Page:Poems Barrett.djvu/292

Cloud-walls of the morning's grey,
 Faced with amber column,—
Crowned with crimson cupola
 From a sunset solemn!
May-mists, for the casements, fetch,
 Pale and glimmering;
With a sunbeam hid in each,
 And a smell of spring.

Build the entrance high and proud,
 Darkening and eke brightening,—
Of a riven thunder-cloud,
 Veined by the lightning!
Use one with an iris-stain,
 For the door within;
Turning to a sound like rain,
 As we enter in!

Enter a broad hall thereby,
 Walled with cloudy whiteness:
Tis a blue place of the sky,
 Wind-worked into brightness;
Whence such corridors sublime
 Stretch, with winding stairs—
Praying children wish to climb
 After their own prayers.

In the mutest of the house,
 I will have my chamber:
Round its door I keep for use
 Northern lights of amber.
Silence gave that rose and bee
 For the lock, in meteness;
And the turning of the key
 Goes in humming sweetness.

Be my chamber tapestried
 With the showers of summer,
Close but soundless,—glorified
 When the sunbeams come here—