Sir Launfal flashed forth in his unscarred mail,1
To seek in all climes for the Holy Grail.

IV.

It was morning on hill and stream and tree,
And morning in the young knight's heart; 2
Only the castle moodily

Rebuffed the gifts of the sunshine free,
And gloomed by itself apart;
The season brimmed all other things up
Full as the rain fills the pitcher-plant's cup.

V.

As Sir Launfal made morn through the darksome

gate,

He was 'ware of a leper, crouched by the same,5 Who begged with his hand and moaned as he sate; And a loathing over Sir Launfal came:

The sunshine went out of his soul with a thrill,

The flesh 'neath his armor 'gan shrink and crawl, And midway its leap his heart stood still

Like a frozen waterfall;7

For this man, so foul and bent of stature,8
Rasped harshly against his dainty nature,

And seemed the one blot on the summer morn
So he tossed him a piece of gold in scorn.

VI.

The leper raised not the gold from the dust: "Better to me the poor man's crust,

Better the blessing of the poor,

Though I turn me1 empty from his door;
That is no true alms which the hand can hold;
He gives nothing but worthless gold

Who gives from a sense of duty;
But he who gives a slender mite,
And gives to that which is out of sight,

That thread of the all-sustaining beauty

Which runs through all, and doth all unite, —
The hand can not clasp the whole of his alms,2
The heart outstretches its eager palms,

For a god goes with it, and makes it store 3
To the soul that was starving in darkness before."

PRELUDE TO PART SECOND.

Down swept the chill wind from the mountain-peak, From the snow five thousand summers old;

On open wold and hill-top bleak

It had gathered all the cold,5

And whirled it like sleet on the wanderer's cheek;

1 I turn me = I turn.

2 his alms: that is, the alms of him "who gives to that which is out of sight."

8 store, bountiful blessing.

Ex

4 wold, a plain, or open country. 5 gathered all the cold. plain.

It carried a shiver everywhere

From the unleafed1 boughs and pastures bare.
The little brook heard it,2 and built a roof
'Neath which he could house him, winter-proof;
All night by the white stars' frosty gleams
He groined his arches and matched his beams;
Slender and clear were his crystal spars
As the lashes of light that trim the stars;
He sculptured every summer delight
In his halls and chambers out of sight.3
Sometimes his tinkling waters slipt

Down through a frost-leaved forest-crypt,
Long sparkling aisles of steel-stemmed trees
Bending to counterfeit a breeze;
Sometimes the roof no fretwork knew,
But silvery mosses that downward grew;
Sometimes it was carved in sharp relief?
With quaint arabesques of ice-fern leaf;
Sometimes it was simply smooth and clear
For the gladness of heaven to shine through, and here
He had caught the nodding bulrush-tops,
And hung them thickly with diamond drops,
That crystaled the beams of moon and sun,
And made a star of every one.

4 crypt, a subterranean cell un-tations used for enriching flat sur

No mortal builder's most rare device
Could match this winter-palace of ice; 1
'Twas as if every image that mirrored lay
In his depths serene through the summer day,
Each fleeting shadow of earth and sky,
Lest the happy model should be lost,
Had been mimicked in fairy masonry
By the elfin builders of the frost.

Within the hall are song and laughter,

The cheeks of Christmas2 grow red and jolly,
And sprouting is every corbel3 and rafter
With lightsome green of ivy and holly;
Through the deep gulf of the chimney wide
Wallows the Yule-log's roaring tide;
The broad flame-pennons droop and flap

And belly and tug as a flag in the wind;
Like a locust shrills 5 the imprisoned sap,
Hunted to death in its galleries blind;
And swift little troops of silent sparks,
Now pausing, now scattering away as in fear,
Go threading the soot-forest's tangled darks
Like herds of startled deer.

1 winter-palace of ice. Perhaps 4 Yule-log, a great log burned in in allusion to the wonderful ice- the fire-place at Christmas time, palace built by Catherine II., Em-in honor of Juul, the Scandinavian press of Russia.

2 The cheeks of Christmas, etc. Explain the personification.

3 corbel, a shoulder-piece of timber, iron, etc., jutting out from a wall.

Thor.

5 shrills. What is the subject of this verb? Explain the simile. 6 hunted to death. Adjunct to what noun?

7 darks. Explain.

But the wind without was eager and sharp,
Of Sir Launfal's gray hair it makes a harp,
And rattles and wrings
The icy strings,

Singing, in dreary monotone,

A Christmas carol of its own,

Whose burden still, as he might guess,

Was, "Shelterless, shelterless, shelterless!"

The voice of the seneschal1 flared like a torch
As he shouted the wanderer away from the porch,
And he sat in the gateway, and saw all night
The great hall-fire, so cheery and bold,
Through the window-slits of the castle old,
Build out its piers of ruddy light
Against the drift of the cold.

PART SECOND.

I.

There was never a leaf on bush or tree;
The bare boughs rattled shudderingly ;
The river was numb, and could not speak,
For the weaver Winter its shroud had spun:

A single crow on the tree-top bleak

From his shining feathers shed off the cold sun; Again it was morning, but shrunk and cold,

As if her veins were sapless and old,
And she rose up decrepitly

For a last dim look at earth and sea.

1 seneschal, in feudal times, a steward or officer who had the superintendence of feasts.

2 its shroud had spun. Explain the metaphor.

8 her. Whose?