II.

Sir Launfal turned from his own hard gate,1
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 2 of his earldom's loss,

No more on his surcoat was blazoned the cross,*
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 5 'gainst the barbéd air,
For it was just at the Christmas time;
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,
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,

1 hard gate: that is, the gate | cross of red cloth worn by the Cruwhere he had been received in a saders. hard-hearted manner.

2 recked, thought, cared.

3 surcoat, a short coat worn by knights over the other garments.

4 the cross, in allusion to the

5 idle mail, a figurative expression equivalent to no protection. 6 barbéd, cutting as though with spikes.

7 Christmas. See Glossary.

And with its own self like an infant played,
And waved its signal of palms.1

IV.

"For Christ's sweet sake, I beg an alms:”—
The happy camels may reach the spring,
But Sir Launfal sees only the grewsome 2 thing,
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
An image of Him who died on the tree;3
Thou also hast had thy crown of thorns,

Thou also hast had the world's buffets and scorns,

And to thy life were not denied

The wounds in the hands and feet and side:

Mild Mary's Son, acknowledge me;

Behold, through him, I give to thee!"

VI.

Then the soul of the leper stood up in his eyes
And looked at Sir Launfal, and straightway he
Remembered in what a haughtier guise
He had flung an alms to leprosie,

1 To where . . . palms. Note this fine description of an oasis. 2 grewsome, ugly, frightful.

8 on the tree: that is, on the cross.

4 leprosie = the leper.

When he girt his young life up in gilded mail,
And set forth in search of the Holy Grail.
The heart within him was ashes and dust;
He parted in twain his single crust,
He broke the ice on the streamlet's brink,
And gave the leper to eat and drink:
'Twas a mouldy crust of coarse brown bread,
"Twas water out of a wooden bowl-

Yet with fine wheaten bread was the leper fed,
And 'twas red wine he drank with his thirsty soul.

VII.

As Sir Launfal mused with a downcast face,

A light shone round about the place;

The leper no longer crouched at his side,

But stood before him glorified,

Shining and tall and fair and straight

As the pillar that stood by the Beautiful Gate1-
Himself the Gate whereby men can

Enter the temple of God in Man.

VIII.

His words were shed softer than leaves from the pine,
And they fell on Sir Launfal as snows on the brine,
Which mingle their softness and quiet in one
With the shaggy unrest they float down upon;
And the voice that was calmer than silence said,
"Lo, it is I, be not afraid!

1 the pillar... Beautiful Gate. | Boaz, which stood beside the Gate The reference is to one of the Beautiful in the temple at Jerutwo pillars called Jachin and salem.

In many climes, without avail,

Thou hast spent thy life for the Holy Grail;

Behold, it is here, this cup which thou

Didst fill at the streamlet for me but now;
This crust is my body broken for thee,
This water His blood that died on the tree.
The Holy Supper is kept indeed,

In whatso we share with another's need;
Not what we give, but what we share-
For the gift without the giver is bare;

Who gives himself with his alms feeds three,—
Himself, his hungering neighbor, and me.”

IX.

Sir Launfal awoke as from a swound: 1
"The Grail in my castle here is found!
Hang my idle armor up on the wall,
Let it be the spider's banquet-hall:
He must be fenced with stronger mail
Who would seek and find the Holy Grail."

X.

The castle gate stands open now,

And the wanderer is welcome to the hall
As the hang-bird2 is to the elm-tree bough;
No longer scowl3 the turrets tall,

The Summer's long siege at last is o'er;
When the first poor outcast went in at the door,

1 swound = swoon.

2 the hang-bird, the Baltimore oriole.

8 scowl. What is the figure?

4 Summer's siege. What is the figure of speech?

She entered with him in disguise,

And mastered the fortress by surprise:

There is no spot she loves so well on ground,

She lingers and smiles there the whole year round. The meanest serf on Sir Launfal's land

Has hall and bower at his command;

And there's no poor man in the North Countree
But is lord of the earldom as much as he.1

2-THE COURTIN'.

[The Courtin' - "the only attempt I had ever made at any thing like a pastoral," as the author states-is the most genuine of our native idyls. The first sketch of the poem comprised only six stanzas, which, curiously enough, were written and inserted merely to fill a vacant page in the introduction to the Biglow Papers. These being greatly admired, the author added stanzas from time to time till the poem assumed its present form of twenty-four stanzas.]

GOD makes sech 2 nights, all white an' still

3

Fur'z you can look or listen,

Moonshine an' snow on field an' hill,

All silence an' all glisten.

1 The biographer of Mr. Lowell | al purists may raise to the use of says of The Vision of Sir Launfal: "This noble poem was composed in a kind of fury, substantially as it now appears, in the space of about forty-eight hours, during which the poet scarcely ate or slept. It was almost an improvisation, and its effect upon the reader is like that of the outburst of an inspired singer."

Yankee

these colloquialisms in literature, we should hesitate in condemning such use until we have learned Mr. Lowell's defense in a masterly essay prefixed to the Biglow Papers. In this essay he shows that many of these supposed "provincialisms" have the authority of the best English writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

2 sech. It will be noted that The 3 Fur'z for as, in order that. Courtin' is written in the The form "fur" has the authority dialect." Whatever objections verb- of Sir Philip Sidney.