North thy silken guards shall pace by dazzling walls while thy
spearsmen clad in furs go round the South. But at the hour of noon in
the midmost day of the year thy chamberlain shall go down from his
high place and into the midmost court, and men with trumpets shall go
down behind him, and he shall utter a great cry at noon, and the men
with trumpets shall cause their trumpets to blare, and the spearsmen
clad in furs shall march to the North and thy silken guard shall take
their place in the South, and summer shall leave the North and go to
the South, and all the swallows shall rise and follow after. And alone
in thine inner courts shall no change be, for they shall lie narrowly
along that line that parteth the seasons in sunder and divideth the
North from the South, and thy long gardens shall lie under them.

"And in thy gardens shall spring always be, for spring lies ever at
the marge of summer; and autumn also shall always tint thy gardens,
for autumn always flares at winter's edge, and those gardens shall lie
apart between winter and summer. And there shall be orchards in thy
garden, too, with all the burden of autumn on their boughs and all the
blossom of spring.

"Yea, I behold this palace, for we see future things; I see its white
wall shine in the huge glare of midsummer, and the lizards lying along
it motionless in the sun, and men asleep in the noonday, and the
butterflies floating by, and birds of radiant plumage chasing
marvellous moths; far off the forest and great orchids glorying there,
and iridescent insects dancing round in the light. I see the wall upon
the other side; the snow has come upon the battlements, the icicles
have fringed them like frozen beards, a wild wind blowing out of
lonely places and crying to the cold fields as it blows has sent the
snowdrifts higher than the buttresses; they that look out through