"Bring the dress and put it on her,
That she wore when she was wed."
Then her people, softly treading,
Bore to earth her body, drest
In the dress that she was wed in,
That her spirit might have rest.

SIR LAUNCELOT AND QUEEN

GUINEVERE.

A FRAGMENT.

LIKE Souls that balance joy and pain,
With tears and smiles from heaven again
The maiden Spring upon the plain
Came in a sunlit fall of rain.

In crystal vapor everywhere
Blue isles of heaven laugh'd between,
And, far in forest-deeps unseen,
The topmost elm-tree gather'd green
From draughts of balmy air.

Sometimes the linnet piped his song:
Sometimes the throstle whistled strong:
Sometimes the sparhawk, wheel'd along,
Hush'd all the groves from fear of wrong:
By grassy capes with fuller sound
In curves the yellowing river ran,
And drooping chestnut-buds began
To spread into the perfect fan,

Above the teeming ground.

Then, in the boyhood of the year,
Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere
Rode thro' the coverts of the deer,
With blissful treble ringing clear.

She seem'd a part of joyous Spring:
A gown of grass-green silk she wore,
Buckled with golden clasps before;
A light-green tuft of plumes she bore
Closed in a golden ring.

Now on some twisted ivy-net,
Now by some tinkling rivulet,
In mosses mixt with violet

Her cream-white mule his pastern set;
And fleeter now she skimm'd the plains
Than she whose elfin prancer springs
By night to eery warblings,
When all the glimmering moorland rings
With jingling bridle-reins.

1 As she fled fast thro' sun and shade,
The happy winds upon her play'd,
Blowing the ringlet from the braid:
She look'd so lovely, as she sway'd

The rein with dainty finger-tips,
A man had given all other bliss,
And all his worldly worth for this,
To waste his whole heart in one kiss
Upon her perfect lips.

A FAREWELL.

FLOW down, cold rivulet, to the sea,
Thy tribute wave deliver :
No more by thee my steps shall be,
Forever and forever.

Flow, softly flow, by lawn and lea,
A rivulet then a river:
Nowhere by thee my steps shall be,
Forever and forever.

But here will sigh thine alder tree, And here thine aspen shiver; And here by thee will hum the bee, Forever and forever.

A thousand suns will stream on thee, A thousand moons will quiver; But not by thee my steps shall be, Forever and forever.

THE BEGGAR MAID.

HER arms across her breast she laid; She was more fair than words can say: Barefooted came the beggar maid

Before the king Cophetua.

In robe and crown the king stept down, To meet and greet her on her way; "It is no wonder," said the lords,

"She is more beautiful than day."

As shines the moon in clouded skies,
She in her poor attire was seen :
One praised her ankles, one her eyes,
One her dark hair and lovesome mien.
So sweet a face, such angel grace,

In all that land had never been:
Cophetua sware a royal oath :

75

This beggar maid shall be my queen !"

Then the music touch'd the gates and died; Rose again from where it seem'd to fail, Storm'd in orbs of song, a growing gale; Till thronging in and in, to where they waited,

As 't were a hundred-throated nightingale, The strong tempestuous treble throbb'd and palpitated;

Ran into its giddiest whirl of sound,
Caught the sparkles, and in circles,
Purple gauzes, golden hazes, liquid mazes,
Flung the torrent rainbow round:
Then they started from their places,
Moved with violence, changed in hue,
Caught each other with wild grimaces,
Half-invisible to the view,
Wheeling with precipitate paces
To the melody, till they flew,
Hair, and eyes, and limbs, and faces,
Twisted hard in fierce embraces,
Like to Furies, like to Graces,
Dash'd together in blinding dew:
Till, kill'd with some luxurious agony,
The nerve-dissolving melody
Flutter'd headlong from the sky.

"I am old, but let me drink ; Bring me spices, bring me wine; I remember, when I think,

That my youth was half divine.

"Wine is good for shrivell'd lips, When a blanket wraps the day, When the rotten woodland drips, And the leaf is stamp'd in clay.

"Sit thee down, and have no shame, Cheek by jowl, and knee by knee: What care I for any name?

What for order or degree?

"Let me screw thee up a peg:

Let me loose thy tongue with wine: Callest thou that thing a leg?

Which is thinnest? thine or mine?

