All day long the broad folding-doors and the two-leaved casements stood wide open: settled sunshine seemed naturalized in the atmosphere; clouds were far off, sailing away beyond sea, resting, no doubt, round islands such as England—that dear land of mists—but withdrawn wholly from the drier continent.
In summer it was never quite dark, and then I went up-stairs to my own quarter of the long dormitory, opened my own casement (that chamber was lit by five casements large as great doors), and leaning out, looked forth upon the city beyond the garden, and listened to band-music from the park or the palace-square, thinking meantime my own thoughts, living my own life, in my own still, shadow-world.
Amid the intense stillness of that pile of stone overlooking the walk, the trees, the high wall, I heard a sound; a casement [all the windows here are casements, opening on hinges] creaked.
To the right, it fell on the old house among the willows up the brook, and gave it for a fleeting space casements more splendid than those of an old cathedral.
I uttered an ejaculation of discontent at seeing the dismal grate, and commenced shutting the casements, one after another, till I came to his.
Little was visible but squares of a dusky orange-red on either side of the street, where the firelight or lamplight of each cottage overflowed through the casements into the dark world without.
There was a very pretty little house, with leaded casements and dubbed gables, just around the corner—a new house, one of those houses you love the minute you see them.
" And off she went She informed the king she had never seen his daughter so content On the contrary, alwasy alone in the room, with ladies-in-waiting who didn't so much as look at her, the princess spent her days wistfully at the window She sat there leaning on the windowsill, and had she not thought to put a pillow under them, she would have got calluses on her elbows The window looked out on the forest, and all day long the princess saw nothing but treetops, clouds and, down below, the hunt
No hungry generations tread thee down; ; The voice I hear this passing night was heard In ancient days by emperor and clown: ; Perhaps the self-same song that found a path Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home, ,, She stood in tears amid the alien corn; ; The same that oft-times hath Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.
