Yet thou hast called him, nor art thou unkind,

O Love Divine, for 't is thy will That gracious natures leave their love behind

To work for Mercy still.

Let laurelled marbles weigh on other tombs,

Let anthems peal for other dead, Rustling the bannered depth of minsterglooms

With their exulting spread.

His epitaph shall mock the short-lived stone,

No lichen shall its lines efface, He needs these few and simple lines alone

To mark his resting-place:—

"Here lies a Poet. Stranger, if to thee His claim to memory be obscure, If thou wouldst learn how truly great was he,

Go, ask it of the poor."

THIS poem was written apparently early in 1848, for in a letter to Mr. Briggs, dated February 1 of that year, Lowell, referring to it, says: "The new poem I spoke of is a sort of a story, and more likely to be popular than what I write generally. Maria thinks very highly of it. I shall probably publish it by itself next summer." The poem was published in the middle of December, 1848, and in an exuberant letter to Mr. Briggs shortly after it appeared, Lowell wrote: "Last night. . I walked to Watertown over the snow with the new moon before me and a sky exactly like that in Page's evening landscape. Orion was rising behind me, and, as I stood on the hill just before you enter the village, the stillness of the fields around me was delicious, broken only by the tinkle of a little brook which runs too swiftly for Frost to catch it. My picture of the brook in Sir Launfal was drawn from it." The following note was prefixed to the poem by its author.

According to the mythology of the Romancers, the San Greal, or Holy Grail, was the cup

PRELUDE TO PART FIRST

OVER his keys the musing organist,
Beginning doubtfully and far away,
First lets his fingers wander as they list,
And builds a bridge from Dreamland for
his lay:

Then, as the touch of his loved instrument Gives hope and fervor, nearer draws his theme,

First guessed by faint auroral flushes sent

Along the wavering vista of his dream.

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 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 following 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.

Not only around our infancy

Doth heaven with all its splendors lie; Daily, with souls that cringe and plot, We Sinais climb and know it not.

Over our manhood bend the skies;

Against our fallen and traitor lives
The great winds utter prophecies;
With our faint hearts the mountain
strives;

Its arms outstretched, the druid wood
Waits with its benedicite;

The beggar is taxed for a corner to die in,

The priest hath his fee who comes and shrives us,

We bargain for the graves we lie in; At the devil's booth are all things sold, Each ounce of dross costs its ounce of gold;

For a cap and bells our lives we pay, Bubbles we buy with a whole soul's tasking:

"T is heaven alone that is given away, 'Tis only God may be had for the asking;

No price is set on the lavish summer;
June may be had by the poorest comer.

And what is so rare as a day in June?

Then, if ever, come perfect days; Then Heaven tries earth if it be in tune, And over it softly her warm ear lays; Whether we look, or whether we listen, We hear life murmur, or see it glisten; Every clod feels a stir of might,

An instinct within it that reaches and towers,

And, groping blindly above it for light,
Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers;
The flush of life may well be seen

Thrilling back over hills and valleys; The cowslip startles in meadows green, The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice,

And there's never a leaf nor a blade too

Comes flooding back with a ripply cheer, Into every bare inlet and creek and bay;

Now the heart is so full that a drop overfills it,

We are happy now because God wills it; No matter how barren the past may have been,

"T is enough for us now that the leaves are green;

We sit in the warm shade and feel right well

How the sap creeps up and the blossoms swell;

We may shut our eyes, but we cannot help knowing

That skies are clear and grass is grow

ing;

The breeze comes whispering in our ear, That dandelions are blossoming near,

That maize has sprouted, that streams are flowing,

That the river is bluer than the sky, That the robin is plastering his house hard by;

And if the breeze kept the good news

back,

For other couriers we should not lack;

We could guess it all by yon heifer's lowing,

And hark! how clear bold chanticleer,
Warmed with the new wine of the year,

Tells all in his lusty crowing!

Joy comes, grief goes, we know not how; Everything is happy now,

Everything is upward striving; 'Tis as easy now for the heart to be

true

As for grass to be green or skies to be blue,

"T is the natural way of living: Who knows whither the clouds have fled ? In the unscarred heaven they leave no

wake; And the eyes forget the tears they have shed,

The heart forgets its sorrow and ache; The soul partakes the season's youth,

And the sulphurous rifts of passion and

woe

Lie deep 'neath a silence pure and smooth, Like burnt-out craters healed with snow. What wonder if Sir Launfal now Remembered the keeping of his vow?

PART FIRST

I

"My golden spurs now bring to me,
And bring to me my richest mail,
For to-morrow I go over land and sea
In search of the Holy Grail;
Shall never a bed for me be spread,
Nor shall a pillow be under my head,
Till I begin my vow to keep;

Here on the rushes will I sleep,

And perchance there may come a vision true

Ere day create the world anew."

Slowly Sir Launfal's eyes grew dim, Slumber fell like a cloud on him, And into his soul the vision flew.

II

The crows flapped over by twos and threes, In the pool drowsed the cattle up to their knees,

The little birds sang as if it were

The one day of summer in all the year, And the very leaves seemed to sing on the trees:

The castle alone in the landscape lay
Like an outpost of winter, dull and gray:
'T was the proudest hall in the North
Countree,

And never its gates might opened be,
Save to lord or lady of high degree;
Summer besieged it on every side,
But the churlish stone her assaults defied;
She could not scale the chilly wall,
Though around it for leagues her pavilions
tall

Stretched left and right,
Over the hills and out of sight;

Green and broad was every tent,
And out of each a murmur went
Till the breeze fell off at night.

III

The drawbridge dropped with a surly clang, And through the dark arch a charger sprang,

Bearing Sir Launfal, the maiden knight,
In his gilded mail, that flamed so bright
It seemed the dark castle had gathered all
Those shafts the fierce sun had shot over
its wall

In his siege of three hundred summers long,

And, binding them all in one blazing sheaf, Had cast them forth: so, young and

strong,

And lightsome as a locust-leaf,

Sir Launfal flashed forth in his maiden

mail,

To seek in all climes for the Holy Grail.

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 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 store
To the soul that was starving in darkness
before."

PRELUDE TO PART SECOND

Down swept the chill wind from the mountain peak,

From the snow five thousand summers old;

On open wold and hilltop bleak

It had gathered all the cold,

And whirled it like sleet on the wanderer's cheek;

It carried a shiver everywhere

From the unleafed boughs and pastures bare;

The little brook heard it and built a roof 'Neath which he could house him, winterproof;

All night by the white stars' frosty gleams He groined his arches and matched his beams;

Slender and clear were his crystal spars
As the lashes of light that trim the stars:
He sculptured every summer delight
In his halls and chambers out of sight;
Sometimes his tinkling waters slipt
Down through a frost-leaved forest-crypt,
Long, sparkling aisles of steel-stemmed

trees

Bending to counterfeit a breeze;

Sometimes the roof no fretwork knew
But silvery mosses that downward grew;
Sometimes it was carved in sharp relief
With quaint arabesques of ice-fern leaf;
Sometimes it was simply smooth and clear
For the gladness of heaven to shine
through, and here

He had caught the nodding bulrush-tops And hung them thickly with diamond drops,

That crystalled the beams of moon and 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.