The Vision of Sir Launfal | Page 7

a
parable of his tale, and, in the broadest interpretation of democracy,
sang of the leveling of all ranks in a common divine humanity. There is
a subterranean passage connecting the Biglow Papers_ with _Sir
Launfal; it is the holy zeal which attacks slavery issuing in this fable of
a beautiful charity, Christ in the guise of a beggar.
The invention is a very simple one, and appears to have been suggested
by Tennyson's Sir Galahad, though Lowell had no doubt read Sir
Thomas Malory's Morte d'Arthur. The following is the note which
accompanied The Vision when first published in 1848, and retained by
Lowell in all subsequent editions:--
"According to the mythology of the Romancers, the San Greal, or Holy
Grail, was the cup out of which Jesus Christ partook of the last supper
with his disciples. It was brought into England by Joseph of Arimathea,
and remained there, an object of pilgrimage and adoration, for many
years in the keeping of his lineal descendants. It was incumbent upon
those who had charge of it to be chaste in thought, word, and deed; but,
one of the keepers having broken this
condition, the Holy Grail
disappeared. From that time it was a favorite enterprise of the Knights
of Arthur's court to go in search of it. Sir Galahad was at last successful
in finding it, as may be read in the seventeenth book of the Romance of
King Arthur. Tennyson has made Sir Galahad the subject of one of the
most exquisite of his poems.
"The plot (if I may give that name to anything so slight) of the
following poem is my own, and, to serve its purposes, I have enlarged
the circle of competition in search of the miraculous cup in such a
manner as to include not only other persons than the heroes of the
Round Table, but also a period of time subsequent to the date of King
Arthur's reign."
PRELUDE TO PART FIRST.
Over his keys the musing organist,
Beginning doubtfully and far

away,
First lets his fingers wander as they list,
And builds a Bridge
from Dreamland for his lay:
Then, as the touch of his loved
instrument 5 Gives hope and fervor, nearer draws his theme,
First
guessed by faint auroral flushes sent
Along the wavering vista of his
dream.
Not only around our infancy[1]
Doth heaven with all its splendors lie;
10 Daily, with souls that cringe and plot,
We Sinais climb and know
it not.
Over our manhood bend the skies;
Against our fallen and traitor lives

The great winds utter prophecies: 15 With our faint hearts the
mountain strives;
Its arms outstretched, the druid wood
Waits with
its benedicite;
And to our age's drowsy blood
Still shouts the
inspiring sea. 20
Earth gets its price for what Earth gives us;
The beggar is taxed for a
corner to die in,
The priest hath his fee who comes and shrives us,

We bargain for the graves we lie in;
[Footnote 1: In allusion to Wordsworth's "Heaven lies about us in our
infancy," in his ode, _Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of
Early Childhood_.]
At the Devil's booth are all things sold, 25 Each ounce of dross costs its
ounce of gold;
For a cap and bells our lives we pay,[2]
Bubbles we
buy with a whole soul's tasking:
'T is heaven alone that is given away,

'T is only God may be had for the asking; 30 No price is set on the
lavish summer;
June may be had by the poorest comer.
And what is so rare as a day in June?
Then, if ever, come perfect days;

Then Heaven tries the earth if it be in tune, 35 And over it softly her
warm ear lays:
Whether we look, or whether we listen,
We hear life
murmur, or see it glisten;
Every clod feels a stir of might,
An
instinct within it that reaches and towers, 40 And, groping blindly

above it for light,
Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers;
The flush
of life may well be seen
Thrilling back over hills and valleys;
The
cowslip startles in meadows green, 45 The buttercup catches the sun in
its chalice,
And there's never a leaf nor a blade too mean
To be
some happy creature's palace;
The little bird sits at his door in the sun,

Atilt like a blossom among the leaves, 50 And lets his illumined
being o'errun
With the deluge of summer it receives;
His mate feels
the eggs beneath her wings,
And the heart in her dumb breast flutters
and sings;
He sings to the wide world, and she to her nest,-- 55 In the
nice ear of Nature which song is the best?
[Footnote 2: In the Middle Ages kings and noblemen had in their courts
jesters to make sport for the company; as every one then wore a dress
indicating his rank or occupation, so the jester wore a cap hung with
bells. The fool of Shakespeare's plays is the king's jester at his