Classic Poem

Golden dawn and shivering evening find our brig lying by opposite
this villa and its dependencies which form a promontory
as extensive as Epirus and the Peloponnesus,
or as the large island of Japan, or as Arabia!
Fanes lighted up by the return of the theories;
prodigious views of a modern coast's defenses;
dunes illustrated with flaming flowers and bacchanalia;
grand canals of Carthage and Embankments of a dubious Venice;
Etnas languidly erupting, and crevasses of flowers and of glacier waters;
washhouses surrounded by German poplars;
strange parks with slopes bowing down the heads of the Tree of Japan;
and circular facades of the 'Grands' and the 'Royals' of Scarborough and of Brooklyn;
and their railways flank, cut through, and overhang this hotel whose plan
was selected in the history of the most elegant and the most colossal edifices
of Italy, America, and Asia, and whose windows and terraces,
at the moment full of expensive illumination, drinks and breezes,
are open to the fancy of the travelers and the nobles who,--
during the day allow all the tarantellas of the coast,--
and even the ritornellos of the illustrious valleys of art,
to decorate most wonderfully the facades of Promontory Palace.