For now, at least, I am sole, I am lord. The
golden walls of this palace which I have built look down, enamoured of
their reflection, into a lake of the choicest, purplest wine.
Not that I made it of wine because wine is rare; nor the walls of gold
because gold is rare: that would have been too childish: but because I
would match for beauty a human work with the works of those Others: and
because it happens, by some persistent freak of the earth, that
precisely things most rare and costly are generally the most beautiful.
The vision of glorious loveliness which is this palace now risen before
my eyes cannot be described by pen and paper, though there _may_ be
words in the lexicons of language which, if I sought for them with
inspired wit for sixteen years, as I have built for sixteen years, might
as vividly express my thought on paper, as the stones-of-gold, so
grouped and built, express it to the eye: but, failing such labours and
skill, I suppose I could not give, if there were another man, and I
tried to give, the faintest conception of its celestial charm.
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