/^. 
 
 '■JHc-e^ 
 
 ■■'9- 
 
SIR LANCELOT, 
 
SIR LANCELOT 
 
 A LEGEND 
 
 OP THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 FEEDEEICK WILLIAM FABER, D.D. 
 
 LONDON": 
 THOMAS EICIIAEDSON AND SON; 
 
 AND DERBY. 
 
FnSs 
 
 ]%S1 ' 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 It is now fifteen years since this poem was 
 composed. Long before my publisher called 
 this autumn for a second edition, I had twice 
 carefully revised it, and on occasion of the 
 second revision had made considerable 
 changes. Many hundreds of verses have 
 been omitted, a portion of the poem, which 
 was not in its natural place before, has now 
 been published in another volume, some 
 hundreds of new verses have been added, 
 a great number of alterations, chiefly of a 
 metrical character, have been made all over 
 the poem, and one book of it may almost be 
 said to have been reconstructed. These 
 changes, it is hoped, will make it somewhat 
 more worthy of that public favour, which it 
 has already received. The work is now more 
 like what it was in its original conception. 
 
 The object of the poem is not an ambitious 
 one. It has always seemed to me, that a 
 love of natural objects, and the depth, as well 
 as exuberance and refinement of mind, pro- 
 duced by an intelligent delight in scenery, 
 are elements of the first importance in the 
 education of the young. But, a taste for the 
 beauties of nature being a quicker growth 
 
 440 
 
VI PKEPACE. 
 
 than the power or habit of independent 
 thought, it is apt in youth to wander from 
 the right path, and lose itself in some of the 
 devious wilds of pantheism. What I wished 
 to eflfect in this poem was, to show how an 
 enthusiastic and most minute appreciation of 
 the beauties of nature might unite itself with 
 Christian sentiments, Christian ritual, and the 
 strictest expression of Christian doctrine. 
 
 Various circumstances, upon which it is 
 needless to enter, but which have an interest 
 to myself, led me to ^x the supposed action 
 of my poem in the reign of Henry the Third. 
 My perfect aquaintance with all the nooks 
 and angles of the Westmoreland Mountains, 
 the scene of my first and very free school- 
 days, and my familiarity with their changeful 
 features, their biographies of light and shade, 
 by night as well as by day, through all the 
 four seasons, naturally decided me as to the 
 locality of my poem. Moreover the choice of 
 that particular epoch enabled me to make 
 nature symbolize ritual and doctrine in a 
 manner which was in keeping with the spirit 
 of those ages, but which would have seemed 
 forced and unreal if my hero had been a man 
 of modern times, who must either have been 
 unlikely to allegorize nature at all, or must 
 have done so through the insight of a modern 
 education. In this case the poem must on the 
 one hand have been overloaded with allusions 
 to physical science, or on the other have 
 
PREFACE. Vll 
 
 failed to persnade^ from tlie apparent igno- 
 rance wLicli the omission of sucli allusions 
 would imply. 
 
 The same choice also permitted me to re- 
 store the physical features of the country to 
 the state in which my boyhood always per- 
 sisted in representing them to me, during the 
 many solitary afternoons, and long summer 
 holy-days spent among the ruined halls and 
 castles and moated houses, which are so fre- 
 quent on the eastern side of those mountains, 
 the abbeys shrinking rather to the west. 
 The forests were replanted ; the chases were 
 filled again with deer, the ancestors of the 
 red deer of the Duke of Norfolk which still 
 drank at the brink of Ullswater by Lyulph^s 
 Tower ; the heronries slanted again over the 
 edges of the lakes; the unpersecuted eagles 
 woke the echoes of Helvellyn ; spear-tops 
 glanced in the sun on the steep paths that 
 lay like pale green threads across the moun- 
 tains ; the castles rang with arms ; the bright 
 ivy had not mantled the ruddy sand- stone 
 beacons which warned men of the Scotch; 
 the abbeys and chantries were haunted by 
 church- music, while the lesser cells in the 
 secluded pastoral vales heard once more the 
 nightly aspirations of wakeful prayer, and 
 Cistercian shepherds could scarcely be dis- 
 tinguished, in their white habits, from the 
 sheep they tended, as they moved across the 
 fells high up above their moorland granges. 
 
Vlll PREFACE. 
 
 As tHe warder on the battlements, .,r ather 
 as the alchemist from his turret, saw that 
 land of hills and woods and waters beneath 
 the starlight long ago, so did I see it always 
 in those ardent years. From earliest times it 
 was to me the land of knightly days, and the 
 spell has never yet been broken. When it 
 became the dwelling-place of manhood and 
 the scene of earnest labour, the light upon it 
 only grew more golden; and now, a year- 
 long prisoner in the great capital, that region 
 seems to me a home whence I have been 
 exiled, but which, only to think of, is tran- 
 quillity and joy. 
 
 Frederick Faber. 
 
 The Oratory. London. 
 
 Feast of St. Bede. 
 
 1857. 
 
DEDICATION. 
 
 Dear Brother ! while the murmurs of my song 
 
 In refluent waves were dying on my ear, 
 
 The spoken music blending with the thrills 
 
 Of that unuttered sweetness, which remains 
 
 A cherished refuse in the poet's soul, 
 
 Still to distinguish him from all the hearts 
 
 To which, by love constrained, he hath resigned 
 
 So much of his interior self, — and while 
 
 I listened, like a practised mountaineer, 
 
 To my own voice rebounding from the heights 
 
 Of song, redoubled and prolonged returns 
 
 Of pleasant echoes, — from the far-off South 
 
 Came welcome news of thee, my dearest Friend ! 
 
 Thou spakest in thine own most beautiful way, 
 And in the sunny visionary style 
 Of thy strange solemn language, of the lights 
 In those new skies, the Cross with starry arms, 
 Palpably bending at the dead of night. 
 The star-built Altar, Noe's sheeny Dove 
 Still winging her incessant flight on high, 
 The definite Triangle, and other such. 
 Girt with huge spaces of iinstarry blue. 
 As sacred precincts round about them spread, 
 Through which the eye, from all obstruction clear. 
 Travels the heavens at midnight, and salutes 
 Those orbed constellations hung thereon 
 Like festal lamps on some cathedral wall j — 
 
X DEDICATION. 
 
 Emblemg of Christian things, not pagan names 
 
 That nightly desecrate our northern skies. 
 
 Thus with thy spirit softly overshadowed 
 
 By the most brilliant umbrage of those stars, 
 
 Thou spakest of the snowy albatross, 
 
 Sailing in circuits round thy lonely bark, 
 
 Fondling its foamy prow as if it deemed. 
 
 And not unjustly, its companionship 
 
 A solace to thee on the desert waves ; 
 
 And underneath the great Australian trees 
 
 A liglit was in strange creatures' wondering eyes, — 
 
 How solemnly interpreted by thee ! 
 
 it was all so beautiful, so strange, 
 And with its current intercepted oft 
 
 With place for some endearment of old love, 
 
 1 thought in thy wild strain how passing sweet 
 The poetry of those far southern seas ! 
 
 Few days elapsed : there came another strain, 
 Fresh poetry from those far southern seas ! 
 It sang of sickness and the fear of death, 
 Of suffering gently borne for love of Christ, 
 "Who calls us to His service as He wills. 
 Not as we choose ; and, mingling with the strain, 
 Broke forth thy simple and courageous words 
 And peaceful trust, as happy and as bold 
 As a child's prayer. And wilt thou think it wrong. 
 That, when I prayed and wept and deeply mourned, 
 There was a pleasure in my mourning, such 
 As I have never felt in love before ? 
 For who that doth remember thee, how pale ! 
 How gentle ! but would smile for very faith, 
 As Abraham smiled, at thine heroic words, 
 Which mate thine outward aspect so unfitly ? 
 Ah ! that was poetry tenfold more sweet 
 
BEDTCATION. XI 
 
 Than when thou sangst of stars, and ocean birds, 
 And wandering creatures underneath the trees ! 
 O more than Brother ! my impetuous heart. 
 Nurtured too much on volatile impulses, 
 In loving thee hath learned still more to love. 
 And study with a covetous design, 
 The science of thy quiet nature, calm, 
 Profoundly calm amid all cares and doubts. 
 As though thy faculties had never had. 
 Or left and lost in thy baptismal font, 
 All power of self-disturbance, so serene 
 The unsuspicious greatness of thy virtue. 
 Thy simple-tongued humility, and love 
 Too self-forgetting to have much of fear ! 
 Like one who sits upon a windy steep. 
 And looks into a placid lake below 
 Bright in the breezeless vale, so have I gazed 
 With long affection fathomed to its depths, 
 Into the inspired tranquillity of heart 
 On thy scarce ruffled innocence bestowed. 
 Dear Friend ! I speak bold words of praise, and 
 
 tears 
 Warrant ray boldness, for I know full well 
 Thine eye will never see what would have pained 
 Thy lowliness : that supernatural calm 
 Of thy pure nature will be deeper still, 
 Unutterably deepened, ere my words. 
 Not written as to one alive, shall reach 
 The island of thy gradual martyrdom. 
 O no ! thou wilt be once more at my side, 
 A help to my weak purposes, an arm 
 Invisible, in intercession strong, 
 No part of this half dead, half dying world, 
 !But to the region of the living gone 
 
XU DEDICATION. 
 
 To pray for us, and to be reached by prayer. 
 When these poor lines have travelled to that shore, 
 Distance and exile will have fallen from thee, 
 Sun-witliered wreaths, before tlie eye of death ; 
 Thou wilt be in my neighbourhood again, 
 Again come home imto my soul's embrace, 
 No more the frail and wasting Missionary, 
 liut the high Mate of Angels and of Saints ! 
 
 Then let this song be dedicate to thee ! 
 If life be thine, forgive these words of praise, — 
 Thou knowest they are my friendship's first offence. 
 Should not this song be thine, all mountain-born ? 
 Are not its verses laden with sweet names. 
 Which to our hearts are poems in themselves ? 
 And unnamed landscapes are there, singular trees. 
 Spots of remembered sunshine or soft shade, 
 And unforgotten fabrics in the clouds. 
 Farms on the heath, and fields beside the town. 
 Haunts by the mere, choice gardens of the poor 
 Oft chance-discovered, O how much beloved 
 And prized by us, as luxuries that belonged 
 To over-tasked yet cheerful cottagers 
 Whose servants we, as priests, would fain become ! 
 Such things are ever floating on my song. 
 Sequestered places, household scenes, inviting 
 Through language more descriptive than their names 
 A pleased detection from thy mindful heart. 
 Did we not learn our poetry together. 
 And sing those spousal verses to each other, 
 Among the glorious hills whose kindling heights 
 Gleam like familiar beacons on its course ? 
 Was there, except thy modesty, and growth 
 In meek self-sacrifice for Holy Church, 
 Was there one difference 'twixt our blended souls ? 
 
DEDICATION. XIU 
 
 my sweet, honoured Friend ! admiring love 
 Sues — thou remember'st how it spake of old 
 By the chill-flowing Eothay in the night — 
 Acceptance now for this religious song. 
 Brother ! thou wert within me and around me 
 As it sunk down, and in my love for thee, — 
 Admonished by thy suflferings to a strain 
 Even yet more Christian, — in my love for the© 
 The measure tremulously fell away. 
 Falling, where I would leave it now for ever, 
 Even at thy feet, to be mine image there. 
 With docile admiration looking np 
 Hourly in thy perpetual downcast eyes ! 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 BOOK 
 
 I. The Ash-Tree Heemitage 
 
 
 
 PAGE 
 1 
 
 II. The Booes 
 
 
 29 
 
 III. The Beautiful Year 
 
 , 
 
 
 53 
 
 IV. The Journey 
 
 
 
 . 81 
 
 V. Black Combe 
 
 
 
 . 113 
 
 VI. Tee Spirit of the Sea 
 
 
 
 137 
 
 VII. The Leprosy . 
 
 
 
 167 
 
 VIII. The Confession. 
 
 
 
 227 
 
 IX. The Absolution 
 
 , 
 
 
 261 
 
 X. The Communion 
 
 
 
 301 
 
SIR LANCELOT. 
 
