This is a garden where the Son of Heaven Well might walk, With all his dragon-broidered mandarins, To the plucked sound of tenor instruments,
With peacocks, kites, and little red balloons, Mirrored with incense and rice-paper lights, And old bronze lanterns on the full moon nights, Upon the lacquered, porcelain-pink lagoons.
If cardinals in sun-blood robes were here To kiss the ring of gorgeous Borgia popes; Or bold de Gama's loot from Malabar: Topaz and ruby, chrysolite and beryl,
The golden idol with a thousand hands, And ropes of pearl; They would seem lesser than these flowers are, Whose masculine magnificence makes riches pale.
And yet with all its oriental hue There is a touch of Holland, Of canals at Loo, Where Orange William planned a boxwood maze.
The house has Flemish curves upon its eaves; Its doorways yearn for buckle-shoed young bloods, Smoking clay pipes, with lace a-droop from sleeves — Moonlight on terraces is like a story told
By sleepy link-boys‘ round old sedan chairs In days when tulip bulbs were gold. The faint, crisp rustle of magnolia leaves Rasps with the crackling scratch of old brocade,
The low bird-voices ripple like the laugh Of Watteau beauties coiffured, with pomade; Here ribboned dandies offered scented snuffs To other ghosts, beneath the giant trees —
Was that a flash of rose-flamingo stuffs — Azaleas?— was a sneeze blown down the breeze? This terrace is a stage set by the years, Fit for the pageants of the centuries;
That fire-scarred ruin marks an act of tears — Charm is more winsome coped with tragedies. Here flaunted tilted hats and crinolines, Small parasols, hoopskirts, and bombazines,
When turbaned slaves walked dykes in single file, And rice-fields made horizons, otherwhile. All, all has passed, but change, Gnawed by the rat-like teeth of avid years,
The masters, through the door, to mysteries Beyond blind panels‘ mid the moss-scarved trees, Uncanny gates, where negroes faintly bold, At high noon in the tide of summer heat,
Stand in the draught of tomb-air deathly cold That flows like glacial water‘ round their feet.
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