The Vision of Sir Launfal | Page 9

Beauty
Which runs
through all and doth all unite,--
The hand cannot clasp the whole of
his alms, 170 The heart outstretches its eager palms,
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,[3]
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 185 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

Down through a frost-leaved forest-crypt, 190 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 195 With quaint arabesques
of ice-fern leaf;
[Footnote 3: Note the different moods that are indicated by the two
preludes. The one is of June, the other of snow and winter. By these
preludes the poet, like an organist, strikes a key which he holds in the
subsequent parts.]
[Illustration: As Sir Launfal Made Morn Through the Darksome Gate.]
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, 200 That
crystalled the beams of moon and sun,
And made a star of every one:

No mortal builder's most rare device[4]
Could match this
winter-palace of ice;
'Twas as if every image that mirrored lay 205 In
his depths serene through the summer day,[5]
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. 210
Within the hall are song and laughter,
The cheeks of Christmas grow
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 215 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; 220 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, 225 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, 230 Whose burden still, as he might
guess,
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.
[Footnote 4: The Empress of Russia, Catherine II., in a magnificent
freak, built a palace of ice, which was a nine-days' wonder. Cowper has
given a poetical description of it in The Task, Book V. lines 131-176.]
[Footnote 5: The Yule-log was anciently a huge log burned at the feast
of Juul (pronounced Yule) by our Scandinavian ancestors in honor of
the god Thor. Juul-tid (Yule-time) corresponded in time to Christmas

tide, and when Christian festivities took the place of pagan, many
ceremonies remained. The great log, still called the Yule-log, was
dragged in and burned in the fireplace after Thor had been
forgotten.]
PART SECOND.
I.
There was never a leaf on bush or tree, 240 The bare boughs rattled
shudderingly;
The river was dumb 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; 245 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.
II.
Sir Launfal turned from his own hard gate, 250 For another heir in his
earldom sate;
An old, bent man, worn out and frail,
He came back
from seeking the Holy Grail;
Little he recked of his earldom's loss,

No more on his surcoat was blazoned the cross, 255 But deep in his
soul the sign he wore,
The badge of the suffering and the poor.
III.
Sir Launfal's raiment thin and spare
Was idle mail 'gainst the barbed
air,
For it was just at the Christmas time; 260 So he mused, as he sat,
of a sunnier clime,
And sought for a shelter from cold and snow
In
the light and warmth of long-ago;
He sees the snake-like caravan
crawl
O'er the edge