 BOOK I. 
 THE ASH-TKEE HERMITAGE. 
 
BOOK I 
 
 THE ASH-TEEE HEEMITAGE. 
 
 There is a sound in England, from the shores 
 
 Unto the midland vales, from London streets 
 
 To the deep chase where yet a Saxon thane 
 
 In his rude homestead lingers, keeping court 
 
 Among his rustic serfs. The realm is stirred, 
 
 For the Crusaders have returned. No hour 
 
 Of day or night but at the various ports, 
 
 The island round, some stragMinor bark arrives. 
 
 The very hostelries are surfeited 
 
 With guests, and armed men in wassail drowned. 
 
 And prattling squires, not seldom with a gift 
 
 Of no mean minstrelsy and racy verse ; 
 
 Who sang adventures, thousandfold, by sea 
 
 Endured, or with a blither interest 
 
 Encountered often in the chance delays 
 
 At foreign harbours,— narratives that might 
 
 Outdo the Cycle of Eeturns from Troy 
 
 For various intermingling of fierce war, 
 
 And love as fierce, and passionate rivalries, 
 
 And manly warriors sickening for their homes, 
 
 And of that sickness miserably cured 
 
 When home was gained, and monasteries filled 
 
 With penitents and world-worn sinners, men 
 
 Whose hearts were aged with pleasure, and, mid 
 
 these, 
 A gentler sort, whose souls uncommon grief 
 Had disenthralled from earth and love of life. 
 
4 SIE LAHCKLOT. [sOOr 
 
 O conld we waken in the woods or hills, 
 Bj city gate, or bare refectory. 
 Or green baronial tower, the Toices old 
 Of ballad-singers, errant, or retained 
 Familiars of the banquet, not the cloud 
 Of beantifdl, pathetic song that hangs 
 Upon Mycenae's cheerless monntain-slope. 
 Or lone Itaki's sweetly foliaged clifis 
 Which the cool sea-breeze fans incessantly, — 
 Not this could equal for true touching strain. 
 Breathed from the sanctuaries of private life. 
 That drama of a thousand ballads, once 
 Floating o'er England and rehearsing there 
 The feats and perils of the homeward-bound 
 Crusaders, daily listened to with tears. 
 And deeply lodged within the popular heart. 
 
 Behold I on hill and dale the autumnal sun. 
 Both when he rises up and when he sets. 
 Sheds a wan lustre o'er some cavalcade. 
 Threading the watery dells, or upland slopes 
 Ascending, through the labyrinthine woods 
 Gleaming with slow advance, or straggling now 
 On the green level of the clialky downs. 
 Some knight mayhap returns unto his t-ower. 
 Some baron to his castle, or a monk. 
 Wayworn and yet reluctant, seeks once more 
 His woodland abbey, — an uneasy man, 
 WTio in the dangerous cheer of pilgrimage 
 Had satisfied an ardent temper, chafed 
 With ritual and those even sanctities 
 Of cloistral occupation. Often too 
 From out the litters, shivering in the breeze. 
 Some eastern beauty, dark-eyed foreigner. 
 Looked forth and chided in an uncouth tongue 
 
I.] THE ASH-TREE HERMITAGE. 
 
 The warrior who reined in his steed close by ; 
 "While hourly from the hall his anxious wife, 
 To wliom the last few hours of widowhood 
 Less tolerable seemed than years had been 
 Before, watched for the spearmen on the hill, 
 And little dreamed how terrible would be 
 The disenchantment of their meeting. 
 
 Yet 
 Not wanting in the breadth of this fair land 
 Approved fidelity, and vows renewed 
 In tenderest embrace, surprises sweet 
 At the tall striplings, the domestic knights 
 Of their lone mother, whom the sire had left 
 Wanting and not conferring aid, and girls 
 Confused before the keen admiring gaze 
 Of the fond knight, unused to read therein 
 The affectionate rights of his paternal eye. 
 And not forgotten is the chaplain grey — 
 But that his voice was somewhat more unclear 
 Least altered of the household, save the hound, 
 The lazy sleuth-hound couched upon the hearth 
 By the warm faggots, yet unrecognized, 
 A second generation since the knight 
 Had sailed for Palestiae. And, now and then. 
 With gay pretence of needless ministries. 
 Old servants in their love, the young no less 
 Through curiosity, intruded there 
 To see their master, and with bustling cheer 
 Pressed their obtrusive hospitality 
 Upon their new-come fellows. there were 
 Evenings in England then of such a bliss 
 As might for unreproved intensity 
 Of native feeling elsewhere have no mates, — 
 Evenings whose innocent obscurity 
 
6 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 Oatweighed whole years of trial, there compressed 
 Into impassioned hours of transport. 
 
 Thus, 
 Through the fair counties of the busy land, 
 All thoughts were drawn and gathered into one, — 
 The travel-worn Crusaders had returned, — 
 Unwelcome, shall I say, or welcome ? Ne'er 
 Did motives blend with such strong interchange 
 As then, such mingling of an affable joy 
 With fears unspoken, and affrighted thought 
 Lest for the past there should a reckoning come. 
 And sometimes loud repining, unashamed, 
 In graceless speech broke forth. Elsewhere per- 
 chance 
 Might feeling fluctuate in some unpoised, 
 And natural piety not seldom hang 
 Too nicely on the balance. In that day 
 Might Angels' eye have seen in human hearts 
 How passion intersected passion ; and truth 
 Being with untruth at war, how each was then 
 Involved with each, while falsehood truth might seem, 
 Truth falsehood, mutually confused. Perchance 
 Long centuries of feud might roll away 
 Before the national manners should run clear 
 Of this unholy trouble at men's hearths, 
 Disturbance of the genial charities 
 And moral instincts of our social life, 
 Recovering, if recovered it might be, 
 The dignity of simple-hearted ways. 
 
 Why Cometh not Sir Lancelot De Wace ? 
 His hall stands empty where the silver Kent 
 Turns seaward, sweetly murmuring as he pours 
 Prone o'er the pebbly bed his frugal stream. 
 The woodlands echo not the horn ; the sea 
 
I.] THE ASH-TEEE HERMITAGE. 7 
 
 Hard by shines idly in the summer sun, 
 
 Or, when the tide is out, the fearless gulls 
 
 Pace leisurely upon the glossy sands. 
 
 The heron by the brook scarce lifts his head 
 
 To scan the passenger : upon the hearths 
 
 No hospitable faggots burn, or lights 
 
 From the long front of windows nightly glance 
 
 Through the low woods, like rising stars that mount 
 
 Above the horizon; and the village poor. 
 
 That sought the hall for their accustomed dole. 
 
 Straggling among the beech-trees gleam no more 
 
 With their red hoods in winter's wan sunshine. 
 
 Why Cometh not Sir Lancelot De Wace ? 
 
 Why cometh not that Knight? Full many a heart 
 Among his vassal poor and menials grey 
 With querulous expectation waits their lord. 
 For the third Henry hath been crowned, and still 
 Sir Lancelot De Wace is in the East. 
 Why tarries that brave man so long from home ? 
 
 Now through the tenantry dismayed there goes 
 A rumour that the good Sir Lancelot 
 By Antioch in a lonely grove hath slain, 
 And that not in the fair and equal lists. 
 His youthful rival, who had wooed and won 
 In fair betrothal that false-hearted maid, 
 Ethilda, daughter of the old Sir Guy 
 Of Heversham. It was a wofal day 
 When those ill tidings spread across the land, 
 All up the wooded valley of the Kent, 
 From the fair estuary with its cliffs 
 Of natural causeway to the shallow mere 
 Within the pastoral solitudes embraced, — 
 With yellow flag- flowers and red willow-herb 
 And dimpling globes of nuphar netted o'er, 
 
8 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 So that the splashing of the frighted coot, 
 
 Or awkward-rising heron alone betrays 
 
 The water underneath. There was one heart 
 
 Throughout the length of his ancestral lands, 
 
 A heart doubt-laden and yet sorrowful. 
 
 That Athelstan in lawful duel slain 
 
 Might be, they doubted not, nor blamed the deed ; 
 
 Only that aught unchivalrous was done 
 
 By a De Wace's hand might not be thought. 
 
 Sir Lancelot a murderer ! IS'ay, the old. 
 
 So credulous of ill, forthwith repelled 
 
 The foul surmise. The headstrong faith of youth 
 
 Would have done battle gladly for their lord 
 
 In vindication of his honor. Ah ! 
 
 Both were by harsh and cruel proof convinced 
 
 Of the dark tidings, when a retinue 
 
 Of armed men by royal warrant took 
 
 In the king's name possession of the hall 
 
 And the wide fief of Lancelot De Wace. 
 
 Yet no one of injustice dreamed; no tongue 
 Among the poor had ever word of ill 
 To say of Hubert, the good minister, — 
 Hubert de Burgh, who in disastrous times 
 And the loose government of Henry's youth. 
 The prey of worthless favorites, then controlled 
 The rude, rough- handed baronage, by skill 
 Of temperate policy, no less than arms, 
 And a rare abstinence in victory. 
 A man he was who in the general good 
 Discerned still clearly, and with pious care 
 Preserved inviolate, the silent rights 
 Of individual happiness. Through him 
 The weight wherewith an absent lord lies hard, — 
 And specially that absent lord a king, — 
 
I.] THE ASH-TEEE HEEMITAGE. 
 
 Upon his vassals, mitigation found 
 
 In the green vale of Kent. Still it was hard 
 
 For that ancestral peasantry to pay 
 
 Unto a lord, to them unknown no less 
 
 Than they, their sires, or local wants to him, 
 
 The tribute of a base, reluctant toil 
 
 In lieu of what they had been wont to bear, — 
 
 The burden of affectionate service, paid 
 
 With manly will, with manly thanks received, 
 
 A mutual obligation more than right, 
 
 By nine Sir Lancelots from sire to son. 
 
 O'er the long glen of Sleddale evening hung 
 With clouds of dreary grey ; the heights were lost 
 In the dull canopy, whose stooping folds 
 Cast o'er the rock-strewn valley, uniform, 
 A cold and purple shadow, while the sun 
 To his invisible setting hasted down 
 Without one thread of crimson to disclose 
 How far the day was spent. With downcast eye. 
 And scarcely noticing the gloomy scene, 
 A wanderer, with a wayworn gait and air 
 Of deep abstraction, climbed the mountain-side 
 To Kentmere : it was Lancelot De Wace, 
 Who sought, an Excommunicated Man, 
 Among his native solitudes some lone 
 And joyless hermitage, where he might bear 
 Through what should yet remain to him of life, 
 The weight of that dread censure, and the load, 
 As burdensome, of drear, foreboding thought. 
 
 A humbled and heart-stricken man he was. 
 Who asked no mitigation of his lot. 
 Nor would have welcomed it, if it had come 
 Unsought; for, self-betrayed, before the throne 
 Of Henry he had claimed his punishment. 
 
10 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 When he had been for seven whole years concealed 
 
 A hermit or a wanderer in the east. 
 
 In safety unendurable through sense 
 
 Of guilt and gnawing of unquietness. 
 
 For noble feats in Palestine achieved 
 
 From capital penalties he was released. 
 
 Only the forfeiture of his broad lands 
 
 Was then confirmed ; and the unbending Church 
 
 With merciful severity had laid 
 
 Her censures on him ; lest his soul, through sin 
 
 Too soon eifaced, should perish in the end. 
 
