IV

It was morning on hill and stream and tree,
And morning in the young knight's heart;
Only the castle moodily

Rebuffed the gifts of the sunshine free,
And gloomed by itself apart;

The season brimmed all other things up
Full as the rain fills the pitcher plant's cup.

V

As Sir Launfal made morn through the darksome gate
He was 'ware of a leper, crouched by the same,
Who begged with his hand and moaned as he sate;
And a loathing over Sir Launfal came;

The sunshine went out of his soul with a thrill,

The flesh 'neath his armor 'gan shrink and crawl,

And midway its leap his heart stood still

Like a frozen waterfall;

For this man, so foul and bent of stature,
Rasped harshly against his dainty nature,
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 only the worthless gold

Who gives from a sense of duty;
But he who gives but a siender 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."

PART SECOND

Ι.

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;
A single crow on the tree-top bleak

From its 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.

CATH. FIFTH READER- - 12

II

Sir Launfal turned from his own hard gate,
For another heir in his earldom sate;

An old, bent man, worn out and frail,

He came back from seeking the Holy Grail;
Little he recked of his earldom's loss,

No more on his surcoat was blazoned the cross,
But deep in his soul the sign he wore,
The badge of the suffering and the poor.

III

Sir Launfal's raiment thin and spare
Was idle mail 'gainst the barbed air,
For it was just at the Christmas time;
So he mused, as he sat, of a sunnier clime,
And sought for a shelter from cold and snow
In the light and warmth of long ago.
He sees the snake-like caravan crawl
O'er the edge of the desert, black and small,
Then nearer and nearer, till, one by one,
He can count the camels in the sun,
As over the red-hot sands they pass

To where, in its slender necklace of grass,

The little spring laughed and leapt in the shade,
And with its own self like an infant played,
And waved its signal of palms.