MIDDLETON GARDEN

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.