This march of color chants a strange barbaric fitness of dithyrambic chords, and moves processional across the days like some encarnadined durbar, where a huge Ethiopian eunuch in red moon-shaped slippers and an orange turban walks with a glittering scimetar, leading a brace of sleepy leopards drugged and golden eyed; the caparisoned elephants swing down a latticed street; silk shawls hang from balconies, brushing the domed gilt of howdahs; and ruby-roped, the maharajahs sway behind the mahout with his peavey-goad. The stark denial of the blue-ribbed sky looks down upon this garden, where the wantonness of earth is flaunted in the spring against the face of heaven's void sterility. Here stolid faces look ashamed. When the sun leans on boreal wings, there is a month that lovers walk here justified, while flower throats cry in vast choirs, "Glory to life!" and the uplifted trumpets of vine tubas shout with noise of color set to notes of bloom. MIDDLETON GARDEN This is a garden where the Son of Heaven Well might walk, With all his dragon-broidered mandarins, To the plucked sound of tenor instruments, With peacocks, kites, and little red balloons, Mirrored with incense and rice-paper lights, And old bronze lanterns on the full moon nights, Upon the lacquered, porcelain-pink lagoons. If cardinals in sun-blood robes were here To kiss the ring of gorgeous Borgia popes; Or bold de Gama's loot from Malabar: Topaz and ruby, chrysolite and beryl, The golden idol with a thousand hands, And ropes of pearl; They would seem lesser than these flowers are, Whose masculine magnificence makes riches pale. And yet with all its oriental hue There is a touch of Holland, Of canals at Loo, Where Orange William planned a boxwood maze. The house has Flemish curves upon its eaves; Its doorways yearn for buckle-shoed young bloods, Smoking clay pipes, with lace a-droop from sleeves-- Moonlight on terraces is like a story told By sleepy link-boys 'round old sedan chairs In days when tulip bulbs were gold. The faint, crisp rustle of magnolia leaves Rasps with the crackling scratch of old brocade, The low bird-voices ripple like the laugh Of Watteau beauties coiffured, with pomade; Here ribboned dandies offered scented snuffs To other ghosts, beneath the giant trees-- Was that a flash of rose-flamingo stuffs-- Azaleas?--was a sneeze blown down the breeze? This terrace is a stage set by the years, Fit for the pageants of the centuries; That fire-scarred ruin marks an act of tears-- Charm is more winsome coped with tragedies. Here flaunted tilted hats and crinolines, Small parasols, hoopskirts, and bombazines, When turbaned slaves walked dykes in single file, And rice-fields made horizons, otherwhile.