SIR LAUNCELOT & QUEEN GUINEVERE. A FRAGMENT. LIKE souls that balance joy and pain, Came in a sun-lit fall of rain. In crystal vapour everywhere From draughts of balmy air. Sometimes the linnet piped his song: Sometimes the throstle whistled strong: In curves the yellowing river ran, Above the teeming ground. SIR LAUNCELOT AND QUEEN GUINEVERE. 363 Then, in the boyhood of the year, She seem'd a part of joyous Spring : Now on some twisted ivy-net, Her cream-white mule his pastern set: And fleeter now she skimm'd the plains Than she whose elfin prancer springs By night to eery warblings, When all the glimmering moorland rings 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, No where 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, For ever and for ever. 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; In robe and crown the king stept down, As shines the moon in clouded skies, 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!" THE VISION OF SIN. 1. I HAD a vision when the night was late: A youth came riding toward a palace-gate. Dreams over lake and lawn, and isles and capes— By heaps of gourds, and skins of wine, and piles of grapes 2. Then methought I heard a mellow sound, |