I. In the greenest of our valleys, By good angels tenanted, Once fair and stately palace -- Radiant palace --reared its head. In the monarch Thought's dominion -- It stood there! Never seraph spread a pinion Over fabric half so fair. II. Banners yellow, glorious, golden, On its roof did float and flow; (This --all this --was in the olden Time long ago) And every gentle air that dallied, In that sweet day, Along the ramparts plumed and pallid, A winged odour went away. III. Wanderers in that happy valley Through two luminous windows saw Spirits moving musically To a lute's well-tuned law, Round about a throne, where sitting (Porphyrogene!) In state his glory well befitting, The ruler of the realm was seen. IV. And all with pearl and ruby glowing Was the fair palace door, Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing And sparkling evermore, A troop of Echoes whose sweet duty Was but to sing, In voices of surpassing beauty, The wit and wisdom of their king. V. But evil things, in robes of sorrow, Assailed the monarch's high estate; (Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow Shall dawn upon him, desolate!) And, round about his home, the glory That blushed and bloomed Is but a dim-remembered story Of the old time entombed. VI. And travellers now within that valley, Through the red-litten windows, see Vast forms that move fantastically To a discordant melody; While, like a rapid ghastly river, Through the pale door, A hideous throng rush out forever, And laugh --but smile no more.
The stanzas are from the poem of this name by Edgar Alan Poe another author much admired in Burne-Jones's circle. He inspired a number of early drawings by Rossetti, Morris possessed his Poetical Works at Oxford (the copy is now at Kelmscott Manor), and betrays Poe's influence in his early prose romances. Burne-Jones, again at Oxford, read the Tales of mystery and Imagination, and found "something full of delicate refinement in all that hideousness"(Memorials, vol I p. 88). The present poem seems to have been particular favourite with him. He quoted the first four lines of the second stanza at the head of Chapter II of A Story of the North, a tale he published in The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine in February 1856.
