SIR LAUNCELOT & QUEEN GUINEVERE, A Fragment. LIKE souls that balance joy and pain, With tears and smiles from heaven again Came in a sun-lit fall of rain. In crystal vapour everywhere Blue isles of Heaven laugh'd between, And, far in forest-deeps unseen, The topmost linden gather'd green From draughts of balmy air. Sometimes the linnet piped his song: Sometimes the throstle whistled strong: SIR LAUNCELOT AND QUEEN GUINEVERE. Sometimes the sparhawk, wheel'd along, By grassy capes with fuller sound In curves the yellowing river ran, To spread into the perfect fan, Then, in the boyhood of the year, With blissful treble ringing clear. A She seem'd a part of joyous Spring: gown of grass-green silk she wore, Buckled with golden clasps before ; A light-green tuft of plumes she bore Closed in a golden ring. Now by some tinkling rivulet, On mosses thick with violet, Her cream-white mule his pastern set: 207 And now more fleet she skimm'd the plains 208 SIR LAUNCELOT AND QUEEN GUINEVERE. Than she whose elfin prancer springs By night to eery warblings, When all the glimmering moorland rings With jingling bridle-reins. As she fled fast thro' 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, 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 by thee will hum the bee, For ever and for ever. |