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 sun-lit fall of rain. In crystal vapour everywhere The topmost elm-tree gather'd green Sometimes the linnet piped his song: Sometimes the throstle whistled strong : Sometimes the sparhawk, wheel'd along, By grassy capes with fuller sound Then, in the boyhood of the year, She seem'd a part of joyous Spring: 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 As she fled fast thro' sun and shade, The rein with dainty finger-tips, 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, For ever and for ever. Flow, softly flow, by lawn and lea, A rivulet then a river: No where by thee my steps shall be, For ever and for ever. But here will sigh thine alder tree, And here thine aspen shiver; And here by thee will hum the bee, For ever and for ever. |