An Antique.

Mildewed and gray the marble stairs      Rise from their balustraded urns     To where a chiseled satyr glares      From a luxuriant bed of ferns;     A pebbled walk that labyrinths      'Twixt parallels of verdant box     To where, broad-based on grotesque plinths,      'Mid cushions of moss-padded rocks,     Rises a ruined pleasure-house,      Of shattered column, broken dome,     Where, reveling in thick carouse,      The buoyant ivy makes its home.     And here from bank, and there from bed,      Down the mad rillet's jubilant lymph,     The lavish violet's odors shed      In breathings of a fountain nymph.     And where, in lichened hoariness,      The broken marble dial-plate     Basks in the Summer's sultriness,      Rich houri roses palpitate.     Voluptuous, languid with perfumes,      As were the beauties that of old,     In damask satins, jeweled plumes,      With powdered gallants here that strolled.     When slender rapiers, proud with gems,      Sneered at the sun their haughty hues,     And Touchstone wit and apothegms      Laughed down the long, cool avenues.     Two pleated bowers of woodbine pave,      'Neath all their heaviness of musk,     Two fountains of pellucid wave,      With sunlight-tessellated dusk.     Beholding these, I seem to feel      An exodus of earthly sight,     An influx of ecstatic weal      Poured thro' my eyes in jets of light.     And so I see the fountains twain      Of hate and love in Arden there;     The time of regal Charlemagne,      Of Roland and of Oliver.     Rinaldo of Montalban's towers      Sleeps by the spring of hate; above     Bows, spilling all his face with flowers,      Angelica, who quaffed of love.