Classic Poem

My chamber lies apart,
The Castle's very heart,
And all things rich and rare,
From land, and sea, and air,
Are lavished with a wild and waste profusion there!
The carpeting was woven in Turkish looms,
From softest wool of fine Circassian sheep,
Tufted like springy moss in forests deep,
Illuminate with all its autumn blooms;
The antique chairs are made of cedar-trees,
Felled on the lofty peaks of Lebanon,
Veined with the rings of vanished centuries,
And touched with frost and sun;
Sofas and couches, stuffed with cygnet's fleece,
Loll round, inviting dreaminess and ease;
The gorgeous window-curtains, damask-red,
Suspended, silver-ringed, on bars of gold,
Droop heavily, in many a fluted fold,
And, rounding outward, intercept and shed
The prisoned daylight o'er the slumberous room,
In streams of rosy dimness, purple gloom;
Hard by are cabinets of curious shells,
Twisted and jointed, horned, wreathed, and curled,
And some like moons in rainbow mist impearled,
With coral boughs from ocean's deepest cells;
Cases of rare medallions, coins antique,
Found in the dust of cities, Roman, Greek;
And urns of alabaster, soft and bright,
With fauns and dancing shepherds on their sides;
And costly marble vases dug from night
In Pompeii, beneath its lava-tides:
Clusters of arms, the spoil of ancient wars,
Old scymitars of true Damascus brand,
Short swords with basket hilts to guard-the hand,
And iron casques with rusty visor-bars;
Lances, and spears, and battle-axes keen,
With crescent edges, shields with studded thorns,
Yew bows, and shafts, and curved bugle-horns
With tasselled baldricks of the Lincoln green:
And on the walls with lifted curtains, see!
The portraits of my noble ancestry;
Thin-featured, stately dames with powdered locks,
And courtly shepherdesses tending flocks,
Stiff lords in wigs, and ruffles white as snow,
Haught peers, and princes centuries ago,
And dark Sir Hugh, the bravest of the line,
With all the knightly scars he won in Palestine!