 Now from the ridge Sir Lancelot's stony way 
 Dropped to the margin of the slimy mere. 
 Fringed verdantly witli dark and speckled weeds 
 And water-plants profuse, whose sliining leaves 
 With bloody spots of brown were all bedropped ; 
 And tangled roote, like knotted snakes asleep. 
 Half under water lay, and half above ; 
 And brittle stalks with veins of poisonous sap 
 Exuded strongest odors : wliile the nii^hts 
 Of the beginning autumn inter- streaked 
 The fenny herbage with its golden lines 
 And pale, discolored red: the crisp white canes 
 Of reedy sedge with plaint unmusical 
 Grated against each other, as the wind 
 Kung with shrill breathing o'er the waving swamp. 
 The heron with discordant notice rose. 
 And flaj^ping wings, upon the cloudy air; 
 Then, poised awhile, its plumaged rudder set 
 This way or that, unto Winander's isles. 
 Or woody pass below Glenridding Screes, 
 Or promontory, seaward looking, far 
 Towards Lune's or Leven's mouths. A single ring, 
 Not native, of old willow trees there stood 
 
I.] THE ASH-TREE HERMITAGE. 11 
 
 Round a deserted hut where dwelt erewhile 
 A falconer, who in Sir Lancelot's youth 
 Had hawked with him for many a happy hour 
 By this same lake. 
 
 The weary knight looked up 
 Into the melancholy evening, spread 
 O'er scenes once known so well, once loved so much ; 
 And for the first time with diverted thoughts 
 Felt that there was additional bitterness, 
 Even to a lot unbearable as his, 
 In the localities around. O days 
 Of our past boyhood, pregnant though ye were 
 With giddy humours and debasing joys. 
 What innocent appearance have ye, seen 
 Through the long gloom of penitential thought 
 In after years, by contrast falsified 
 With guilt unequal made by age alone ! 
 
 better far it were would memory 
 O'erleap the pleasant worldliness of youth 
 Which so entraps our thoughts, and rather muse 
 On the few wrecks by radiant childhood left 
 Upon the misty confines of our sense ! 
 O purest Time, from out the recent Font 
 Still dewy, still with spiritual flowers 
 Of musky scent and snowy tint adorned, 
 How art thou to the hopeful, striving soul 
 A bath of strength and innocent delights, 
 With unfatlgued recurrence visited ! 
 While to the pleasure-loving soul thou seem'st 
 A tantalizing Eden, dimly seen 
 To be delectable, yet not unbarred, 
 But in mysterious thoughts absconded deep 
 From restless wish, the memory of wild acts. 
 Or sin-bleared eye. there is gracious hope 
 
12 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK I 
 
 Of true amendment in the heart that seeks j 
 
 With sacred habit to revive the days i 
 
 Of its lost childhood, from its fragrant flowers .j 
 
 To suck the honey of sad thought, or feed } 
 
 The wells of tears with dew-drops lurking still , j 
 In earliest reminiscence unexhaled ! 
 
 Like silvery breakers on the lone sea-shore, 
 
 The hoary foliage of the willows rose ] 
 
 And fell in regular descents, and gleamed i 
 
 With dusky light upon the moorland dim. | 
 
 This then, so thought the weary fugitive, * J 
 
 This is my welcome to my native home, I 
 
 The busy greeting of my vassals, this j 
 
 That arch of proud triumphal thought through which \ 
 
 Hope aiid ambition entered once so oft 1 
 In visionary pomp ! 
 
 This selfsame day | 
 
 And self-same month, when to the hallowed East, ; 
 
 With dreams untarnished yet, I journeyed first, ! 
 
 I stood with Sigismund, the noble Pole, | 
 
 On our rude galley's deck. With silent speed i 
 
 Along the Servian shore we glided down ; 
 
 The kingly Danube, where past Drenkova I 
 
 It bursts the green Carpathians through, and flows \ 
 
 Betwixt impending cliffs and woods o'erarched \ 
 
 Through sylvan horrors beautifal. The stream ^ 
 
 In eddies deep with glossy surface wheeled | 
 
 In calm solemnity. The leafy tops ] 
 
 Of walnut woods, for centuries unfelled, | 
 
 With clematis and lithe wild vine were bound i 
 
 In their own thickets prisoners, while the crags , 
 
 Were hung with bells of white convolvulus, 4 
 
 As though a bridal were to pass that way, '^ 
 
 A region of festoons, enwreathed for leagues i 
 
I.] THE ASH-TREE HEEMITAGE, 13 
 
 One with another, while above the trees, 
 
 Half masked, the cliffs of rich and mottled red 
 
 In heavy brows or airy minarets 
 
 Sprung emulous to catch the setting sun. 
 
 Vale after vale with tributary stream 
 
 We passed, and through their dusky wooded gates 
 
 We caught sweet momentary views beyond. 
 
 And one most touching spectacle there was. 
 
 Still unforgotten ; through an opening wide 
 
 In the rough rampart of Danubian rocks. 
 
 Far in the heart of Servia we beheld 
 
 A mountain, like a couchant lion shaped. 
 
 In softest purple clad, which for awhile 
 
 Against the saffron sky stood boldly forth. 
 
 But, as the furnace of the kindled west 
 
 Glowed more intensely, was absorbed apace, 
 
 Absorbed until incorporated wholly 
 
 With shooting gold, which, crimson grown at length, 
 
 Yielded once more from out its gorgeous womb 
 
 The outline of the hill, distinct and keen. 
 
 Oh, in that hour what sunny thoughts were mine. 
 
 What happiness, what hope exuberant ! 
 
 Ah ! Sigismund, how enviable seems 
 
 Thy fate, although no warrior's grave was thine ; 
 
 But by the sunbeams withered like a flower, 
 
 Salem unreached, thy warfare was fulfilled. 
 
 And in full armour, most ungentle shroud! 
 
 Where paynim watch-fires nightly gleam, thou 
 
 sleep'st ; 
 In the cold moonlight by these hands entombed 
 Beneath a myrtle and an arbutus. 
 By slow Orontes laved with stately lapse 
 Near old Seleucia. 
 
 most dreary change ! 
 
14 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 Most desolate ! most dark ! with hungry soul, 
 Hungry of bitterness and penal woe, 
 With honest acceptation do I bid 
 Thee welcome ! you, harsh wailing Winds, and Moors, 
 And sobbing Mosses, and cold splashing Meres, 
 And bleakest Mountains, by the noisy flail 
 Of the rude tempest beaten, and white shares 
 Of foamy torrents ploughed, — you too I bid 
 Welcome sincere, nay, grateful I may say, 
 In hope the mercy of my God may work 
 My punishment through you : — through you per- 
 chance, 
 'Time, Solitude, long Fast, and Living rude. 
 And Silence drear, may in His love exact 
 Enough to satisfy His wrath : the rest, 
 A greater heap, beyond all measure great, 
 file Cross might pay, pay utterly, nor be 
 Impoverished ; so unsearchable its wealth. 
 
 And from thy wealth, Nature, gathering wealth, 
 Wherewith perchance despondency may be 
 Enriched to meekest hope ; and venturous faith. 
 By fear chastised, ennobled into love, 
 I, a base sinner, shall not poorer be 
 Than her who whilome in Sarepta dwelt 
 A widow lone, and from thine outward forms 
 A symbol, guided, chose. In her two sticks. 
 To dress the unfailing sacrifice of meal 
 And oil, a real sacrifice of faith 
 No less than sustenance by God supplied, 
 iShe chanced upon the saving Cross to light 
 in type unlooked for ; so mayhap can I, 
 By lore my spirit hath already learned 
 In distant Asia, find in natural forms 
 Suggestive virtue which through grace may be 
 
I.] THE ASH-TEEE HEEMITAGE. 15 
 
 In truth a poor auxiliary, yet still 
 An aiding supplement to one who lies 
 Beneath the ban of Holy Mother Church. 
 
 Next into Troutbeck Vale, a savage scene 
 Of matted coppice then. Sir Lancelot climbed. 
 And lo ! a welcome of white sunshine burst 
 All on a sudden through the parting clouds. 
 The mist cleared off from Kirkstone's rocky pass. 
 And radiance, mounting from the glorious west 
 In upward sloping beams, possessed the gorge 
 With burning brightness, till it overflowed 
 That ample pass into the lower vales. 
 In falls of golden light it came, and rose 
 Till the whole glen, with splendour flooded, seemed 
 Full of ethereal beauty from the roots 
 Of the wild mountains to their rugged heights. 
 Sir Lancelot, whose pace uneasy thoughts 
 Had lately quickened, now stood still and gazed. 
 Then journeyed forward, weeping as he went 
 In silence, inexpressibly relieved. 
 
 Within the Vale of Troutbeck towards the head 
 There is a single woody hill, enclosed 
 Within the mountains, yet apart and low. 
 Amid the underwood around, it seems 
 Like a huge animal recumbent there, 
 Not without grace ; and sweetly apt it is 
 To catch all wandering sunbeams as they pass, 
 Or volatile lights in transit o'er the vale. 
 And oft the travellers of this day may see 
 The sunny hill within a flying shower 
 Of greenest hue in that romantic glen. 
 "Upon the west there is a shaggy dell 
 Marked with a dusky vein of alders grey, 
 Beneath whose shade is heard a noisy brook 
 
16 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 Eacing amid the stones ; and eastward hangs 
 
 A bell-shaped mountain which the wild winds ring 
 
 Full mournfully, and by a verdant trench 
 
 And stream that glimmers in a sunken fosse, 
 
 Divided from the isolated hill. 
 
 Both steep and smooth that grassy mountain ia. 
 
 Green as the noted turf upon Scale How, 
 
 With junipers unspeckled, nor adorned 
 
 With a loose surface of unquiet fern 
 
 Which finds a wandering air upon the breast 
 
 Of earth when pensive tree-tops sleep aloft, 
 
 And with continual waving gives a light 
 
 To the still prospects. But upon the brow 
 
 Two regions of red heather are outspread 
 
 In formal shapes, like plots of garden ground. 
 
 Ending in lines so trim and straight no spade 
 
 More straightly could have delved them, through 
 
 dislike 
 Of other soil, or the more rapid fall. 
 Of the descent, or some more latent cause. 
 That single hill it is, with hawthorn trees 
 In parklike order scattered on the lawn. 
 Which in the month of May, with muffled boughs 
 Depressed by snow-drifts of chaste flower, might well 
 Provoke the lambs to jealousy that flit 
 In aimless frolic on the turf below. 
 Like scudding foam across the dark green sea. 
 And at the junction of the forked streams 
 Where two wych-elms for ever dip their oars. 
 And rise with starry drippings to the air. 
 How wildly is the full moon's orbed face 
 Amid the shaken circles multiplied, 
 And her attendant stars rebuffed from wave 
 To wave, as though there had been war in heaven. 
 
ij THE ASH-TREE HERMITAGE. 17 
 
 The self-same hill it is, whereon the Knight 
 Now sought an ancient hermitage, for years 
 Vacant and ruinous, which in his youth 
 In some long rambles he had visited. 
 Beneath a grassy knoll, with coronal 
 Of raised ash surmounted, was the cell 
 Between two leaning rocks, a desolate 
 And uncouth residence, yet weather-proof, 
 And from the running brook not far removed. 
 
 Not for ablution only at the dawn, 
 Or rite prelusive to more solemn prayer, 
 Or with ingenious craft full often used 
 At midnight to put back the approach of sleep, 
 Aiding the spirit to subdue the flesh, 
 Impatient of the vigil, — not alone 
 For all the baser ends of common life 
 Was the propinquity of that clear stream 
 A blessing : for a privilege it is 
 To be a dweller in a sounding vale 
 Of limpid waters from the mountainous rocks 
 Descending, sweetly chanting as they come 
 The praise of Baptism ; so that when we walk 
 Abroad, in each translucent deep we see 
 The Font, and in the prattling shallows hear 
 The missionary waters going forth 
 From the pierced sides of those eternal heights 
 To fill the cleansing vessels of the Church. 
 
