh, shrinking heart of me!
—Or should I sleep till wakened By crying of the sea-gulls, And looking toward Friuli, See all the broad lagoon O'erstrewn with faint cloud-petals Of hyacinth and primrose, With distant church-bells throbbing To drown the dead years' rune?