"Thou shalt not be saved by works: Thou hast been a sinner too : Ruin'd trunks on wither'd forks,

Empty scarecrows, I and you!

"Fill the cup, and fill the can:

Have a rouse before the morn: Every moment dies a man,

Every moment one is born.

"We are men of ruin'd blood;

Therefore comes it we are wise. Fish are we that love the mud, Rising to no fancy-flies.

"Name and fame! to fly sublime Through the courts, the camps, the schools, Is to be the ball of Time,

Bandied in the hands of fools.

"Friendship!-to be two in oneLet the canting liar pack ! Well I know, when I am gone,

How she mouths behind my back.

"Virtue ! to be good and just →
Every heart, when sifted well,
Is a clot of warmer dust,
Mix'd with cunning sparks of hell.

"O! we two as well can look Whited thought and cleanly life As the priest, above his book Leering at his neighbor's wife.

"Fill the cup, and fill the can :

Have a rouse before the morn: Every moment dies a man,

Every moment one is born.

"Drink, and let the parties rave: They are fill'd with idle spleen; Rising, falling, like a wave,

For they know not what they mean.

PROLOGUE.

SIR WALTER VIVIAN all a summer's day
Gave his broad lawns until the set of sun
Up to the people: thither flock'd at noon
His tenants, wife and child, and thither half
The neighboring borough with their Institute
Of which he was the patron. I was there
From college, visiting the son, — the son
A Walter too, with others of our set,
Five others: we were seven at Vivian-place.

And me that morning Walter show'd the house,

Greek, set with busts: from vases in the hall Flowers of all heavens, and lovelier than their names,

Grew side by side; and on the pavement lay Carved stones of the Abbey-ruin in the park. Huge Ammonites, and the first bones of

Time;

And on the tables every clime and age
Jumbled together: celts and calumets,
Claymore and snow-shoe, toys in lava, fans
Of sandal, amber, ancient rosaries,
Laborious orient ivory sphere in sphere,
The cursed Malayan crease, and battle-clubs
From the isles of palm: and higher on the
walls,

Betwixt the monstrous horns of elk and deer,
His own forefathers' arms and armor hung.

And "this," he said, "was Hugh's at
Agincourt;

And that was old Sir Ralph's at Ascalon :
A good knight he! we keep a chronicle
With all about him," which he brought,

and I

Dived in a hoard of tales that dealt with knights

Half-legend, half-historic, counts and kings Who laid about them at their wills and died; And mixt with these, a lady, one that arm'd Her own fair head, and sallying thro' the

gate,

Had beat her foes with slaughter from her

walls.

"O miracle of women," said the book, "O noble heart who, being strait-besieged

A. TENNYSON.

By this wild king to force her to his wish, Nor bent, nor broke, nor shunn'd a soldier's death,

But now when all was lost or seem'd as lost-
Her stature more than mortal in the burst
Of sunrise, her arm lifted, eyes on fire-
Brake with a blast of trumpets from the gate,
And, falling on them like a thunderbolt,
She trampled some beneath her horses' heels,
And some were whelm'd with missiles of the
wall,

And some were push'd with lances from the rock,

And part were drown'd within the whirling brook :

O miracle of noble womanhood!"

So sang the gallant glorious chronicle; And, I all rapt in this, "Come out," he said, "To the Abbey: there is Aunt Elizabeth And sister Lilia with the rest." We went (I kept the book and had my finger in it) Down thro' the park: strange was the sight

to me;

For all the sloping pasture murmur'd, sown There moved the multitude, a thousand With happy faces and with holiday.

heads;

The patient leaders of their Institute Taught them with facts. One rear'd a font of stone

And drew from butts of water on the slope,
The fountain of the moment, playing now
A twisted snake, and now a rain of pearls,
Or steep-up spout whereon the gilded ball
Danced like a wisp and somewhat lower

down

A man with knobs and wires and vials fired
A cannon: Echo answer'd in her sleep
From hollow fields: and here were telescopes
For azure views; and there a group of girls
In circle waited, whom the electric shock

Dislink'd with shrieks and laughter: round

the lake

A little clock-work steamer paddling plied And shook the lilies: perch'd about the knolls

A dozen angry models jetted steam:
A petty railway ran: a fire-balloon