Palaver

“ In a costly palace Youth goes clad in gold;
In a wretched workhouse Age’s limbs are cold:
There they sit, the old men by a shivering fire,
Still close and closer cowering, warmth is their desire.
In a costly palace, when the brave gallants dine,
They have store of good venison, with old canary wine,
With singing and music to heighten the cheer;
Coarse bits, with grudging, are the pauper’s best fare. ”

“ There is a flood of feeling and a cosmic imagery throughout, but they only form the gorgeous palace within which Thought dwells in full magnificence and mystic dimness. "As the thread of my song," says the poet in his preface, "unrolled itself, I saw that my heart was full of mind, that its pulses were of thought, that my feeling had something musical and difficult to measure, and that I accepted the rapture of contemplation just as a lad accepts his sweetheart's kiss. ”

“ I HAVE come forth alive from the land of purple and poison and glamour,
Where the charm is strong as the torture, being chosen to change the mind;
Torture of wordless dance and wineless feast without clamour,
Palace hidden in palace, garden with garden behind;
Women veiled in the sun, or bare as brass in the shadows,
And the endless eyeless patterns where each thing seems an eye. . . . ”

“ To be a slop-pail to hold all the stuff that people pour into your ears, or a vase to hold sweet fragrance and flowers for the King's palace and a harp of many strings that sounds the melodies and harmonies of His love and praise? Each one of us is going to his own place. ”

“ Now the judges were about to proclaim their sentence, when, amidst the tumult of the town, there came riding to the palace the flower of all the ladies of the world. She came mounted upon a palfrey, white as snow, which carried her softly, as though she loved her burthen. ”

“ When we remained in the palace, we were occupied with music. I sung with the grand duchess and my cousin, whose voice was of a tone of unequaled sweetness and purity—such, that I could never hear it without being moved even to the depths of my soul. At other times, we examined in detail the wonderful collection of pictures and works of art, or the admirable library of the prince, who, you know, is one of the most learned and best-informed men in Europe; frequently I returned to dine at the palace, and on opera days I accompanied the grand ducal family to the theater. ”

“ And as they said it, the whole party shook their heads mysteriously, and one by one retired, leaving us alone in the old parlour.
If we had followed the established precedent in all such instances, we should have fallen into a fit of musing, without delay. The ancient appearance of the room—the old panelling of the wall—the chimney blackened with smoke and age—would have carried us back a hundred years at least, and we should have gone dreaming on, until the pewter-pot on the table, or the little beer-chiller on the fire, had started into life, and addressed to us a long story of days gone by. ”

“ Then he knocked loudly, but still no one answered; and he said to himself, 'It must be deserted.' So he took courage and entering the vestibule, cried out, 'Ho, people of the palace! I am a stranger and a wayfarer and hungry. Have ye any victual?' He repeated these words a second and a third time, but none answered. So he took heart and went on boldly into the interior of the palace, which he found hung and furnished with silken stuffs, embroidered with stars of gold, and curtains let down before the doors. ”

“ The Pala Campanile
Every lover of the artistic and the picturesque on first seeing the bell-tower of Pala stands enraptured before its unique personality. And this word "personality" does not seem at all misapplied in this connection. Just as in human beings we find a peculiar charm in certain personalities that it is impossible to explain, so is it with buildings. They possess an individuality, quality, all their own, which, sometimes, eludes the most subtle analysis. Pala is of this character. One feels its charm, longs to stand or sit in contemplation of it. ”

“ The ponderous parlour-table
Marched as fast as it was able
Right across the parlour floor;
Danced across the room, and then assumed
Its post beside the door—
Which is true, and something more.
Outside louder grew the knockings,
Till I shook within my stockings,
And then there came a thundering bang,
Far louder than before;
While the ponderous parlour table
Danced as fast as it was able
Kicking up a noise like Babel,
Which I could not well explore;
Let my legs be firm a moment,
And this mystery explore—
’Tis a drunken man, no more. ”

“ It would seem as if the very language of our parlors would lose all its nerve and degenerate into parlaver wholly, our lives pass at such remoteness from its symbols, and its metaphors and tropes are necessarily so far fetched, through slides and dumb-waiters, as it were; in other words, the parlor is so far from the kitchen and workshop. The dinner even is only the parable of a dinner, commonly. ”

“ For days there were so many magicians about the palace that they were commoner than cats, and it was impossible to enter any room without surprising one or the other of them, sitting in deep reflection and looking as wise as only a magician can look. ”

“ The regent produces an infinitely diverse spectacle, where stage and ground floor, actor and audience are one, and he himself is poet, director and hero of the play at the same time. How delightful when, as with the king, the directrice is at the same time the hero's lover and the heroine of the piece, when one catches a glimpse of the muse in her, it fills the poet with holy passion, and his lyre attunes to gentle heavenly melodies. ”

“ And the same threats and menaces of the palatine being carry’d to the marshal de Tonneure, notwithstanding all his former encomiums, Oh! quo he, the palatine’s a young prince; give him leave to huff and ding for his living; words break no bones: when all’s done, ’tis the coach wheel, not the fly that raises the dust. ”

“ Take upon you, young sir, her friend, the name of Palamon; say you come to eat with her, and to commune of love. This will catch her attention, for this her mind beats upon; other objects that are inserted ’tween her mind and eye become the pranks and friskins of her madness. Sing to her such green songs of love as she says Palamon hath sung in prison. ”

“ You well know that the best house has a desolate appearance unfurnished. This house accordingly, since it has been occupied by us and our meubles, is as much superior to what it was when you saw it as you can imagine. The parlour is even elegant. When I say that the parlour is elegant, I do not mean to insinuate that the study is not so. It is neat, warm, and silent, and a much better study than I deserve, if I do not produce in it an incomparable translation of Homer. ”

