Poems (Scudder)/The Deserted Palace

by Antoinette Quinby Scudder

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?