GOLD

There is a castle on a hill,

So far into the sky,

That birds that from the valley-beds

Up to the turrets fly,

Climbing towards the sun can feel

The clouds go tumbling by.

But always far above the clouds

The sun is shining there,

It shines for ever on those walls;

And the great boughs that bear

Harvests of never fading fruit

Are golden everywhere.

Who journeys to that castled crest

Finds, with his journey done,

All ages and all colours in

Cascades of light that run

Over the broad weirs of the air

For ever from the sun.

Two things are silver: flower of plum

When April yet is cold;

And willowed floods that of the moon

Quiet leases hold.

That castle in the sky alone

Of living things is gold.

Between unfathomable blue

And the bright belts of green,

Midway the plains of heaven and earth,

Rock-borne it stands between

Woods and the sky, a golden world

Where only gold is seen.

Old carvers in the stone have cut

Forests and wraths and herds,

And these are gold: the dials tell

The sun in golden words;

The very jackdaws, from the towers

Wheeling, are golden birds.

The minting of the sun is on

The gravel everywhere,

The yellow walls are fleeces washed

In pools of sunny air,

That coming to that castle place

All men are Jasons there.

Trancelike to stand upon that hill

When the deep summer sings,

Gold-clad, gold-hearted, and gold-voiced,

And sings and sings and sings,

Is as to wait a rising world

In flight of golden wings.

And I have walked with love that way,

And on that golden crest

The sun was happy for my love,

For she is golden-tressed.

Red gold, that of all golden things

The great sun marks for best.

O golden castle of the sky

Hereafter gold can be

Only your image when the sun

Transfigured her for me,

Till she was golden-clouded Jove,

And I her Danae.

Hereafter in the chambered night

When linked love is told,

One thought shall spare to climb that hill

Into the sunbright fold,

For a great summer noon when love

Was gold, and gold, and gold.