Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
France: Vols. IX–X. 1876–79. | | | | Paris | | The Garden of the Palais Royal | | Bessie Rayner Parkes (1829–1925) |
| | | IN the Palais Royal by moonlight, | |
| Watching the fountains play, | |
| Are a thousand ghostly shadows | |
| Of those who are passed away. | |
| Shadows of beauty and splendor, | 5 |
| Flitting from salle to salle; | |
| Sweetest of all among them, | |
| Marie Thérèse de Lamballe! | |
| |
| Yet there is not a place in Paris | |
| Where it seems less wise to dream, | 10 |
| Than here, where the people gather | |
| And flow in an endless stream; | |
| Full of their follies and pleasures, | |
| Full of the last new thing, | |
| Under the close-cropped lindens, | 15 |
| Blossoming every spring. | |
| |
| But for me the Palais Royal | |
| Is full of the days gone by, | |
| And the flash of the silver fountains | |
| Is a murmur blent with a sigh; | 20 |
| And the steps of the people passing | |
| Are as if they came to me | |
| From the far, unearthly distance | |
| Of a bygone century! | | | | |
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