The tang of the smoke and the reek of the box and the savor of the year's decay are soft in the gardens of Aranjuez where the fountains fill silently with leaves and the moss grows over the statues and busts clothing the simpering cupids and fauns whose stone eyes search the empty paths for the rustling rich brocaded gowns and the neat silk calves of the halcyon past.

 The Tagus flows with a noise of wiers through Aranjuez. And slipping by mirrors the brown-silver trunks of the planes and the hedges of box and spires of cypress and alleys of yellowing elms; and on the other bank three grey mules pulling a cart loaded with turnips, driven by a man in a blue woolen sash who strides along whistling and does not look towards Aranjuez.

XI

Beyond ruffled velvet hills the sky burns yellow like a candle-flame.

Sudden a village roofs against the sky leaping buttresses a church and a tower utter dark like the heart of a candleflame.

 Swing the bronze-bells uncoiling harsh slow sound through the dusk that growls out in the conversational clatter Of the trainwheels and the rails.

A hill humps unexpectedly to hide the tower erect like a pistil in the depths of the tremendous flaming flower of the west.

 Getafe

XII

Genteel noise of Paris hats and beards that tilt this way and that. Mirrors create on either side infinities of chandeliers.

The orchestra is tuning up:       Twanging of the strings of violins groans from cellos toodling of flutes.

Legs apart, with white fronts the musicians stand amiably as pelicans.

Tap. Tap. Tap. With a silken rustle beards, hats sink back in appropriate ecstasy. A little girl giggles. Crystals of infinities of chandeliers tremble in the first long honey-savored chord.

From under a wide black hat curving just to hide her ears peers the little face of Juliet of all child lovers      

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