And seemed the one blot on the summer morn,

So he tossed him a piece of gold in

scorn.

VI.

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 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

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 sum mer 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;
Through the deep gulf of the chimney

wide

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, ar 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.

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!

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:
"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 A he 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,
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.

It

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 Ariinathea, and remained there, an object of pilgrimage and adoration, for many years in the keeping of his lineal descendants. was incumbent upon those who had charge of it to be chaste in thought, word, and deed; but one of the keepers having broken this condition, the Holy Grail disappeared. From that time it was a favorite enterprise of the knights of Arthur's court to go in search of it. Sir Galahad was at last successful in finding it, as may be read in the seventeenth book of the Romance of King Arthur. Tennyson has made Sir Galahad the subject of one of the most exquisite of his poems.

The plot (if I may give that name to anything so slight) of the foregoing poem is my own, and, to serve its purposes, I have enlarged the circle of competition in search of the miraculous cup in such a manner as to include, not only other persons than the heroes of the Round Table, but also a period of time subsequent to the date of King Arthur's reign!