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; 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.

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,
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.

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, for many years in the keeping of his lineal descendants. It was incumbent upon those who had charge of it to be chaste in thought, word, and deed; but one of the keepers Laving 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 supposed date of King Arthur's reign.