Versailles
"Le monde est l’œuvre d’un grand Architecte qui est mort avant de l'avoir achevé."—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!
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