THE VISION

OF

Sir Launfal.

PART SECOND.

PRELUDE.

Down swept the chill wind from the mountain peak, From the snow five thousand summers old;

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;

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

Down through a frost-leaved forest-crypt,
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
With quaint arabesques of ice-fern leaf;
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,

Which crystalled the beams of moon and sun,
And made a star of every one:

No mortal builder's most rare device

Could match this winter-palace of ice;

'T was as if every image that mirrored lay
In his depths serene through the summer day,
Each flitting 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 the 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,

3