SIR LAUNCELOT AND QUEEN GUINEVERE.

A Fragment.

LIKE souls that balance joy and pain,

With tears and smiles from heaven again
The maiden Spring upon the plain

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. 207

Sometimes the sparhawk, wheel'd along,
Hush'd all the groves from fear of wrong:
By grassy capes with fuller sound

In curves the yellowing river ran,
And drooping chestnut-buds began

To spread into the perfect fan,
Above the teeming ground.

Then, in the boyhood of the year,
Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere

Rode thro' the coverts of the deer,

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 on some twisted ivy-net,
Now by some tinkling rivulet,

On mosses thick with violet,

Her cream-white mule his pastern set:

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 happy winds upon her play'd,
Blowing the ringlet from the braid :
She look'd so lovely, as she sway'd

The rein with dainty finger-tips,

A man had given all other bliss,
And all his worldly worth for this,
To waste his whole heart in one kiss
Upon her perfect lips.

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 thine aspen shiver;

And here by thee will hum the bee,

A hundred suns will stream on thee,

A thousand moons will quiver;

But not by thee my steps shall be,
For ever and for ever.