A royal palace and its gardens hang suspended in autumn, where the line between living and dead grows faint. Inside, the speaker imagines glamorous, “immoral” court ladies gliding down gilded stairs, their heel taps still echoing through cold corridors. Outside, the clipped geometric gardens feel “desolately gay” — bright but hollow — with crimson dahlias as vivid as the painted women who once passed here beside a ringletted king, a Henry or a Louis, on some lost October day. The mood is elegiac and ghostly, not violent, but heavy with time. As garden aisles lead into the darker forest, ghostly kings hunt while a damp wind grieves; horse and horn are hushed in falling leaves. The closing repetition — “four centuries of autumns, four centuries of leaves” — turns the scene into a quiet meditation on fading beauty, dead royalty, and the way places hold the past.
Fontainebleau — Summary
Interminable palaces front on the green parterres, And ghosts of ladies lovely and immoral Glide down the gilded stairs, The high cold corridors are clicking with the heel taps That long ago were theirs. But in the sunshine, in the vague autumn sunshine, The geometric gardens are desolately gay; The crimson and scarlet and rose-red dahlias Are painted like the ladies who used to pass this way With a ringletted monarch, a Henry or a Louis On a lost October day. The aisles of the garden lead into the forest, The aisles lead into autumn, a damp wind grieves, Ghostly kings are hunting, the boar breaks cover, But the sounds of horse and horn are hushed in falling leaves, Four centuries of autumns, four centuries of leaves.