“ But if thou hast a heart to be touched by the sense of beauty and fair proportion, it will leap within thee at the first sight of my palace, the stately grace of which may be compared to the faultless form of some high-bred dame, or the artful yet seemingly simple modulations of such a tune as we have been now composing. ”

“ I cannot build my nest in a palace, but I will come and sit in the evening on the spray yonder by the window and sing you something so that you may be glad and thoughtful at once. I will sing of those who are happy and those who suffer. I will sing of good and of evil that are hidden from you. The little singing bird flies far around, to the poor fishermen, to the peasant's roof, to every one who dwells far from your court. ”

“ The brilliant pictures of courtly life, the splendor and fascination of a palace, where all that could charm and captivate abounded, and all were at the feet of one who, not a king, was yet greater than a king, and who in the mighty power of his intellect held kings and kaisers as his bond-slaves. ”

“ Each of your earthly joys fills but a part of your being, and all the other ravenous longings either come shrieking at the gate of the soul's palace, like a mob yelling for bread, or are starved into silence ”

“ Is vibrant in the air. High-pitched and thin,
It quavers dimly, then descends again,
And echoes aimless through the busy din:
Mankind would add to pleasure, but in vain—
For Pleasure's Palace is a house of pain. ”

“ One person may naturally sing in tune as another does by acquired knowledge. The happier state, however, is where knowledge ministers to instinct, and this must have been the case with the Moors. Their poet exhorts us to attentively contemplate the adornments of the Palace, and so reap the benefit of a commentary on decoration ”

“ There was a decided elegance about the baron’s house and his dinner. If he had been one of the lawful kings of the dandies, you would have cried, “What perfect taste!”—but such is human nature, that the dandies who dined with him said to each other, “He pretend to imitate D——! vulgar dog!” ”

“ My family is of great antiquity; we have built in this palace for hundreds—that is to say, dozens of years. I am intimately acquainted with the king, the queen, and the little princes and princesses—also the maids of honor, and all the inhabitants of the city. I talk a good deal, but I always talk sense, and I daresay I should be exceedingly useful to a poor little ignorant boy like you. ”

“ If it offends your Grace's sense of beauty to look down from your magnificent palace upon the roof of my poor house, yet it does me good to be able to live out my days in the room in which my poor husband breathed away his life, and I would not accept any palace in exchange. ”

“ To him, from a distance, Love had appeared as a Palace Beautiful standing on the summit of a hill—a fairy fabric of gleaming minarets, slender lines, and soft curves—a haven greatly to be desired by a lonely pilgrim. ”

“ The first know nothing of the palace, the pig-sties of which are all that they have seen; the second are enthusiasts, who turn their eyes far from all that offends them, but that, none the less, exists. ”

“ Then he set it on the point of an arrow and shot it at the pavilion, and it fell in the garden, where the lady was then walking with her maidens. She bade one of the latter hasten and bring her the letter, for she could read writing; and when she had read it and saw what he said in it of his love and passion and longing, she wrote him a reply, to the effect that she was smitten with a yet fiercer passion for him and threw the letter down to him from one of the windows of the pavilion. ”

“ In his deservedly famous Ode to Melancholy we are told that this goddess has her sovran shrine in the very temple of Delight—
"Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue
Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine!"
And in one of his last sonnets he characteristically mentions "the palate of my mind losing its gust" as an indication of approaching death.
Naturally the senses of hearing and sight provided him with a much greater proportion of his imagery than the inferior, less noble senses. He had a musician's love of music and a painter's eye for variations of light and colour. ”

“ We are lizards in an empty palace, frogs crawling over a throne. But it is a palace, it is a throne, and, it may be, the reverberation of our ugly voices will presently awaken the world to put something better in our place. ”

“ Tell me, if wishing to see a palace resplendent with much gold, and radiant with the brightness of precious stones, thou couldest find him who had the key, and he being called upon immediately opened it, and admitted thee within, wouldest thou not prefer him above all men? ”

“ She might have suggested to you the idea of some Gothic baroness of old, half chatelaine, half- abbess; you would see at a glance that she did not live in the light world around her, and disdained its fashion and its mode of thought; yet with all this rigidity it was still the face of the woman who has known human ties and human affections. ”

“ Now, hard by the Palace lived a man who had three sons, and they too had heard how the king had given it out that the man who could make the princess laugh was to have her to wife and half the kingdom. ”

“ A noise was heard, a great host of men had assembled; there is a crowd of courtiers at the palace, seizing their beards with their hands; all rend and strike themselves, the sound of their slapping is heard. They said: "Darkness is upon us, accursed, since our sun is gone from the sky!" ”

“ Smiles and tears, rapture and agony, hope and despondency, a palace and a dungeon, were the alternations frequently crossing in the course of one who was the companion of princes, the delight of ladies, the admiration of the world,—an outcast, a wanderer, clothed in rags and asking bread, or the lonely tenant of a maniac's cell. ”

“ At last a movement was felt in the crowd, one of those strange impulses which seem to make masses vibrate with emotion like a single human heart; then the great massive gates of the old palace were seen to open, a sight not seen for many a year, and a very old woman, bent almost double, issued forth, leaning on the arm of her son. ”

“ All this shall become Palamon, for Palamon can sing, and Palamon is sweet and every good thing. Desire to eat with her, carve her, drink to her, and still among intermingle your petition of grace and acceptance into her favour. Learn what maids have been her companions and play-feres, and let them repair to her with Palamon in their mouths, and appear with tokens, as if they suggested for him. It is a falsehood she is in, which is with falsehoods to be combated. ”