| |
| MOST like some aged king it seemed to me, | |
| Who had survived his old regality, | |
| Poor and deposed, but keeping still his state, | |
| In all he had before of truly great; | |
| With no vain wishes and no vain regret, | 5 |
| But his enforcéd leisure soothing yet | |
| With meditation calm, and books, and prayer, | |
| For all was sober and majestic there,— | |
| The old Castilian, with close finger-tips | |
| Pressing his folded mantle to his lips; | 10 |
| The dim cathedral’s cross-surmounted pile, | |
| With carved recess, and cool and shadowy aisle; | |
| The walks of poplar by the river’s side, | |
| That wound by many a straggling channel wide; | |
| And seats of stone, where one might sit and weave | 15 |
| Visions, till wellnigh tempted to believe | |
| That life had few things better to be done, | |
| And many worse, than sitting in the sun, | |
| To lose the hours, and wilfully to dim | |
| Our half-shut eyes, and veil them till might swim | 20 |
| The pageant by us, smoothly as the stream | |
| And unremembered pageant of a dream. | |
| |
| A castle crowned a neighboring hillock’s crest, | |
| But now the moat was level with the rest; | |
| And all was fallen of this place of power, | 25 |
| All heaped with formless stone, save one round tower, | |
| And here and there a gateway low and old, | |
| Figured with antique shape of warrior bold. | |
| And then behind this eminence the sun | |
| Would drop serenely, long ere day was done; | 30 |
| And one who climbed that height might see again | |
| A second setting o’er the fertile plain | |
| Beyond the town, and, glittering in his beam, | |
| Wind far away that poplar-skirted stream. | |
| |
