The Vision of Sir Launfal | Page 9

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 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, 270 And with its own self like an infant played,?And waved its signal of palms.
IV.
"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.
V.
And Sir Launfal said,--"I behold in thee 280 An image of Him who died