My castle stood of white transparent glass Glittering and frail with many a fretted spire, But when the summer sunset came to pass It kindled into fire. My pleasaunce was an undulating green, Stately with trees whose shadows slept below, With glimpses of smooth garden-beds between, Like flame or sky or snow. Swift squirrels on the pastures took their ease, With leaping lambs safe from the unfeared knife; All singing-birds rejoicing in those trees Fulfilled their careless life. Wood-pigeons cooed there, stock-doves nestled there; My trees were full of songs and flowers and fruit, Their branches spread a city to the air, And mice lodged in their root. My heath lay farther off, where lizards lived In strange metallic mail, just spied and gone; Like darted lightnings here and there perceived But nowhere dwelt upon. Frogs and fat toads were there to hop or plod And propagate in peace, an uncouth crew, Where velvet-headed rushes rustling nod And spill the morning dew. All caterpillars throve beneath my rule, With snails and slugs in corners out of sight; I never marred the curious sudden stool That perfects in a night. Safe in his excavated gallery The burrowing mole groped on from year to year; No harmless hedgehog curled because of me His prickly back for fear. Ofttimes one like an angel walked with me, With spirit-discerning eyes like flames of fire, But deep as the unfathomed endless sea Fulfilling my desire: And sometimes like a snowdrift he was fair, And sometimes like a sunset glorious red, And sometimes he had wings to scale the air With aureole round his head. We sang our songs together by the way, Calls and recalls and echoes of delight; So communed we together all the day, And so in dreams by night. I have no words to tell what way we walked, What unforgotten path now closed and sealed; I have no words to tell all things we talked, All things that he revealed: This only can I tell: that hour by hour I waxed more feastful, lifted up and glad; I felt no thorn-prick when I plucked a flower, Felt not my friend was sad. "To-morrow," once I said to him with smiles: "To-night," he answered gravely and was dumb, But pointed out the stones that numbered miles And miles and miles to come. "Not so," I said: "to-morrow shall be sweet; To-night is not so sweet as coming days." Then first I saw that he had turned his feet, Had turned from me his face: Running and flying miles and miles he went, But once looked back to beckon with his hand And cry: "Come home, O love, from banishment: Come to the distant land."