The neighboring ruins, too, are as picturesque as those of Italy, and
my desire of standing in the Coliseum, and of seeing the shattered
arches of the Aqueducts stretching along the Campagna and melting into
the Alban Mount, is entirely quenched. The rich gloom of my orange
groves is gilded by fruit as brilliant of complexion and exquisite of
flavor as any that ever dark-eyed Sorrento girls, looking over the
high plastered walls of southern Italy, hand to the youthful
travellers, climbing on donkeys up the narrow lane beneath.
The Nile flows through my grounds. The Desert lies upon their edge,
and Damascus stands in my garden. I am given to understand, also, that
the Parthenon has been removed to my Spanish possessions. The
Golden-Horn is my fish-preserve; my flocks of golden fleece are
pastured on the plain of Marathon, and the honey of Hymettus is
distilled from the flowers that grow in the vale of Enna--all in my
Spanish domains.
From the windows of those castles look the beautiful women whom I have
never seen, whose portraits the poets have painted. They wait for me
there, and chiefly the fair-haired child, lost to my eyes so long ago,
now bloomed into an impossible beauty.
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