For a cap and bells our lives we pay, Bubbles we buy with a whole soul's tasking:

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,

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,

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, 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, 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,

In the nice ear of Nature which song is the best?

Now is the high-tide of the year,

And whatever of life hath ebbed away Comes flooding back with a ripply cheer, Into every bare inlet and creek and

bay;

Now the heart is so full that a drop overfills it,

ing;

have been,

'Tis enough for us now that the leaves are green;

In search of the Holy Grail; Shall never a bed for me be spread,

are flowing,

That the river is bluer than the sky, That the robin is plastering his house hard by;

And if the breeze kept the good news back,

For other couriers we should not lack; We could guess it all by yon heifer's lowing,

And hark! how clear bold chanticleer, Warmed with the new wine of the year, Tells all in his lusty crowing!

Joy comes, grief goes, we know not how Everything is happy now,

Everything is upward striving;

"T is as easy now for the heart to be true As for grass to be green or skies to be blue,

"T is the natural way of living: Who knows whither the clouds have fled?

In the unscarred heaven they leave no wake;

And the eyes forget the tears they have shed,

The heart forgets its sorrow and ache; The soul partakes the season's youth, And the sulphurous rifts of passion and woe

Lie deep 'neath a silence pure and smooth,

Till I begin my vow to keep;
Here on the rushes will I sleep,
And perchance there may come a vision

Like burnt-out craters healed with

snow.

What wonder if Sir Launfal now Remembered the keeping of his vow?

PART FIRST.

I.

"My golden spurs now bring to me, And bring to me my richest mail, For to-morrow I go over land and sea

She could not scale the chilly wall,
Though around it for leagues her pa-
vilions tall
Stretched left and right,
Over the hills and out of sight;

Green and broad was every tent,
And out of each a murmur went
Till the breeze fell off at night.

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,

From the snow five thousand summers old;

On open wold and hill-top bleak
And whirled it like sleet on the wan-
It had gathered all the cold,
derer'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,

That 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,