The Palace of Art

I built my soul a lordly pleasurehouse,

Wherein at ease for aye to dwell.

I said, "Oh Soul, make merry and carouse,

Dear Soul, for all is well.

A huge crag-platform, smooth as burnished brass,

⁠I chose, whose rangèd ramparts bright

From great broad meadowbases of deep grass

⁠Suddenly scaled the light.

Thereon I built it firm. Of ledge or shelf

⁠The rock rose clear, or winding stair.

My soul would live alone unto herself

⁠In her high palace there.

"While the world runs round and round," I said,

⁠"Reign thou apart, a quiet king;

Still as, while Saturn whirls, his steadfast shade

⁠Sleeps on his luminous ring.

"And richly feast within thy palacehall,

Like to the dainty bird that sups,

Lodged in the lustrous crown-imperial,

Draining the honeycups."

To which my soul made answer readily.

⁠"Trust me, in bliss I shall abide

In this great mansion that is built for me

⁠So royalrich and wide."

Full of long-sounding corridors it was

⁠That overvaulted grateful glooms,

Roofed with thick plates of green and orange glass

Ending in stately rooms.

Full of great rooms and small the palace stood,

⁠All various, all beautiful,

Looking all ways, fitted to every mood

⁠And change of my still soul.

For some were hung with arras green and blue

⁠Showing a gaudy summer morn,

Where with puffed cheek the belted hunter blew

⁠His wreathèd buglehorn.

One showed an English home—gray twilight poured

⁠On dewy pastures, dewy trees,

Softer than sleep—all things in order stored—

⁠A haunt of ancient Peace.

Some were all dark and red, glimmering land

⁠Lit with a low large moon,

Among brown rocks a man upon the sand

Went weeping all alone.

One seemed a foreground black with stones and slags.

Below sunsmitten icy spires

Rose striped with long white cloud the scornful crags,

Deeptrenched with thunderfires.

Some showed far-off thick woods mounted with towers,

Nearer, a flood of mild sunshine

Poured on long walks and lawns and beds and bowers

Trellised with bunchy vine.

Or the maidmother by a crucifix,

In yellow pastures sunnywarm,

Beneath branchwork of costly sardonyx,

Sat smiling, babe in arm.

Or Venus in a snowy shell alone,

Deepshadowed in the glassy brine,

Moonlike glowed double on the blue, and shone

A naked shape divine.

Or in a clearwalled city on the sea,

Near gilded organpipes (her hair

Wound with white roses) slept Saint Cecily;

An angel looked at her.

Or that deepwounded child of Pendragon

Mid misty woods on sloping greens

Dozed in the valley of Avilion,

Tended by crownèd queens.

Or blue-eyed Kriemhilt from a craggy hold,

Athwart the lightgreen rows of vine.

Poured blazing hoards of Nibelungen gold,

Down to the gulfy Rhine.

Europa's scarf blew in an arch, unclasped,

From her bare shoulder backward borne;

From one hand drooped a crocus: one hand grasped

The mild bull's golden horn.

He thro' the streaming crystal swam, and rolled

Ambrosial breaths that seemed to float

In lightwreathed curls. She from the ripple cold

Updrew her sandalled foot.

Or else flushed Ganymede, his rosy thigh

Half-buried in the eagle's down,

Sole, as a flying star, shot thro' the sky

Over the pillared town.

Not these alone: but many a legend fair,

Which the supreme Caucasian mind

Carved out of nature for itself, was there

Broidered in screen and blind.

So that my soul beholding in her pride

All these, from room to room did pass;

And all things that she saw, she multiplied,

A manyfacèd glass;

And, being both the sower and the seed,

Remaining in herself became

All that she saw, Madonna, Ganymede,

Or the Asiatic dame—

Still changing, as a lighthouse in the night

Changeth athwart the gleaming main,

From red to yellow, yellow to pale white,

Then back to red again.

"From change to change four times within the womb

The brain is moulded," she began,

"So thro' all phases of all thought I come

Into the perfect man.

"All nature widens upward: evermore

The simpler essence lower lies.

More complex is more perfect, owning more

Discourse, more widely wise.