 O blessed Element ! how dread would seem 
 The exulting rivers, and the buoyant plunge 
 Of stony cataracts, unto the sons 
 Of Sem, as witnessing the abiding power 
 Of the destructive waters, yea, how dread 
 The aspect of that fatal element. 
 Even through the rainbow thoughts the Oath Divine 
 
18 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 Might haply fiirni.sh to tlieir timorous hearts! 
 
 But, wliat ready eonsohition leaps, 
 
 Like a reflected sunbeam, from the rills 
 
 Into the Christian lieart, while yet the drops 
 
 Of our New Birth, not wholly dried within, 
 
 Stir with a sweet response of hidden joy. 
 
 So that when long upon a barren moor. 
 
 Or breadth of arid pinewood, we have roamed, 
 
 How cheerfiiUy our weary footsteps make 
 
 A needless circuit to attain a pool 
 
 Discerned amid the heather or the stems, 
 
 That we may look therein, and weep or smile 
 
 As best befits the temper of the hour ! 
 
 And to my well-pleased ear each mountain brook 
 
 With various plea, the chime of tumbling falls 
 
 Or murmuring lapse, seems audibly to claim 
 
 Kindred with Jordan, in whose typical wave 
 
 All waters from the Body Virginal 
 
 Of God's dear Son received tlie cleansing Gift, 
 
 The Mystical Ablution of our sins 
 
 Drawn from the contact of that Sacred Flesh. 
 
 Stay, stay, poor worldly Hearts ! and rest awhile 
 From gainful traffic, and the frivolous war 
 Of wordy senates, and the vulgar place 
 In slanderous courts, all, talents in the earth 
 Unprofitably hidden, — rest awhile. 
 And with the poet o'er this woodland bridge 
 Descend, or rather raise yourselves, to lean, 
 And watch the fish in unpolluted depths 
 Tarrying unmoved against the stream, old types, 
 Haply by apostolic teaching first divulged. 
 Of Him the Fish Divine through love submerged 
 Within the depths of poor Humanity! 
 Or with St. Leo, by some Latian stream 
 
I.] THE ASH-TKEE HEEMITAGE. 19 
 
 In spirit walking, let us ponder well 
 In every curve those still pellucid wombs 
 Of crystal undefiled, where now converge 
 The under-water beams which enter there, 
 Piercing the fluent brook without a wound, 
 And playing on the quiet stones beneath. 
 Within such wombs are Christian babes conceived 
 With an immaculate conception, pierced 
 By the Invisible Spirit ; for the power 
 He gave to Mary hath He likewise shed 
 Into these watery depths ; what Jesus took 
 From her, so speaks that ancient Saint, He laid 
 Once more within the Sacramental Font. 
 These are the wombs of Mary, these the depths 
 Immaculate wherein the Fish resides. 
 But see ! the golden fisher from the bridge 
 Shoots on his glancing wings ; shall nature still 
 Preacli on ? Lo ! then, ye children of the world, 
 That bird is crowned a king, and ever makes 
 The streams the limits of his realm, the rills 
 His pathway o'er the world, baptismal roads 
 Which he deserteth never, and for food 
 The venturous creature preys upon the fish, 
 Like faith upon the Flesh of Him submerged 
 For our behoof within those watery depths. 
 Ah ! had we kept that same baptismal path, 
 The road of waters, we should not bewail 
 With tears — yet even those who weep are blest — 
 The ruffled splendour of our plumage now. 
 
 Weep, weep, ye little mosses ! ever weep 
 With sunny trickling o'er yon giant rock ! 
 A power abides in your celestial tears 
 Shed from the Kock Divine, more precious far 
 Than that anointing which from Aaron's beard 
 
20 SIE LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 Went down into the outskirts of the Law ! 
 Chime, all ye little Jordans ! as I walk, 
 Warning the penitent to keep the Gift 
 Eeceived ; or, it were best to say, preserve 
 What yet remains of that baptismal power ! 
 And while the mountains lift their mighty heads. 
 Companions of the sunrise, and proclaim 
 Christ, the true mountain, and the forests wave 
 Their beckoning boughs and lisp in gentle songs, 
 Heard by the meek in spirit, of Thy ways, 
 O Holy Ghost ! let this sweet valley preach 
 Our Baptism, let the thunder of the floods 
 Cry Baptism loudly to forgetful hearts, 
 And let the summer-hidden brooks prolong 
 The lesson in their accents soft and low, 
 And murmur Baptism to the ear of love ! 
 
 O that the hermitage of all our lives, 
 Our hidden lives secreted with our Lord, 
 Might be, as was Sir Lancelot's rocky cell, 
 Never from running brooks too far removed ! 
 
 In solemn mood of mind and with his thoughts 
 Grave and collected, the lone Knight surveyed 
 The sanctuary of cloudy years to come, 
 The narrow vale and clasping bound of hills, 
 The silent school-house of his solitude, — 
 Where in the eye of nature he must learn 
 The austere wisdom of repentance. There 
 So long he stood, so ardently he gazed 
 Upon the cell and its rough neighbourhood. 
 Now in the twilight dusky and obscure, 
 It seemed as though he waited for some sign, 
 Or looked to find the features of the place 
 Significant and legible, where he 
 Some tokens of the future might detect : 
 
I.] 
 
 THE ASH- TREE HEEMITAGE. 
 
 21 
 
 Till by the beauty of the night o'ercome, 
 Looking upon the star-lit valley, thus, 
 But silently within himself, he mused. 
 
 Evening hath gone, hath died upon the hills, 
 The vale, the river, — no one knoweth where ; 
 But her last lustrous breath hath passed at once 
 From land and sky. The sombre earth is now 
 But the grey, twilight-curtained bed, whereon 
 That death is daily died. From every point 
 Huge palls of black, continuous cloud are drawn 
 Onward and upward till they meet above 
 And rest upon the heights, roofing the earth 
 With awful nearness, — like the closing round. 
 Audibly wafting, of seraphic wings 
 To guard the slumbering world. With what a weight 
 Night seems to lean incumbent on the earth. 
 The earth still beating with the sun's late warmth ! 
 All things are hushed except the waterfalls, 
 The inarticulate voices of the woods. 
 And scarcely-silent shining of the moon. 
 See how she hangs, the very soul of night. 
 And from the purple hollow showers on man 
 Her radiant pulses of unfruitful gold ! 
 
 that I had the night-bird's wing to flee 
 To many a dreadful glen and fishy tarn. 
 Which I have seen and feared by day, (in youth 
 Chasing the deer or anxious to reclaim 
 A truant falcon) that at this still hour 
 When night is working her chief miracles. 
 And with grey shadowy lights is lying bare 
 The very nerves of darkness, I might drink 
 From the deep wells of terror one chaste draught 
 To chill the over-lightness of my heart ! 
 
 Kound me are hills whose summits seem to reel 
 
22 SIE LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 Within the unsteady atmosphere of night, 
 Clothed in soft gloom, like raven's plumage: there 
 Mid the strong folds of ether, and the zones 
 Of mighty clasping winds that gird with chains 
 The naked precipice and leaning peak, 
 Great things and glorious pomps are going on 
 Up in the birth-place of the storms and calms, 
 Where light and darkness fetch their utmost powers 
 To meet and clash in war unspeakable. 
 And now and then throughout the quiet night 
 Fragments of breezes with a liquid fall 
 Drop to the lowlands, whisper in the reeds, 
 And are drawn in beneath tlie silver brook, 
 Bearing, it may be, messages and words 
 Of wondrous import from the lines arrayed 
 Upon the unseen steeps. 
 
 But hark ! the owls 
 Shout from the firs on Wansfell, and the eye 
 May trace those sailing pirates of the night, 
 Stooping with dusky prows to cleave the gloom, 
 Scattering a momentary wake behind, 
 A palpable and broken brightness shed 
 As with white wing they part the darksome air I 
 
 Thus, inmate of the Ash-tree Hermitage — 
 Which they who seek will surely find, if so 
 Imagination help them to the spot — 
 The lone Sir Lancelot dwelt for seven whole years 
 And more. By his old vassals was he served 
 With common necessaries duly left 
 Twice in the week beneath a holly bush 
 On a smooth slab of stone, a ministry 
 Connived at by the merciful old man 
 Who ruled St. Catherine's cloister by the lake, 
 If not suggested by his thoughtful love. 
 
I.] THE ASH-TREE HEEMITAGB. 23 
 
 Yet speech did no one hold with their poor lord ; 
 
 On such condition was it understood 
 
 Connivance rested ; yet from brake or hill 
 
 Full many an eye, both young and old, would watch 
 
 To see the last De Wace, as by his cell 
 
 He stood, or from the tangled copse emerged 
 
 High up to wander on the open moors. 
 
 It chanced that in the byegone years his lot 
 A strange, mysterious Providence had met 
 In Caucasus and by the saA^age steppes 
 Interminable, and the Asian lakes, 
 Whereby the powers of nature had been made 
 To him a language dimly understood, — 
 A punishment, yet not without relief 
 Commingled, science far above the pitch 
 Of those rough days, except unto the few 
 To whom the stars obediently would yield 
 Nightly interpretations, and the stones 
 Their latent mutabilities unfold. 
 And gums and fatal saps would minister 
 Their properties medicinal, for ends 
 Unhallowed, and a loathsome skill. 
 
 Even such, 
 Only more guilty, is the fearful use 
 Of nature made in these self- boasting days, 
 By science unabashed before the Eye 
 Of the Supreme, and not on bended knees 
 Its searches prosecuting day and night. 
 A base, idolatrous ritual it is. 
 Whence, in oblivion offc of the First Cause, 
 Self-swollen knowledge uncouth service yields 
 To second causes multitudinous ; — 
 Not in the beautiful and bright array 
 Of mystic truths, impersonations fair 
 
24 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 Of sight or sound, which in old Greece were wont 
 
 To minister unto the inward sense 
 
 Of what Eternal was and Infinite, 
 
 And ofttimes raised the soul above herself, — 
 
 Faith even in its short-comings beautiful ; — 
 
 But with a barren worship of poor names, 
 
 Vacant, unhelpful, unimpassioned ; loud 
 
 In novelty of dissonance, — oh ! how 
 
 Unlike the symphony true science wakes, 
 
 In sympathy absorbing to itself 
 
 The skilful tones of sweet Theology, 
 
 Which Heaven hath crowned the queen of sciences, 
 
 Mother of truth and fountain of the arts, 
 
 Pure heavenly lore, within the humble soul. 
 
 In varying tune with every want and woe 
 
 And every homeless love of humankind, — 
 
 A deep accord of everlasting praise 
 
 Preluded now, with such rehearsal as 
 
 Might win the world unto the side of Heaven, 
 
 If to the charming she would lend an ear. 
 
 Like some insidious creature, self-immured, 
 "Which 'neath the glebe absconds, and hourly fights 
 Against the outward beauty of the earth 
 With dull corrosive diligence, so lurks 
 The curse of Babel at the secret root 
 Of popular language or the invented tongue 
 Of mundane science, and, each passing year. 
 Sunders with more effectual divorce 
 The mighty power of language from the Faith, 
 Which once with amity subserved the truth 
 In Creeds consigned, through spiritual power 
 At Pentecost infused into the Church, 
 From Tongues of Fire distilled, unquenchable 
 As is the beacon by the climbing surge. 
 
