Page:In Xanadu.djvu/10



So fancy caught My sleeve and brought Me to a court embowered in orange trees. Eve was allured by such apples as these, And they hung in the groves of the Hesperides, And rapture and dolor they wrought. Sea-born columns round them loom— As when along the shore the spume, Scudding ahead of the wave, escapes, And, yellow and empty, in idle shapes Quivers, and stays where it is blown— So, fretted into airy grace, The foamy shafts of mellow stone Stand round about the place Guarding azure porticoes And shadowed coigns of pictured space; And like the drifts Of tumbled cliffs The sculptured tower lightly lifts On high, Breaking to tender minarets Against the sky.

And there in the midst the round earth glows, Lazily swimming, Flushing, dimming, Hazily swaddled in vapor of rose. It is the pristine world afloat In mist primeval, fog remote, And the waters beneath that glow and fade Are the sea before the land was made.