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

By 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,

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,

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,

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;

And the steps of the people passing

Are as if they came to me

From the far, unearthly distance

Of a bygone century!