"I take possession of men's minds and deeds.

I live in all things great and small.

I dwell apart, holding no forms of creeds,

But contemplating all."

Four ample courts there were, East, West, South, North,

In each a squarèd lawn wherefrom

A golden-gorgèd dragon spouted forth

The fountain's diamond foam.

All round the cool green courts there ran a row

Of cloisters, branched like mighty woods,

Echoing all night to that sonorous flow

Of spouted fountain floods.

From those four jets four currents in one swell

Over the black rock streamed below

In steamy folds, that, floating as they fell,

Lit up a torrentbow;

And round the roofs ran gilded galleries

That gave large view to distant lands,

Tall towns and mounds, and close beneath the skies

Long lines of amber sands.

Huge incense-urns along the balustrade,

Hollowed of solid amethyst,

Each with a different odour fuming, made

The air a silver mist.

Far-off 'twas wonderful to look upon

Those sumptuous towers between the gleam

Of that great foambow trembling in the sun,

And the argent incense-steam;

And round the terraces and round the walls,

While day sank lower or rose higher,

To see those rails with all their knobs and balls,

Burn like a fringe of fire.

Likewise the deepset windows, stained and traced,

Burned, like slowflaming crimson fires,

From shadowed grots of arches interlaced,

And topped with frostlike spires.

Up in the towers I placed great bells that swung

Moved of themselves with silver sound:

And with choice paintings of wise men I hung

The royal daïs round.

There deephaired Milton like an angel tall

Stood limnèd, Shakspeare bland and mild,

Grim Dante pressed his lips, and from the wall

The hald blind Homer smiled.

And underneath freshcarved in cedarwood,

Somewhat alike in form and face,

The Genii of every climate stood,

All brothers of one race:

Angels who sway the seasons by their art,

And mould all shapes in earth and sea;

And with great effort build the human heart

From earliest infancy.

And in the sunpierced Oriel's coloured flame

Immortal Michael Angelo

Looked down, bold Luther, largebrowed Verulam,

The king of those who know.

Cervantes, the bright face of Calderon,

Robed David touching holy strings,

The Halicarnasseän, and alone,

Alfred the flower of kings,

Isaïah with fierce Ezekiel,

Swarth Moses by the Coptic sea,

Plato, Petrarca, Livy, and Raphaël,

And eastern Confutzee:

And many more, that in their lifetime were

Fullwelling fountainheads of Change,

Between the stone shafts glimmered, blazoned fair

In divers raiment strange.

Thro' which the lights, rose, amber, emerald, blue,

Flushed in her temples and her eyes,

And from her lips, as morn from Memnon, drew

Rivers of melodies.

No nightingale delighteth to prolong

Her low preamble all alone,

More than my soul to hear her echoed song

Throb thro' the ribbèd stone.

Singing and murmuring in her feastful mirth

Joying to feel herself alive,

Lord over nature, lord o' the visible earth,

Lord of the senses five—

As some rich tropic mountain, that infolds

All change, from flats of scattered palms

Sloping thro' five great zones of climate, holds

His head in snows and calms—

Full of her own delight and nothing else,

My vainglorious, gorgeous soul

Sat throned between the shining oriels,

In pomp beyond control;

With piles of flavorous fruits in basket-twine

Of gold, upheapèd, crushing down

Muskscented blooms—all taste—grape, gourd or pine—

In bunch, or singlegrown—

Our growths, and such as brooding Indian heats

Make out of crimson blossoms deep,

Ambrosial pulps and juices, sweets from sweets

Sunchanged, when seawinds sleep.

With graceful chalices of curious wine,

Wonders of art—and costly jars,

And bossèd salvers. Ere young night divine

Crowned dying day with stars,

Making sweet close of his delicious toils,

She lit white streams of dazzling gas,

And soft and fragrant flames of precious oils

In moons of purple glass

Ranged on the fretted woodwork to the ground.

Thus her intense untold delight,

In deep or vivid colour, smell and sound,

Was flattered day and night.