I.J THE ASH-TEEE ffEEMITAGE. 25 
 
 O I could weep for that most grievous wrong 
 Which we commit, the trespass of our lips, 
 Against the noble majesty of day, 
 And sacred beauty of nocturnal skies ! 
 When o'er the weary realms of Europe, God, 
 Upon the purple walls of midnight, deigns 
 To write the sweet inscriptions of His love 
 In starry characters, lo ! science lifts 
 Her forehead unabashed, and froaa her towers 
 Preaches the pagan worship, rites and spells, 
 Junctions and separations, there fulfilled 
 By red-haired Mars, or that divinest orb. 
 Beaming on children at their early prayers, 
 The lamp of evening now surnamed from her 
 The sea-born goddess. And upon the earth, 
 In patient loveliness outspread, no less 
 Prevails the tyranny of pagan names. 
 Bidding that eloquent preacher hold her peace ; 
 Drawing across her blazonry of types 
 A veil of denser woof than that of old, 
 Broidered with form of every living thing. 
 In Egypt woven for the Isiac rites. 
 Flowers that for innate love of Jesus sign 
 Their little bosoms with a summer Cross, 
 Choice blooms through simple mention consecrate 
 By the dear Saviour's Lips, and modest herbs 
 Which in their form or habits could remind 
 Past ages of the Blissful Mother, torn 
 Each from its little pulpit, sing by force, 
 Hard by the waters of our Babylon, 
 Of Venus, or the self- admiring boy. 
 Or wounded gallant whom the goddess loved. 
 
 Ah me ! we need another Pentecost 
 Unto the stammering nations to restore 
 
26 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 Their unity of ritual voice again ! 
 
 That deed of ill by liumble men deplored 
 
 Which boastfully deformed the catholic past, 
 
 And now hath shaped three centuries to bear 
 
 Its paltry and disfigured lineaments, 
 
 Hath more than half way travelled toward a change. 
 
 Therefore, as admonition to ourselves 
 
 And grave enticement to our friends, let us, 
 
 Each in his unobtrusive measure, turn 
 
 The helm of our swift-sailing words, and steer 
 
 Our common converse by more Christian stars ; 
 
 Mindful that on the new-created earth 
 
 The first, sublimest litany that rose. 
 
 From man unto the Triune God above. 
 
 Was that miraculous Nomenclature given 
 
 With mystical intelligence to all 
 
 Created things by Adam, thus inspired 
 
 To worship God with that primeval song, — 
 
 A litany the sweetest which the earth 
 
 Had rendered, till the Church was taught to sing 
 
 The dear life-giving Dolours of her Lord ! 
 
 But, not like alchemist or vigil-worn 
 Astrologer, Sir Lancelot entertained 
 Communion far sublimer than was wont. 
 But of a moral sort, with natural things ; 
 Striving in true submission to the Church 
 To bear her weight, yet not the less to seek 
 From earth consoling wisdom like her own,-— 
 A rule whereby to mete his inward growth, 
 A melody to which he might attune 
 The variable temper of his soul : 
 As though some roots and remnants there might be. 
 Inverted strata of the treasure once 
 In earth laid up, when mystic tillage could 
 
I.] THE ASH-TREE HEEMITAGE. 27 
 
 Suffice for discipline to sinless man, 
 
 By God ordained in Paradise of old, — 
 
 Through the fierce action of the ancient curse 
 
 Delved deep into the soil, but by the power 
 
 Of Christian meditation haply still 
 
 Kecoverable, and which may yet escape 
 
 In obscure spots and by unthought-of ways 
 
 The jealous custody wherein it lies. 
 
 How much had been retrieved in elder times 
 
 And through the affectionate patience of the Church, 
 
 In Alexandria chiefly, had the Knight 
 
 Been duly taught when in Bologna once 
 
 He studied, and a far-famed doctor there. 
 
 While the vast hall was thronged with auditors, 
 
 In studious exposition had unlocked 
 
 The cabinets of Christian allegory. 
 
 And such communion did he now attempt 
 
 To achieve in that his penal hermitage. 
 
SIR LANCELOT. 
 
 BOOK 11. 
 THE BOOKS. 
 
BOOK 11. 
 
 THE BOOKS. 
 
 There to his solitude the seasons came, 
 
 And each one took him gently by surprise, 
 
 Turning on noiseless hinges unperceived. 
 
 Spring calmly passed, like some transparent dream, 
 
 Upon the spirit of the wintry earth, 
 
 And then was in tlie shady summer lost. 
 
 Ere he was conscious of a growing change : 
 
 And though more palpably, yet autumn stole 
 
 With subtle step encroaching on the depths 
 
 Of summer foliage. And in nothing else 
 
 Is nature's sacred influence more confessed 
 
 A healinor balsam, than in that calm use 
 
 Of present hours and opportunities 
 
 Which her unfretful transmutations breed. 
 
 And soft, deliberate beauty. Then perchance 
 
 Each season wore a trace witliin his heart, 
 
 Furthered his discipline, and left his soul 
 
 In some advance upon the season past. 
 
 Though the gross eye when introverted most 
 
 Must be content to measure inward growths 
 
 Attained, which in their act of growing shunned 
 
 The contemplative gaze. 
 
 For seven long years 
 Earth's four magnificent mutations rolled 
 Above him and around him, while within 
 His spirit yielded with responsive change. 
 He loved spring's downy green and brilliant veins 
 
32 SIK LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 Of vivid fern that striped the sloping hills, 
 
 And the white splendours of her sunshine showers, 
 
 When birds beneath the rainbow arches sanof 
 
 o 
 
 With lusty music, and the wild flowers rose 
 
 Almost beneath his footsteps as he walked. 
 
 And with a pensive humour would he watch 
 
 How summer's green grew darker in the rains 
 
 Which swept assiduously upon the hills. 
 
 Or hung in labouring folds of fleecy mist 
 
 Which shed their tear-drops imperceptibly, 
 
 And with the sunbeam wild enchantments wrought. 
 
 Or ministered nocturnal pageantry 
 
 Unto the silver moon. Autumnal days 
 
 He noted for their variable lights. 
 
 Stirring or still, on those discoloured moors 
 
 Of green sward slowly withering into white, 
 
 Hollows of tawny fern or purple heath. 
 
 And blue stones from the trickling mosses wet 
 
 Gleaming like polished marble on the steeps, 
 
 And through an atmosphere beheld, so soft, 
 
 The mountains seemed like cushions that would yield 
 
 Elastic to the pressure of the arm 
 
 Of one reclining. 
 
 In the bright cold eye 
 And dazzling aspect of the wintry sun, 
 Which from the low horizon slanting looks 
 Into the face, not on the heights of heaven 
 As in the deep and fervent midsummer 
 Commodiously enthroned, he loved to mark 
 The threads of moss which shot across the slopes. 
 Yellow and scarlet and refulgent green, 
 All round the springs in bulging pillows swollen ; 
 And night was never half so beautiful 
 As on the hills in frosty starlight spread 
 
II.] THE BOOKS. 33 
 
 Snow-capped, and with a hundred echoes filled 
 Waked by the clear- voiced raving of the brooks. 
 In that pacific splendour of the stars 
 On wintry nights, with what a fair deceit 
 Is undue summer born afresh, to one 
 Who wanders half-way up some wooded hill ! 
 The beeches, whose dry clinging leaves by day 
 Seem like the rustling shroud upon a ghost. 
 In the vague light now swell upon the eye 
 In dusky size, and outline unconfirmed 
 Of nodding umbrage, wliile tlie vale below 
 Trembles beneath a half translucent sea. 
 That with alternate waves of light and dark 
 Clothes the grey marshy fallows at our feet 
 With dim magnificence, as Christian thought 
 Sheds on the beaten path of common tasks 
 The aspect of infinity, by right 
 To duties appertaining, as to powers 
 Which, howsoever mean or common- place, 
 Enclose some portion of the Will of God. 
 
 Nor wanted he another simple joy 
 Bestowed in that drear sabbath of the earth ; 
 For wandering near the wintry streams, kept low 
 By frosts that seal the upland springs, he loved 
 The glistening star which on the ouzle's breast 
 Twinkles upon the ice-rimmed stones, or flits 
 Shooting its snowy beam all up the rill, 
 Winding as it may wind, and not a curve 
 Evading, nor a cape of meadow-land 
 In lawless transit crossing, like some orb 
 That wheels obedient on a tortuous path 
 Upon the trackless sky. A visitant, 
 That living Luminary ne'er arrives 
 Till with the cold of our declining year : 
 
34 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 And — not inapt to watchful hearts will seem 
 
 The bold comparison — it bodies forth 
 
 To pious thought the Migratory Star 
 
 Of Christmas, which the swarthy Magians led 
 
 To Him new-born among the flocks and herds. 
 
 The lesser revolutions of the day, 
 And silent-footed night, were meted out 
 By him with ritual observances, 
 And an affectionate formality. 
 The sun, now burning in the azure heaven, 
 Now urging on his white and spectral disk 
 Perceptibly behind a veil of clouds, 
 Was his sole altar-lamp, a Voice of Light — 
 So may an inmate of a mountain home 
 Not over-boldly name the sun — a Voice, 
 Which from the pearly east invoked liira first 
 To rise, and, when with risen orb it stood 
 Above the hills, it summoned him to prime ; 
 And when the vale was filled with light, it rang 
 With its descending beams the hour of tierce ; 
 Or when it sparkled in the central sky 
 (Not least a Voice at that deep earth-stilled hour) 
 Bespoke the noon-day service, and, half-way 
 Sloped westward, then a fresh monition gave, 
 Ere yet the sunset waked his vesper thoughts ; 
 And, tlie moist twilight of the compline passed, 
 The moon three times in her ascent proclaimed, 
 Stooping from out her balcony serene. 
 Three several nocturns, and the dubious light 
 Of dawn, whose sweet confusion mingles half 
 Night's softness with day's clear transparent hue, 
 Seemed interposed for lauds, that at the prayer 
 Of His true Church the Bridegroom might unveil 
 His spiritual sunrise to the soul. 
 
II.] THE BOOKS. 35 
 
 Thus were his hours partitioned, and no less 
 Had he invented rituals minute, 
 Which with the fluctuations harmonized 
 Of our unsteady climate : patterns sweet 
 He found, and drew from his remembrances 
 Of catholic observance, and the forms 
 Divine of Rome's magnificent liturgies. 
 And gradually mounting in degree 
 As observation monthly added fresh 
 Intelligence, he to a strange extent 
 Evoked the spirit of earth's ritual. 
 The natural liturgies of storm and calm, 
 And swelling symphonies of choral winds 
 With solitary breezes blending faintly ; 
 While in the stately gestures of the clouds 
 He studied her processional. Yet poor 
 And feeble was the approach which he could make 
 Toward shadowing out a service for himself 
 From earth's disjointed symbols. Still from these, 
 And from his punishment endured with awe. 
 And from the grace of Christ which runneth over 
 Even on the outcast and the separate, 
 And from the weekly mass, heard in the porch 
 Of grey St. Catherine's by the lonely lake, 
 And ritual joys upon occasional feasts 
 In secret snatched, and only half enjoyed 
 As aids to penance, rather than reliefs, — 
 He gathered wherewithal to train his soul 
 Through penitential gloom to filial love : 
 And angels ministered without disdain 
 Unto that Excommunicated Man. 
 
 And other aids he had of no mean sort, 
 But mighty in accomplishing his end. 
 For not a soul inhabits the wide earth, 
 
36 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 Inside the Church or out, which is not reached 
 
 By some stray blessing and uncertain grace 
 
 Irregular, and oft miraculous 
 
 As oft dispensing with appointed forms : 
 
 So all untiring is the love of God, 
 
 So all unsearchable the grace of Christ. 
 
 Two Books he had brought with him to the hills 
 By happy chance, for not more suitable 
 Could they have been, or to his present lot 
 More curiously appropriate, if he 
 With choice long-pondered had selected them : 
 Aids might they be and complements, perchance, 
 "Which could supply unto his mind what lacked 
 Of self-interpretation in the earth, 
 To comment on her own fair mysteries 
 With illustrations of a moral kind. 
 Keys were they, aptly fitted to unlock 
 Her inspiration of sustaining thought, 
 Her subsidies of spiritual strength, 
 And consolations, with sublimity 
 No less than a relieving gentleness 
 Adapted to the variable walks 
 And destinies of fallen humanity. 
 
