'Tis enough for us now that the leaves

are green;

We sit in the warm shade and feel right well

How the sap creeps up and the blossoms swell;

We may shut our eyes, but we cannot help knowing

That skies are clear and grass is growing;

The breeze comes whispering in our ear, That dandelions are blossoming near,

That maize has sprouted, that streams 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; 'Tis 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,

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

III.

The drawbridge dropped with a surly clang,

And through the dark arch a charger sprang,

Bearing Sir Launfal, the maiden knight, In his gilded mail, that flamed so bright It seemed the dark castle had gathered all

Those shafts the fierce sun had shot over its wall

In his siege of three hundred summers

long, And, binding them all in one blazing sheaf,

Had cast them forth: so, young and strong,

The leper raised not the gold from the dust:

"Better to me the poor man's crust,
Better the blessing of the poor,
Though I turn me empty from his door;
That is no true alms which the hand
can hold;

He gives nothing but worthless gold
Who gives from a sense of duty;
But he who gives but a slender mite,
And gives to that which is out of sight,
That thread of the all-sustaining
Beauty

Which runs through all and doth all unite,

The hand cannot clasp the whole of his alms,

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,

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,

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.

Within the hall are song and laughter, The cheeks of Christmas glow red and jolly,

And sprouting is every corbel and rafter With lightsome green of ivy and holly;

A single crow on the tree-top bleak From his shining feathers shed off the cold sun;

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.

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,
Singing, in dreary monotone,
A Christmas carol of its own,
Whose burden still, as he might guess,
Was- "Shelterless, shelterless, shel-

terless!"

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

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.

PART SECOND.

I.

THERE was never a leaf on bush or tree, The bare boughs rattled shudderingly; The river was dumb and could not speak, For the weaver Winter its shroud had

spun;

And looked at Sir Launfal, and straightway he Remembered in what a haughtier guise He had flung an alms to leprosie, 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,
'T was a mouldy crust of coarse brown
bread,

'T was water out of a wooden bowl,Yet with fine wheaten bread was the leper fed,

And 't was 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
Gate,

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,

That mingle their softness and quiet in

one

The castle gate stands open now,

And the wanderer is welcome to the hall

As the hangbird is to the elm-tree bough;

No longer scowl the turrets tall,
The Summer's long siege at last is o'er ;
When the first poor outcast went in at
the door,

She entered with him in disguise,
There is no spot she loves so well on
And mastered the fortress by surprise;
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.

NOTE. According to the mythology of the Romancers, the San Greal, or Holy Grail, was the cup out of which Jesus partook of the last

supper with his disciples. It was brought into England by Joseph of Arimathea, and remained there, an object of pilgrimage and adoration,