What's O'Clock/The Enchanted Castle

by Amy Lowell

THE ENCHANTED CASTLE

To Edgar Allan Poe

Old crumbling stones set long ago upon
The naked headland of a suave green shore.
Old stones all riven into cracks and glands
By moss and ivy. Up above, a peak
Of narrow, iron windows, a hooded tower
With frozen windows looking to the West.
When the sun sets, a winking, fiery light
Rifles the window-panes above the gloom
Of purple waters heaving evenly,
Waters moving about the naked headland
In sombre slowness, with no dash of spray
To strike the stagnant pools and flash the weeds.
A rack of shifting clouds
Darkens the waters' margin. On the shore
Are clusters of great trees whose brittle leaves
Crackle together as the mournful wind
Takes them and shakes them. But the tower windows
Fling bloody streams of light across the dusk,
Planges of bloody light which the upper sky
Has hurled at them and now is drawing back.
Behind the tower, where no windows are,
A little wisp of moon catches the stones
So that they glitter palely from the shore,
The suave green shore with all its leaden trees.