 One was a fragment of the Written Word, 
 By God consigned unto the Holy Church, 
 Her charter, whence with her vast mind informed 
 With apostolic saying, by the cloud, 
 That luminous pillar of our wilderness. 
 Of old tradition throughout her descents 
 Not without miracle accompanied. 
 She was to teach the hearts of Christian men ; 
 Sole teacher she, and that one Book the chief 
 Original fountain of her teaching ! There, 
 la mute magnificent procession led, 
 
II.] THE BOOKS. 37 
 
 We see the fortunes of Humanity, 
 
 The various discipline of Adam's race ; 
 
 And from our childhood upward learn to weep 
 
 Or smile in cherished sympathy with him 
 
 In Bethel dreaming, or with Joseph sold 
 
 To foreign merchants, and with bursting heart 
 
 Weeping impassionedly upon the neck 
 
 Of Eachel's youngest- born. There man is seen 
 
 In fluctuations marvellous and wild, 
 
 And yet by revelation ascertained 
 
 Infallible, drawn forward to the Cross, 
 
 The everlasting haven of our kind. 
 
 There with that solitary, blameless man 
 
 Beginning, tenant of God's Paradise, 
 
 Now fallen we behold our nature led 
 
 Through dreams and expiations shadowy 
 
 In blood of beasts approached, through old 
 
 Traditions of hereditary forms 
 
 Of service primitive, and colloquies 
 
 With angel apparitions, and a law 
 
 Of onerous significance imposed 
 
 On private life and on the social state, 
 
 In its pure self a blessing, to a curse 
 
 By sin commuted unendurable, 
 
 Through prophecy translated more and more, 
 
 And goaded by a harsh captivity. 
 
 Into the dawning of Messiah's Day. 
 
 And then upon the threshold of two worlds 
 
 In the drear wilderness the Baptist stood, 
 
 And with authentic voice proclaimed aloud 
 
 The ceremonial education over, 
 
 And that the beautiful and solemn Day 
 
 Had absolutely broken in the East. 
 
 And then — Wisdom graciously vouchsafed, 
 
38 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 To be bj us affectionately prized 
 
 And by the Church assiduously taught ! — 
 
 The eye beholds how, for a few short years 
 
 Divine Exemplar, dwelt upon the earth 
 
 Goodness and Truth, the Eternal Plenitude 
 
 Of the true Godhead bodily comprised 
 
 In Flesh the blissful Mary minister'd, 
 
 Two Natures deeply intercommuning 
 
 "With a mysterious intimacy, joined 
 
 In unity of Person all Divine, — 
 
 And how at length, our sole Atonement made 
 
 In His health-giving Passion, He went up 
 
 To Glory He had never left, to sit. 
 
 Yet not divorced from Flesh so late assumed, 
 
 Man, worshipped by the hierarchies of heaven. 
 
 Then far across the universal earth, 
 Through God's election secretly exhaled, 
 By sacramental links in unity 
 Compact, the Mystic Body grew apace, 
 On twelve foundation stones reposing sure ; 
 Which through supernal pilotage hath steered 
 Bight o'er opposing ages westward bound, 
 And still shall steer, transfigured evermore 
 With varying splendours suitably ordained 
 Unto the age and sickness of the world. 
 Whether in her raagnific decadence. 
 Or fresh returns towards her primal strength. 
 
 O Book most good ! most holy ! on our knees 
 To be full often scanned, how blest was he, 
 That lonely. Excommunicated Man, 
 That one small portion of thy heavenly lore 
 At least was his, whence fervours unreproved 
 \A"ere fed, and terror deepened and chaste love, 
 Love far beyond a sinners worth or hope, 
 
TI.] THE BOOKS. 39 
 
 Begotten of calm prayer within his soul, 
 And thanksgivings which hardly dared to be 
 Thanksgivings, as above his guilty state ! 
 A little parchment Manuscript it was, 
 Laboriously written, and emblazed 
 With uncial letters fancifully streaked 
 In flourishes of vermeil and of gold, 
 A task of love by some most diligent monk 
 In cloistered leisure reverently adorned. 
 And therein was contained the Book of Job, 
 In the quaint style and sinewy rhythm composed, 
 And touching diction of the barbarous 
 And powerful Latin of the Western Church, 
 Kich in a strange felicity to print 
 Expressions picturesquely turned, and thoughts 
 Through bold ellipses darkly signified, 
 Upon the memory, by that darkness wooed 
 To deep attention. 
 
 And there could not be 
 Of Holy Writ a portion suited more 
 Unto the aspirations of his soul 
 And wholesome sadness than that Book of Job. 
 
 In the far east long centuries ago 
 Of which we have no count, amid the tents 
 Of Hus, and pastoral magnificence 
 Of its great men, a marvellous Voice was heard, — 
 Anguish, submission, patience, all conjoined 
 With solemn vindications, and expressed 
 In interrogatories boldly urged. 
 Yet with a reverent s|)irit., to the Judge 
 Supreme in Heaven and Maker of mankind. 
 The Voice it was of lorn Humanity 
 Turning abrupt, like oxen on tlie goads, 
 On its intolerable destiny, 
 
40 SIE LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 Its woes intense and hungry sympathies 
 
 Unsatisfied, and craving hopes and loves, 
 
 And bodily torments vile, all unsustained 
 
 By dignity in the endurance. There, 
 
 In Hus, Humanity thus turned abrupt, 
 
 As though refusing further to advance, 
 
 "With thoughtful obstinacy, not unpraised 
 
 Of God, by purblind men not understood. 
 
 And now no more by destiny pursued, 
 
 A flying victim in ignoble rout. 
 
 It turned to face the curse, and wise in faith 
 
 Questioned the lofty quarter whence it came ; 
 
 Not in the tame philosophy content 
 
 With explanations timidly beneath 
 
 God's glory, offered by the poverty 
 
 Of common consolation, and the world's 
 
 Unspiritual humility of speech, — 
 
 An unregarded offering. It was bold 
 
 In lofty thought, and in its questionings 
 
 Not ignorant. O surely not without 
 
 Divine suggestion of the nobleness 
 
 Of its original natyre, and the sense 
 
 Of supernatural alliance fed 
 
 Within the spirit by deep communings 
 
 With worlds invisible, and obvious prints 
 
 Of an Almighty Presence on the earth. 
 
 Never was music heard among mankind 
 Like that most fluctuating Voice ! Wild strains, 
 Beating in awful cadence like the surge 
 Which marks the rough pulsations of the storm, 
 Making the solid shore to groan, or like 
 The cry of angry torture oft dispersed 
 By wounded eagles in the echoing vales 
 Of the hushed mountains. Wild and lofty strains 
 
II.] THE BOOKS. 41 
 
 Were they of venturous passion now, and now 
 
 Of self-abasement dignified, which rose 
 
 And fell, — with troublous warbling of loose notes 
 
 Rose thrillingly, and with a prelude strange 
 
 Of shaken keys disorderly, and fell 
 
 With steady sound and pressure masculine, 
 
 Like a loud march in music, or the close 
 
 Of some full-hearted requiem. One while 
 
 Most querulous, yet not unsweetly so, 
 
 It sued for rest in death, and then accused 
 
 The blessed functions of the fruitful womb, 
 
 Declaring life unprized, and preaching how 
 
 The moist clods of the valley should be sweet 
 
 Unto the weary limbs and world-worn heart. 
 
 With better sense of its own majesty 
 And possibilities of Heaven, It then 
 Complained of the Almighty's mystic love 
 Of darkness and concealment in His ways ; 
 Till by the very greatness of its thoughts 
 Rebuked, its vileness did It straight confess 
 With ample self-disparagement. It brooked 
 The Voice of God, but in forbearance meek 
 Once, twice It spake, the third time answered not. 
 But laid its hand, a signet on its mouth ; 
 In lamentation skilful, not in proof. 
 When God, a sixth in that great colloquy, 
 Vouchsafed to interpose. It could not brook, — 
 That plaintive Voice of our Humanity, 
 It could not brook the Vision of our God, 
 (Although it quailed not at His gracious Voice) 
 But speechless was, abhorrent of itself. 
 How changed the converse since the Almighty talked 
 In the cool time of Asiatic day. 
 Beneath the umbrage of the happy groves 
 
42 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 Where Adam dwelt, our ancestor revered, 
 
 "Whose solemn memory we may cherish still \ 
 
 And, silent, wrap it in our tenderest thoughts! - 
 
 The blazoned Manuscript a spirit was, I 
 
 Instinct with grandeur, to that lonely Man ; | 
 
 And his whole temper consciously was raised ] 
 
 With an uplifting of his thoughts, while he, j 
 
 Listening the pathos of that awful Voice j 
 
 From out the depths of poor Humanity, 1 
 
 Gazed like a seer upon the thrilling scene ] 
 
 Where Everlasting Mercy justified I 
 
 The Voice which, unalarmed, maintained its ways. ' 
 
 Nor wanted he a fountain whence to draw ] 
 
 Improving sadness, and no less beguile i 
 
 The melancholy leisure of his time. \ 
 
 A Book it was, in true ascetic tone j 
 Composed, the labour of the austere pen 
 
 Of old Hieronymus, which from a monk i 
 
 Of Brescia in his youth he had received, \ 
 
 A student in Bologna's grim arcades. \ 
 
 Through years of pleasure, love, and idle joust, j 
 
 And in far darker scenes of wilful sin, j 
 
 With a contemptuous care he had preserved I 
 
 The gift, at first with courteous sneer received ; : 
 
 While his companions rang a giddy change 1 
 
 Of gibes upon the monk who so misplaced 1 
 
 In sinful hands his pious offering. j 
 
 But thus not seldom is the eye of age \ 
 
 By Heaven illuminated to discern | 
 
 Upon the lineaments of youth some trace 1 
 
 Of character behind the character j 
 
 Of our first years, hereafter to absorb ! 
 
 Our lives with unexpected mastery : i 
 
 And thus it speaks and warns in words that seem 'I 
 
II.] THE BOOKS. 43 
 
 To indicate a most misjudging eye, 
 Till time avenges it upon the harsh 
 And forward condemnations of our youth. 
 
 For now the Penitent in that old Book 
 A power encountered both to heal and bless, 
 An angel guest most gladly entertained. 
 Three scant biographies the Book comprised. 
 Which did to him abound ; for tlience he drew 
 An application ever fresh, because 
 In some sort mated to his changeful moods. 
 
 One while amid the parched Thebaid sands 
 With that first eremite, the holy Paul, 
 He conversed to the profit of his soul. 
 And specially at even-tide he stood. 
 Translated in his spirit, at the cave 
 Now in Egyptian sand-drifts all engulfed. 
 Embayed within a horrid clifi" it was. 
 Where the scorched mountains confine on the sand, 
 A lonely, miserable place, yet not 
 Without some insulated loveliness. 
 It was most sweetly roofed with bluest sky 
 Stopping the chinks of a suspended palm. 
 Which overhead hung like a green alcove. 
 And ever found a feebly suing breeze, 
 Even from the sands, in whose weak breath it was 
 Floating and stationary both at once. 
 Amid its roots a lucid fountain sprung 
 With copious jet, and with a tinkling sound 
 Which seemed to augment the coolness of the place 
 And, touching marvel ! by the selfsame vent. 
 Through which the little silver column rose, 
 Was it continually absorbed again. 
 A habitation was it once where dwelt 
 Unlawful coiners, and in it pursued 
 
44 SIE LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 Their trade, what time voluptuous Antony 
 
 With Cleopatra dallied by the Nile 
 
 As though Rome was not, and their implements 
 
 Lay scattered in the corners of the rock. 
 
 There Paul the Hermit dwelt, in amity 
 
 And mutual understanding marvellous 
 
 With the rough beasts ; there on his knees he died: 
 
 A lion dug his grave, while Antony, 
 
 That choice ascetic, wrapped liis sacred corpse 
 
 In his own treasured cloak, the humble gift 
 
 Of Athanasius, pillar of the ftiith. 
 
 For miracles, upon the outer world 
 
 Effected, are but shadows from within 
 
 Of those mysterious heights of power, attained 
 
 Through the unseen miracles of faith and love. 
 
