A Stroll At the Biltmore Estate

The Student As I strolled upon the green and take in the breathtaking view of the front lawn the onrush of winter geese take on the horizon, waking me to my senses. The silent roar of two lions guard the entrance the entrance that now greets me from the summer sun as I and my companion visit the house. Beneath the opening arch, the European marble beckons like wishing wells In an open spring off in the distant countryside somewhere and I am swaying to and fro in the summer wind. The sheer scale of the voyeur overwhelms the senses, our eyes filled with sixteenth century tapestries and seventeenth century bronze sculptures paralleling Rome, Italy, and France. At my right, the chess set of an imperial Frenchmen lay, the pawns standing defiant for battle, yet, unmoved they remain as I pass this way. At my left, a library waits, and I--a deliberate reader-- stand in stupor at the sheer size of the Vanderbilt library --my hands, restrained holding back, to read every book the family ever read. I am fascinated at the four-acre facade of American wealth, yet. I can say not a word at this engaging portrait of nineteenth century life that now lays before me. But gone are the days when you could sit and read all day --as in the nineteenth century voyeur or library, they say. Gone are the days when the outdoors beckoned the silent look of two players at a game of chess. Only the memory stands ready, as a friend, just as the knight's of Vanderbilt's castle stand guard at the foot of his staircase I climb now trembling for words. Only it can retrieve these lost fragments of a poet's fragile mind, these books, as I sit on a visit of its estate composing a few lines.