Sometimes the riddle of the painful earth

Flashed thro' her as she sat alone,

Yet not the less held she her solemn mirth,

And intellectual throne

Of fullsphered contemplation. So three years

She throve, but on the fourth she fell,

Like Herod, when the shout was in his ears,

Struck thro' with pangs of hell.

Lest she should fail and perish utterly,

God, before whom ever lie bare

The abysmal deeps of Personality,

Plagued her with sore despair.

When she would think, wheree'er she turned her sight

The airy hand confusion wrought,

Wrote "Mene, mene," and divided quite

The kingdom of her thought.

Deep dread and loathing of her solitude

Fell on her, from which mood was born

Scorn of herself; again, from out that mood

Laughter at her selfscorn.

"Who hath drawn dry the fountains of delight,

That from my deep heart everywhere

Moved in my blood and dwelt, as power and might

Abode in Sampson's hair?

"What, is not this my place of strength," she said,

"My spacious mansion built for me,

Whereof the strong foundationstones were laid

Since my first memory?"

But in dark corners of her palace stood

Uncertain shapes, and unawares

On white-eyed phantasms weeping tears of blood

And horrible nightmares,

And hollow shades enclosing hearts of flame,

And, with dim fretted foreheads all,

On corpses three-months-old at noon she came

That stood against the wall.

A spot of dull stagnation, without light

Or power of movement, seemed my soul,

Mid downward-sloping motions infinite

Making for one sure goal.

A still salt pool, locked in with bars of sand,

Left on the shore, that hears all night

The plunging seas draw backward from the land

Their moonled waters white.

A star that with the choral starry dance

Joined not, but stood, and standing saw

The hollow orb of moving Circumstance

Rolled round by one fixed law.

Back on herself her serpent pride had curled.

"No voice," she shrieked in that lone hall,

"No voice breaks through the stillness of this world—

"One deep, deep silence all."

She, mouldering with the dull earth's mouldering sod,

Inwrapt tenfold in slothful shame,

Lay there exilèd from eternal God,

Lost to her place and name;

And death and life she hated equally,

And nothing saw, for her despair,

But dreadful time, dreadful eternity,

No comfort anywhere;

Remaining utterly confused with fears,

And ever worse with growing time,

And ever unrelieved by dismal tears,

And all alone in crime;

Shut up as in a crumbling tomb, girt round

With blackness as a solid wall,

Far off she seemed to hear the dully sound

Of human footsteps fall.

As in strange lands a traveller walking slow,

In doubt and great perplexity,

A little before moonrise hears the low

Moan of an unknown sea,

And knows not if it be thunder or the sound

Of stones thrown down, or one deep cry

Of great wild beasts; then thinketh, "I have found

A new land, but I die."

She howled aloud "I am on fire within.

There comes no murmur of reply.

What is it that will take away my sin

Dying the death I die?"

So when four years were wholly finishèd,

She threw her royal robes away.

"Make me a cottage in the vale," she said,

"Where I may mourn and pray.

"Yet pull not down my palace towers, that are

So lightly, beautifully built:

Perchance I may return with others there

When I have purged my guilt."

One was the Tishbite whom the raven fed,

As when he stood on Carmel-steeps,

With one arm stretched out bare, and mocked and said,

"Come cry aloud—be sleeps."

Tall, eager, lean and strong, his cloak windborne

Behind, his forehead heavenly-bright

From the clear marble pouring glorious scorn,

Lit as with inner light.

One was Olympias: the floating snake

Rolled round her ancles, round her waist

Knotted, and folded once about her neck,

Her perfect lips to taste

Round by the shoulder moved; she seeming blythe

Declined her head: on every side

The dragon's curves melted and mingled with

The woman's youthful pride

Of rounded limbs.

Hither, when all the deep unsounded skies

Shuddered with silent stars, she clomb,

And as with optic glasses her keen eyes

Pierced thro' the mystic dome,

Regions of lucid matter taking forms,

Brushes of fire, hazy gleams,

Clusters and beds of worlds, and bee-like swarms

Of suns, and starry streams.

She saw the snowy poles of moonless Mars,

That marvellous round of milky light

Below Orion, and those double stars

Whereof the one more bright

Is circled by the other, &c.