 And long afflictive penance in the soul. 
 
 In like communion with the inferior tribes 
 St. Francis lived, who, on Alvernia rapt, 
 At the Seven Hours was duly called to prayer 
 By a mysterious falcon on the hills. 
 The wandering creature self-constrained through love, 
 With no reluctant office, to supply 
 The holy purpose of a convent bell. 
 And there the poet of our latest times. 
 Poet and sage, and with lay-priesthood clothed 
 To wind the prelude on the magic horn 
 Of ancient truth, behind the cuckoo's cry 
 Discerned, and with obedient ear received, 
 The Baptist's call to deeper penitence,— 
 A pilgrim in the Tuscan Apennines, 
 Met by the admonitions of the Faith 
 Within that vernal liturgy consigned. 
 
 Thus was the Penitent ftill oft with Paul 
 And the wild beasts in conclave most uncouth. 
 
II.] THE BOOKS. 45 
 
 Or in the noisy midnights went his thoughts 
 
 (A second history prompting now his mind) 
 
 With young Ililarion on the rough sea-shore 
 
 Of Palestine, with robbers prowling round, 
 
 Or sick from Gaza journeying to be healed. 
 
 Again in other moods his Book would lead 
 
 His rapt imagination far away 
 
 To eastern noontide, and the drowsy plains, 
 
 Where brittle salt-herbs struggle with wild thyme, 
 
 And Malchus, captive monk, who pastured there 
 
 The sheepflocks of the ungodly Saracens. 
 
 Then humble Joy, the heavenly exile, came 
 In various guise to that most lonely cell. 
 For, wandering like a pilgrim o'er the world. 
 She visits all and sojourneth with none ; 
 For either churlish sin will bar her out. 
 Or peevish and inhospitable mirth 
 Will seek a quarrel with her, brooking not 
 The admonition of her quiet ways. 
 And yet, me thinks, it were a thought more true, 
 That Joy, which knocks so often at our doors, 
 No prompt departure takes, but lingering still. 
 Like an importunate benefactor, stays 
 To wait a kindlier mood ; and at our feet 
 She lies, when we go forth, as one that asks 
 An alms ; and in the heyday of our dreams. 
 And chiefly in our foolish youth, we spurn 
 The Angel with as little thought, or even 
 With something of the whim wherewith we spurn, 
 With more intention than we need, the leaves 
 Of yellow autumn ; and then sadness comes. 
 Slackening the current of our dreams, and does 
 Her pleasant office, bending to the ground 
 Our lofty spirits, till our eyes find out 
 
46 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 Her whom we thought far off, whose modest place 
 And most unllkelj fashion staring hope 
 Had overlooked. Alas ! we live too fast 
 And look too forward to be joyful men. 
 We get and gain too much. Our faith in Christ 
 Is written in our holy books, a thing 
 Of bliss which we can never make of it. 
 Or will not make of it, although we can. 
 And when we would constrain our worldly hearts 
 To attitude of joy, we but presume, 
 Or vex our lips to utter formal words 
 Which have no inward echo : for to joy 
 In Jesus is a spiritual gift, 
 A simple, childlike power, that sings its songs 
 Leaning upon obedience strict and calm. 
 And nurtured at the breast of sacred fear. 
 Of all the rituals to which humble Joy 
 Consigned herself for that most lonely Man, 
 Let one be named. When autumn's wailing winds, 
 Or silent action of November's frost. 
 With tawny acorns strewed the leafy ground. 
 There passed a pleasant change upon the place, 
 A sweet invasion of the solitude. 
 A tide of little children daily flowed 
 Up the deserted valley, and outspread. 
 Single or in associate bands, all day 
 To glean the woodland fruitage, and at eve 
 Softly receded to their distant homes 
 As though the sunset ruled their silent ebb. 
 In the first year Sir Lancelot had endured 
 This brief intrusion with unquiet mind. 
 And then his shyness bore it, as he brooked 
 The rustic eyes that looked on him at mass, 
 And with an awkward delicacy strove 
 
II.] THE BOOKS. 47 
 
 To look as though they did not mean to look. 
 
 But afterward did it become a change, 
 
 A little revolution in the vale, 
 
 Which expectation looked for, and, when come, 
 
 Enjoyed without reluctance ; for it brought 
 
 An influx of sweet images, and trains 
 
 Of profitable pleasure, which it seemed 
 
 An ill-directed penance to avoid. 
 
 The merry voices cast into the woods, 
 
 Ubiquitous, like cuckoo's muffled cries, 
 
 The encounter with blythe faces, and the awe. 
 
 Endeavouring to look bold, with which they made 
 
 Frightened obeisance, and the cheerful sound 
 
 Of many footsteps tripping o'er the leaves, 
 
 The diligent ambition, often foiled. 
 
 To drag their heavy sack of acorns home. 
 
 Loaded beyond their strength, the unselfish aid 
 
 By sisters to their little brothers given. 
 
 Themselves by elder brothers all unhelped 
 
 Such images, that for a single week 
 
 Peopled the valley, yielded harmless store 
 
 Of grateful meditation, blythe or sad. 
 
 Abetted by the silence that ensued. 
 
 Itself incomparably deepened there 
 
 By those bright presences, which left it now 
 
 A melancholy breadth of sliore whereon 
 
 An hour ago the sparkling waters were. 
 
 And let it not a trifling help be deemed, 
 A subsidy whicli conscience would disdain. 
 That, when the soft and steady south wind blew 
 On holy days, it wafted to his ear 
 From the old priory by the neighbouring lake 
 The pleasant achnonitious. of the bells. 
 Few hearts there are so hard that they can hear 
 
48 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK | 
 
 That soothing sound immoved, so sweet it is, j 
 And in the spirit of old childhood steeped, 
 
 A very plaintive haunting, pregnant all j 
 
 With memories of our lost maternal love, s 
 
 And the first innocent delights of home. i 
 
 O while association, of pure thoughts i 
 
 Begotten and chaste memories, hath the power ' 
 
 To purify and heighten, let it not 1 
 
 With poor disdainful wantonness forswear J 
 
 Its old and true alliance with church-bells ! ; 
 
 There sometimes did the Penitent steal down, j 
 
 Ere the green mountains in the sunrise blushed, ? 
 
 Unto St. Catherine's chapel bj the mere ; \ 
 
 Half doubting, whether it were well his soul I 
 
 Should feed upon sweet sounds, and drink the cup \ 
 
 Of exquisite church-music, to allay I 
 
 For one short hour the weary strife within. -* 
 
 And through the underwood obscure he crept i 
 
 Inside a curtain of dark elder boughs, ] 
 Shading the buttresses upon the north : 
 
 And there with many a tear, and yet a joy ] 
 
 Amid his tears, he heard the chanted Mass _ ! 
 
 s 
 
 Sound feebly through the old and solid wall. ] 
 
 And often in the summer did he catch, \ 
 
 Through open windows tremulously borne, = 
 
 A breath of incense ; and, returned once more \ 
 
 To his lone hermitage, that odour hung ; 
 
 Around his temper like an atmosphere j 
 
 Of blessing, sometimes undispersed for days. ; 
 
 To this and other holdfasts, that may seem \ 
 
 But trivial unto us who are so rich '. 
 
 In our neglected means, his spirit clung, ; 
 
 And by them climbed, and from them knew to draw < 
 
 Apt nourishment. ] 
 
II.] ' THE BOOKS. 49 
 
 Two Portals dread there are, 
 Whereby a thousand, thousand catholic souls, 
 On their invisible occupations bound, 
 Are passing and repassing in and out 
 The spiritual world the whole day through. 
 Chief from the blessed Incarnation hewn, 
 With Blood and Water tempered, is the Gate 
 Of Sacramental Access to the Throne, 
 Unseen but not far off, of God Supreme. 
 Then, mighty though subordinate, the Gate 
 Of Prayer, or rather Gateway without gate, 
 Open, unsentinelled by day or night. 
 Thence to and fro, from earth to Heaven, and back 
 From Heaven to earth, the living spirits range 
 Through regions infinite, and see great sights. 
 And come across calm foretastes of the bliss 
 To be hereafter. 
 
 From the first of these 
 Sir Lancelot was for awhile repulsed 
 For his soul's health at last ; but through the Gate 
 So mercifully left without a guard. 
 With the devotion of pure thought, and rite 
 Of actual prayer, his spirit hourly passed. 
 Yet I would fain believe, if so the thought 
 Acceptance find with wisdom more assured 
 Than mine, that, in the daily pomps and shows 
 Of nature, there are posterns ill discerned. 
 Through negligence long overgrown with weeds. 
 Or in the effulgence of the present Church 
 Overshadowed, and by which a guided soul, 
 Through sweet discoveries led, may entrance gain 
 Into the world of spirit that confines 
 So closely on our own, and meet with God 
 Not wholly from our Eden yet withdrawn. 
 
60 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 Or through the reconciling Cross content 
 His hidden Presence once more to renew- 
 Elsewhere than in the grave disclosures made 
 By Holy Church in Mysteries Divine, 
 Yet there, there only, surely manifest. 
 
 In some deep ways and through a patient love, 
 Unseated often from his anxious heart 
 Through the distress of penitential fears, 
 The Excommunicated found a church 
 In natural things, that, shapeless as it was. 
 Largely enriched his poverty of means. 
 Even time, unaided in its silent lapse. 
 Not wholly powerless hath been found to heal. 
 To elevate, and to sustain : much more 
 May nature, with her simple earthly shows, 
 And her betrayings of unearthly powers. 
 Claim for herself a gift medicinal. 
 Some have there been of old, some may be now, 
 "Who have devoutly faced earth's mysteries, 
 (Often most solemnly when least supposed) 
 Not with the pomp of knowledge, but the approach 
 Of reverent longing, and have gently worn 
 By the soft pressure of assiduous love 
 A pathway through the coloured veil of things. 
 
 Sir Lancelot was changed. Earth not in vain 
 Had wooed his heart, which somew^hat lighter grew 
 Without aught being diminished of the sense 
 Of miserable guilt and fearful stain. 
 Sin seemed a stranger thing, and it was cast 
 To a far greater distance in his thoughts 
 Than heretofore, and virtue lovelier seemed, 
 And purity more welcome to his heart. 
 For slowly his repentance had outgrown 
 The broader shadows of remorse, and grace 
 
11.] THE BOOKS. 51 
 
 In meek anticipations was perceived 
 
 A growing light amid his darker thoughts. 
 
 And joy once more unto his spirit came 
 
 In fitful visitations, like the wind 
 
 In measured pauses on a summer's day. 
 
 And beautiful as all things were around, 
 
 Most beautiful, because contributing 
 
 Most freshness and relief, was natural change. 
 
 How sweet is change ! In sickness or in grief 
 The very alternations of our pain 
 Are recognized for ease : and happiness 
 Is fed by fluctuations in its kind ; 
 And love that would be trustful must have change 
 To overtake the mutability 
 Of temper in its object, else the heart 
 O'ertops the languid passion with its growths. 
 And when is change more blameless or more soft 
 Than in the transformations of the earth 
 And sky ? Thus after weeks of sunny days 
 With mind well- pleased Sir Lancelot would behold 
 Tenacious mists receive unto themselves 
 The green hill-tops and promontoried steeps 
 For other weeks of rain to be involved 
 In the cool chambers of the humid clouds. 
 Thence would they issue forth once more, bright conea 
 Of kindled herbage or of glittering rock, 
 "Which from a region of perpetual gleams 
 With sunny aspect overlooked the vales. 
 And, thus emerging from the folds of mist 
 With freshened tints and store of tinkling springs, 
 Which fall in trills of bell-like sound from rock 
 To rock all down, the mountain heights appeared 
 New features in the scene, by novelty 
 Clothed in fresh interest, and with envy too 
 
52 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 11. 
 
