SIR LAUNCELOT AND QUEEN GUINEVERE A FRAGMENT. LIKE souls that balance joy and pain, Came in a sun-lit fall of rain. In crystal vapor everywhere Blue isles of heaven laughed between, And, far in forest-deeps unseen, The topmost linden gathered green Sometimes the linnet piped his song: SIR LAUNCELOT AND QUEEN GUINEVERE. 127 In curves the yellowing river ran, Then, in the boyhood of the year, A She seemed a part of joyous Spring: Now on some twisted ivy-net, On mosses thick with violet, Her cream-white mule his pastern set: And now more fleet she skimmed the plains Than she whose elfin prancer springs By night to eery warblings, When all the glimmering moorland rings With jingling bridle-reins. 128 SIR LAUNCELOT AND QUEEN GUINEVERE. As she fled fast through sun and shade, The rein with dainty finger-tips, A man had given all other bliss, A FAREWELL. FLOW down, cold rivulet, to the sea, No more by thee my steps shall be Flow, softly flow, by lawn and lea Nowhere by thee my steps shall be, But here will sigh thine alder tree And here thine aspen shiver; And here by thee will hum the bee Forever and forever. A thousand suns will stream on thee, But not by thee my steps shall be, THE BEGGAR MAID. HER arms across her breast she laid; Before the King Cophetua. In robe and crown the king stept down, To meet and greet her on her "It is no wonder," said the lords, way; "She is more beautiful than day." As shines the moon in clouded skies One her dark hair and lovesome mien. So sweet a face, such angel grace, In all that land had never been: Cophetua sware a royal oath : "This beggar maid shall be my queen! |