Lie deep 'neath a silence pure and smooth,

Like burnt-out craters healed with snow. What wonder if Sir Launfal now

Remembered the keeping of his vow?

PART FIRST

"My golden spurs now bring to me,

And bring to me my richest mail, For to-morrow I go over land and sea

In search of the Holy Grail.

95

In the pool drowsed the cattle up to their knees,
The little birds sang as if it were

The one day of summer in all the year,

And the very leaves seemed to sing on the trees;
The castle alone in the landscape lay

Like an outpost of winter, dull and gray.

115

'T was the proudest hall in the North Countree,

And never its gates might opened be

Save to lord or lady of high degree.

Summer besieged it on every side,

But the churlish stone her assaults defied:

She could not scale the chilly wall,

Though round it for leagues her pavilions tall

Stretched left and right,

Over the hills and out of sight;

Green and broad was every tent,

And out of each a murmur went

Till the breeze fell off at night.

The drawbridge dropped with a surly clang,
And through the dark arch a charger sprang,

120

125

Bearing Sir Launfal, the maiden knight,

130

In his gilded mail, that flamed so bright

It seemed the dark castle had gathered all

Those shafts the fierce sun had shot over its wall

In his siege of three hundred summers long, And, binding them all in one blazing sheaf,

135

Had cast them forth; so, young and strong, And lightsome as a locust-leaf,

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

It was morning on hill and stream and tree,

140

Full as the rain fills the pitcher-plant's cup.

As Sir Launfal made morn through the darksome gate,
He was 'ware of a leper, crouched by the same,

Who begged with his hand and moaned as he sate:
And a loathing over Sir Launfal came;

150

The sunshine went out of his soul with a thrill,

The flesh 'neath his armour 'gan shrink and crawl,

The leper raised not the gold from the dust:

"Better to me the poor man's crust,

160

Better the blessing of the poor

Though I turn me 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,

165

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 cannot clasp the whole of his alms,
The heart outstretches its eager palms,

170

For a god goes with it and makes it store

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;

175

On open wold and hill-top bleak

It had gathered all the cold,

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

It carried a shiver everywhere

From the unleafed boughs and pastures bare.

180

The little brook heard it, 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;
Sometimes his tinkling waters slipt

185

For the gladness of heaven to shine through, and here

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 Christmas glow red and jolly,
And sprouting is every corbel 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 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.

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,

210

215

220

225

230

Was "Shelterless, shelterless, shelterless!"

The voice of the seneschal flared like a torch

As he shouted the wanderer away from the porch;

And he sat in the gateway, and saw all night

235

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.

From his shining feathers shed off the cold sun;

245

Again it was morning, but shrunk and cold,
As if her veins were sapless and old,

And she rose up decrepitly

No more on his surcoat was blazoned the cross,

255

O'er the edge of the desert, black and small,

265

Then nearer and nearer, till, one by one,

He can count the camels in the sun,

As over the red-hot sands they pass

To where, in its slender necklace of grass,

The little spring laughed and leapt in the shade,
And with its own self like an infant played,
And waved its signal of palms.

270

"For Christ's sweet sake, I beg an alms!”—
The happy camels may reach the spring,
But Sir Launfal sees only the grewsome thing,

275

The leper, lank as the rain-blanched bone,

That cowers beside him, a thing as lone
And white as the ice-isles of Northern seas
In the desolate horror of his disease.

And Sir Launfal said: "I behold in thee
An image of Him who died on the tree:
Thou also hast had thy crown of thorns

280