As the hangbird is to the elm-tree bough;
No longer scowl the turrets tall,

The Summer's long siege at last is o'er;

When the first poor outcast went in at the door,
She entered with him in disguise,

And mastered the fortress by surprise;

There is no spot she loves so well on ground,

She lingers and smiles there the whole year round;
The meanest serf on Sir Launfal's land

Has hall and bower at his command;

And there's no poor man in the North Countree
But is lord of the earldom as much as he.

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POEMS HAVING A SPECIAL RELATION TO THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL. GROUP A1

THE SEARCH

I WENT to seek for Christ,

And Nature seemed so fair

That first the woods and fields my youth enticed,
And I was sure to find him there:
The temple I forsook,

And to the solitude

Allegiance paid; but Winter came and shook
The crown and purple from my wood;

Ε

His snows, like desert sands, with scornful drift, Besieged the columned aisle and palace-gate; 10 My Thebes, cut deep with many a solemn rift,

But epitaphed her own sepulchred state: Then I remembered whom I went to seek, And blessed blunt Winter for his counsel bleak. 1 See The Study of The Vision of Sir Launfal, p. 91.

Back to the world I turned,

For Christ, I said, is King;

So the cramped alley and the hut I spurned,

As far beneath his sojourning:

Mid power and wealth I sought,

But found no trace of him,

And all the costly offerings I had brought
With sudden rust and mould grew dim:
I found his tomb, indeed, where, by their laws,
All must on stated days themselves imprison,
Mocking with bread a dead creed's grinning jaws,
Witless how long the life had thence arisen;
Due sacrifice to this they set apart,

Prizing it more than Christ's own living heart.

So from my feet the dust

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Of the proud World I shook;

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Then came dear Love and shared with me his crust,

And half my sorrow's burden took.

After the World's soft bed,

Its rich and dainty fare,

Like down seemed Love's coarse pillow to my head, 35
His cheap food seemed as manna rare;
Fresh-trodden prints of bare and bleeding feet,
Turned to the heedless city whence I came,
Hard by I saw, and springs of worship sweet
Gushed from my cleft heart smitten by the same ; 40
Love looked me in the face and spake no words,
But straight I knew those footprints were the Lord's.

I followed where they led,

And in a hovel rude,

With naught to fence the weather from his head, 45

The King I sought for meekly stood;
A naked, hungry child

Clung round his gracious knee,

And a poor hunted slave looked up and smiled
To bless the smile that set him free;
New miracles I saw his presence do, -

No more I knew the hovel bare and poor,
The gathered chips into a woodpile grew,

The broken morsel swelled to goodly store; I knelt and wept: my Christ no more I seek, His throne is with the outcast and the weak.

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A PARABLE

SAID Christ our Lord, "I will go and see
How the men, my brethren, believe in me."
He passed not again through the gate of birth,
But made himself known to the children of earth.

Then said the chief priests, and rulers, and kings, 5
Behold, now, the Giver of all good things;
Go to, let us welcome with pomp and state
Him who alone is mighty and great."

With carpets of gold the ground they spread
Wherever the Son of Man should tread,

And in palace-chambers lofty and rare

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They lodged him, and served him with kingly fare.

Great organs surged through arches dim
Their jubilant floods in praise of him;

And in church, and palace, and judgment-hall, 15
He saw his own image high over all.

But still, wherever his steps they led,
The Lord in sorrow bent down his head,
And from under the heavy foundation-stones,
The son of Mary heard bitter groans.

And in church, and palace, and judgment-hall,
He marked great fissures that rent the wall,
And opened wider and yet more wide
As the living foundation heaved and sighed.

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Have ye founded your thrones and altars, then, 25 On the bodies and souls of living men?

And think ye that building shall endure,

Which shelters the noble and crushes the poor ?

"With gates of silver and bars of gold

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Ye have fenced my sheep from their Father's fold;
I have heard the dropping of their tears
In heaven these eighteen hundred years."

"O Lord and Master, not ours the guilt,
We build but as our fathers built;
Behold thine images, how they stand,
Sovereign and sole, through all our land.

"Our task is hard, - with sword and flame
To hold thine earth forever the same,
And with sharp crooks of steel to keep
Still, as thou leftest them, thy sheep."

Then Christ sought out an artisan,
A low-browed, stunted, haggard man,
And a motherless girl, whose fingers thin
Pushed from her faintly want and sin.

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These set he in the midst of them,

And as they drew back their garment-hem,

For fear of defilement, "Lo, here," said he, "The images ye have made of me!"

FREEDOM

ARE we, then, wholly fallen? Can it be

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That thou, North wind, that from thy mountains bringest

Their spirit to our plains, and thou, blue sea,

Who on our rocks thy wreaths of freedom flingest,

As on an altar, can it be that ye

Have wasted inspiration on dead ears,

Dulled with the too familiar clank of chains?
The people's heart is like a harp for years
Hung where some petrifying torrent rains
Its slow-incrusting spray: the stiffened chords
Faint and more faint make answer to the tears
That drip upon them: idle are all words:
Only a golden plectrum wakes the tone
Deep buried 'neath that ever-thickening stone.

We are not free: doth Freedom, then, consist
In musing with our faces toward the Past,
While petty cares and crawling interests twist
Their spider-threads about us, which at last

Grow strong as iron chains, to cramp and bind
In formal narrowness heart, soul, and mind?
Freedom is re-created year by year,

In hearts wide open on the Godward side,

In souls calm-cadenced as the whirling sphere,
In minds that sway the future like a tide.

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