Forevermore, In Dream

Out of a sky as rich as bundled silk,
Light moves in glittering waterfalls
Flowing like grass upon the slope of a hill
In warm cascades upon the gray stone walls
Of a castle beside which flows a mountain rill,

Splashing down the side of a mountain
In gorgeous curls of foam-white crests,
Lightly touched with diamond and with light.
The castle's reflection in it briefly quests,
But finds beneath it something more worthy and bright:

The basin that the cascade pours into,
Glittering and stilll as a turning jewel,
Netted over with soft and sumptuous radiance.
Beneath the gold it is a calm blue pool,
Though the surface has a frenetic magnificence.

The gray walls of the castle and the slopes
That ring the pool glow just beneath the water,
Transmuted to dreamlike versions of themselves.
Here one can well imagine that some old king's daughter
Sat and gazed at herself from the mountain shelves.

On the far side of the basin lies a jutting spur
On which stand, jade in the water, brilliant trees.
Beauty peers out of them, then hides her face shyly.
The leaves rustle, and the water, in the breeze,
Reflects them in motion all the more wildly.

The castle itself is a marvel of architecture,
Gracious and warm in the spill of the sun,
Gray stone softened as the spur is by woodland.
The beams upon it parade, rather than run,
Shimmering paint daubed there by a master's hand.

Turrets rise to the heights, almost, of the clouds,
Not impractical but delicate and light in style.
This is a castle that was not built for hate or war,
But to stand in the heart of light for a short while
That has passed, with time and beauty, to evermore.

Did they think, when they first began to build,
That the castle would overwhelm the small lake?
Did they think that the woodland was in itself perfect?
How long did they hesitate the first step to take?
Did they pause the specter of man to resurrect?

But all the men left this castle so long ago that 
The years have ceased to be counted as years,
And must now be named and numbered as centuries,
Eras, eons, millennia; their hopes and dreams and fears
Have been subsumed by light and water, stone and trees.

The castle still stands, proud as when they first made it,
Lost, one cannot help but feel, not in dreaming of kings,
But in listening to the steps of the wavering sunlight beam,
And to the song that, sometimes, a bird in the forest sings,
Lost in a dream of light lost in light- lost, forevermore, in dream.