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,

265

The little spring laughed and leapt in the shade, 27€ And with its own self like an infant played,

And waved its signal of palms.

IV

For Christ's sweet sake, I beg an alms; "-
The happy camels may reach the spring,
But Sir Launfal sees only the grewsome thing, 27
The leper, lank as the rain-blanched bone,
That cowers beside him, a thing as lone
And white as the ice-isles of Northern seas
In the desolate horror of his disease.

And Sir Launfal said, "I behold in thee
An image of Him who died on the tree;
Thou also hast had thy crown of thorns,
Thou also hast had the world's buffets and scorns,

And to thy life were not denied

The wounds in the hands and feet and side:

Mild Mary's Son, acknowledge me;

Behold, through him, I give to Thee!”

VI

280

28

Then the soul of the leper stood up in his eyes
And looked at Sir Launfal, and straightway he
Remembered in what a haughtier guise
He had flung an alms to leprosie,

290

When he girt his young life up in gilded mail
And set forth in search of the Holy Grail.
The heart within him was ashes and dust;
He parted in twain his single crust,

He broke the ice on the streamlet's brink,
And gave the leper to eat and drink:
'Twas a mouldy crust of coarse brown bread,
"T was water out of a wooden bowl,
Yet with fine wheaten bread was the leper fed,
And 't was red wine he drank with his thirsty soul.

29

300

VII

As Sir Launfal mused with a downcast face,
A light shone round about the place;

The leper no longer crouched at his side,
But stood before him glorified,

Shining and tall and fair and straight

As the pillar that stood by the Beautiful Gate, -
Himself the Gate whereby men can

Enter the temple of God in Man.

VIII

305

309

His words were shed softer than leaves from the pine, And they fell on Sir Launfal as snows on the brine,

310. Lowell seems to have used here a figure first suggested by Tennyson's lines,

"music that softer falls

Than petals from blown roses on the grass."

The suggestion is remote and must be traced through Lowell's fondness for poetic phrases and an almost unconscious adaptation of the figure to the more severe land of northern cold with which be was familiar. Our poet was also familiar with the source from which Tennyson drew so much of the beautiful imagery of The Lotos Eaters, Enone, and other early Idylls. In a letter dated June 28, 1839, he writes: "I have found a treasure to-day,

That mingle their softness and quiet in one
With the shaggy unrest they float down upon;
And the voice that was calmer than silence said,
Lo, it is I, be not afraid!

In many climes, without avail,

Thou hast spent thy life for the Holy Grail;

Behold, it is here, this cup which thou

Didst fill at the streamlet for Me but now;
This crust is My body broken for thee
This water His blood that died on the tree;
The Holy Supper is kept, indeed,

In whatso we share with another's need:
Not what we give, but what we share,
For the gift without the giver is bare;

Who gives himself with his alms feeds three,-
Himself, his hungering neighbor, and Me."

IX

Sir Launfal awoke as from a swound:
The Grail in my castle here is found!
Hang my idle armor up on the wall,
Let it be the spider's banquet-hall;
He must be fenced with stronger mail
Who would seek and find the Holy Grail."

X

The castle gate stands open now,

315

82€

326

And the wanderer is welcome to the hall 335

small volume of about five hundred pages; not one of your attenuated modern things that seem like milk and water watered, but a goodly fat little fellow and full of the choicest dainties, viz.: Hesiod, Theocritus, Bion, Moschus, and extracts from Orpheus and some forty others, all with a Latin translation ad verbum