These rooms are public as a place
where strangers come to stay the night;
the court is spacious though bathed in
a curious, oblique gray light.

A bell is rung at every hour
to startle sleeping men awake;
a watchman stationed in the tower
cries pardon for the bell’s mistake.

Yet you who take repeated shocks
without too visible dismay
can watch the gilded weathercocks
peck the starry corn away

until along those spiral stairs,
descending from some place apart,
the sightless, smiling watchman bears
the last wine from the master’s heart.