Panoramas are not what they used to be.
Claude has been dead a long time
And apostrophes are forbidden on the funicular.
Marx has ruined Nature,
For the moment.
For myself, I live by leaves,
So that corridors of clouds,
Corridors of cloudy thoughts,
Seem pretty much one:
I don't know what.
But in Claude how near one was
(In a world that is resting on pillars,
That was seen through arches)
To the central composition,
The essential theme.
What composition is there in all this:
Stockholm slender in a slender light,
And Adriatic riva rising,
Statues and stars,
Without a theme?
The pillars are prostrate, the arches are haggard,
The hotel is boarded and bare.
Yet the panorama of despair
Cannot be the speciality
Of this ecstatic air.