 Of their so long communion up on high ; 
 
 With the dark spirit of the mighty mists. j 
 
 And not less grateful to his mind, the more | 
 
 That it by melancholy thought was so j 
 
 Enhanced, was the sad change of faded earth | 
 
 When summer days were shortening. The gay flush ] 
 
 Of the first evenings of the genial spring * 
 
 Was not more acceptable to his heart, l 
 
 Than chill elastic airs which nimbly breathe j 
 
 O'er the white rime of an autumnal morn. j 
 
 There was a quickening in them both which gave j 
 
 An impulse to his soul, an industry j 
 
 Of thought which could on simple joys bestow ] 
 
 Authentic patent of nobility. I 
 
SIR LANCELOT. 
 
 BOOK III. 
 THE BEAUTIFUL YEAR. 
 
BOOK III 
 
 THE BEAUTIFUL YEAR. 
 
 With what soft airs and visionary change, 
 
 Sweetly protracted, doth our English spring, 
 
 Welcome invader, march by running stream 
 
 Or woodland skirt, and capture sunny bank 
 
 And sheltered nook, and with a kind surprise 
 
 Hang his green-spotted banner in one day 
 
 Upon a score of tree-tops, whence he flings, 
 
 As from his strongholds over hill and dale, 
 
 Long leafy chains until the land is his 
 
 By conquest visible, and obvious right 
 
 Which the pleased eye accords. More sweet by far 
 
 This wayward tardiness, this gentle strife 
 
 Twixt day and night, crisp rime and genial sun. 
 
 Than spring's approach of strangely mingled speed 
 
 And tedious slowness, such as we behold 
 
 On Lombard's plain or Bergamascan slopes 
 
 Facing the warm winds of the south, where dykes, 
 
 With herbage newly flushed, glow all at once 
 
 With violets both blue and white., and tufts 
 
 Of primrose, and the periwinkle, thick 
 
 As garlands twisted for a May- day show. 
 
 Downward they nod into a thousand streams 
 
 Or threads of trickling silver, that enrich 
 
 The oozy rice-grounds, or with upward eye, 
 
 Their beauty pleading for the season, woo 
 
 The unwilling leaves from out the mulberry buds 
 
 Week after week in vain. More sweet by far 
 
56 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 Our spring, retarded thus delightfully, 
 
 Than the wild burst which over Provence hangs, 
 
 As if by necromantic touch exhaled, 
 
 A tremulous earth-born cloud of almond-bloom, 
 
 Pale blush with pearly white ingrained, to mock 
 
 The olive-yards. More sweet by far than when 
 
 One sunrise over the Trinacrian fields, 
 
 From Monte Baido to the sea that chafes 
 
 The spurs of Etna, flings a gleamy web 
 
 With instantaneous blossoms all outrolled 
 
 Of tasselled cactus, woven visibly 
 
 Before the traveller's eye as on his mule 
 
 He goes, with wizard spring outriding him. 
 
 Dear Isle of England, where the seasons meet 
 And part with such a kindly intercourse 
 Of change, the weeping briglitness of whose sun 
 Is tempered so with alternations bland 
 Of inland breezes and salubrious airs, 
 "Which the clouds waft from our circumfluent sea. 
 Inspiring wandering breaths in summer noon. 
 And slackening winter's hold upon the earth, — 
 How fortunately fixed are thy sweet shores, 
 Fronting .the warm Atlantic ! Neither heat 
 Nor cold, in mutable excesses each 
 When present felt least tolerable, reign 
 O'er thy free landscapes with tyrannic sway. 
 True vassals here, not lords, where hill and dale 
 With a kind birthright of locality 
 Are free as those who till the genial soil, 
 More truly free, for not like them enslaved 
 Unto the boast of liberty. 
 
 Not here 
 In desolating plague of sickly winds. 
 In blistering mildew or volcano's wrath, 
 
in.] THE BEAUTIFUL YEAE. 57 
 
 In vernal rivers swollen to a curse, 
 
 Or the fierce grandeurs of the avalanche, 
 
 In flood or earthquake, are deep nature's powers 
 
 In ruinous magnificence displayed : 
 
 But o'er the modest scenery, secure 
 
 In lowly features, temperate beauty reigns, 
 
 By the four seasons checquered, not disturbed. 
 
 O pleasant country ! Father-land revered ! 
 
 Thee and thy clime must I perforce extol, 
 
 Fit cause perceiving, fit for me who am 
 
 From morn till eve a dweller out of doors. 
 
 Not seldom later far than eve, content 
 
 Now with the neat parterre and laurel walk, 
 
 Confinement to some moods adapted most, — 
 
 Or breezy deck of elevated lawn 
 
 Which overlooks the vale, and throws the eye 
 
 Alternately upon the southern lake 
 
 Or mountain cove with mist or sunlight filled. 
 
 Purple or green with streaks of ruddy soil ; 
 
 And, when loose humours will it so, I seek 
 
 With aspiration restless and unfixed 
 
 A range unlimited among the hills. 
 
 Or woody fringes of the distant meres : 
 
 In winter unconfined by cold, nor burnt 
 
 With more than welcome heat on summer days. 
 
 And often with a twilight of soft clouds. 
 
 Which most persuasively solicits thought. 
 
 And now, unlearning my past mountain life. 
 
 With thoughts like anchored things, I walk or sit 
 
 Beneath three gables of time-fretted stone, 
 
 Watching the huge mimosa's half-clothed boughs 
 
 Tracing light-fingered shadows on the house : 
 
 Or through the pointed arch of chestnut leaves, 
 
 The boasted work of sylvan architect, 
 
58 
 
 SIR LANCELOT. 
 
 [book 
 
 Tearfully gazing on the far church-tower, 
 And pondering deep responsibilities, akin 
 To austere contemplation, not to song. 
 
 O when the snowdrop gems the bright brown 
 earth 
 Of merry England, and the tender thrush 
 Salutes the sunset from the budding spray, 
 And, pleased with his own aptness, practises 
 Into the night his last year's melody, — 
 Then may the poet, alway vigilant 
 In such deep yearning love of humankind 
 As will not grieve or joy alone, detect 
 For the outpouring of kind sympathies 
 A vent in meditation on the lot 
 Of the plain pastoral men who in the vales 
 Of the fair Tyrol dwell. Ah ! I have seen, 
 When the warm breath of deepest summer glowed 
 On the green slopes, earth's lineaments deformed 
 By frowns of vernal anger uneffaced, 
 Marring soft landscapes, like a troubled look 
 In eyes where love alone hath lawful right 
 To shine : the meadow-fields with stones besprent, 
 The paths fierce waters for themselves have hewn 
 Through woody steeps, the broad and staring seam 
 Of gravel down the centre of the vales. 
 The trunks of alder huddled on the banks 
 In wreck unsightly ! Beautiful, and calm. 
 And darkened with sweet mantling shades, as are 
 Those glens of Tyrol in the summer-tide, 
 Who hath the heart to realize the mass 
 Of dead white snow, the chalets half engulphed, 
 The stalled kine, the voiceless streams, the hush 
 Of Alpine winter terrible, a hush 
 Broken, most surely not relieved, by winds 
 
III.] THE BEAUTIFUL YEAE. 59 
 
 And wolves alternately ? There Adam's sons 
 
 Fight with the snow-drift and the elements 
 
 Unmerciful and mighty to invade 
 
 Our first prerogative ; while Adam's curse, 
 
 Like an enchanted loom, incessantly 
 
 Plies round the herdsman there, yet masters not 
 
 Inventive toil and patient manliness. 
 
 O sweet are then responsibilities 
 Enjoining fortitude through simple love 
 Of wife and child, when the vexed peasant finds 
 In obligations lofty and divine 
 A tranquil haven, and an anchorage 
 Of chaste enjoyment, of impassioned peace, 
 And moral elevation, and a trust 
 Laid up on high, lest love begun on earth 
 Continuance should miss beyond the grave. 
 There, from the world cut ofi*, a world they find 
 Of breadth sufiicient for immortal souls 
 To move unstraitened, while the gentle queens 
 Of the poor fir- wood cottages with groups 
 Of prattling children aid the indoor tasks 
 Of husbandry, by Virgil's graceful muse 
 So touchingly depicted ; and the long 
 Dark months of winter are illumined there 
 By that serenity of inward mood 
 "Which simple wants engender, and true love 
 Heightens, sustains, and ratifies, content 
 With earth, yet with its dearest hopes beyond. 
 
 Now the eighth spring unto the Hermit came : 
 From the warm sunny lowlands, like a tide> 
 It mounted up the rivers to the vales 
 And rocky bays ; no crash of avalanche 
 Kelaxing its strong grasp, no fall of earth. 
 Or burst of angry torrents sounded there. 
 
60 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK \ 
 
 But day by day the pearly streams outgrew 
 
 Their parsimonious trickling, and amused ! 
 
 The attentive ear with merry tinkling songs, j 
 
 Swelled with a pleasant science, as the sun \ 
 
 Thawed the white drifts, to widely dashing falls i 
 
 Sonorous in the midnight hills. The rooks, ^ 
 
 Those noisy builders, on their tasks intent, ; 
 
 Rifled the mossy slopes and from the trees j 
 
 Snapped the light twigs, impatient to renew ] 
 
 Domestic bliss, while on the sunny banks j 
 
 A hardy primrose here and there stole out 1 
 
 And looked the weak sun in the face, nor closed j 
 
 Its yellow eye through all the frosty night. i 
 
 Seven years of silent solitude, seven years ■ 
 
 Of outward beauty acting on a heart, \ 
 Humbled through penance cheerfully endured. 
 Left not Sir Lancelot the man he was 
 
 When he disturbed the heron in the sedge 1 
 
 That melancholy day by Kentmere side. 'j 
 Sweet change — the world- worn heart can well attest \ 
 
 Its sweetness — o'er his softened spirit came j 
 
 With dewy freshness : and who will not own 1 
 
 How mountain winds and cold pure breaths of sea j 
 
 Unclasp the pain which girds the aching brow, ~ i 
 
 And snap the anxious languors that are hung ] 
 
 As fillets round the victim who is led | 
 
 A sacrifice unto the world's false gods, j 
 
 Riches, or honour, or invidious place ? J 
 
 Chief and most holy change, by nature half, i 
 
 And half by grace, to nature next of kin, j 
 
 Wrought on the Penitent, was in his faith, ] 
 
 Which now was elevated far above I 
 
 Sublimest heights which reason ever gains. ] 
 
 For feeling went along with every truth, | 
 
III.] THE BEAUTIFUL YEAB. 6 1 
 
 Eaising the lofty doctrines of the Creed 
 To those high places in the patient mind 
 Where they the veneration should receive 
 Of the whole man. The very atmosphere 
 Of his keen intellect was purified, 
 As an indwelling faith did more absorb 
 Each day his lesser faculties ; the light, 
 Which o'er the regions of his fancy spread, 
 All truths presented in dimension just 
 And solemn clearness, beautified no less 
 By distances through reverence interposed, 
 While dealing with the mysteries of Heaven. 
 
 As in the intervals of summer rain. 
 When the low clouds hang softly o'er the earth. 
 And the dark verdure is enriched with showers, 
 The light, like eloquence unto the ear, 
 Fixes the listening eye, which with a joy 
 Fathoms the cool transparent depths of air, 
 Wherein the distant objects seem so close 
 It were a feat not hard across the vale 
 To lean, and gather ferns and flowers that wave 
 Upon the mountain opposite : even such 
 And so translucent was the atmosphere 
 In which his inward faculties abode 
 And all their several offices discharged. 
 Yielding their subsidies unto the work 
 Of grace now stirring deeply in his soul. 
 
 Darkness and daylight, moon and braided staw. 
 Waters and flowers, the habits and the joys 
 Of all the inferior creatures, now he saw. 
 Saw and received them in his loving heart ; 
 And by such visitations was his mind 
 With more than earthly wisdom so enriched, 
 That with the Universal Presence he 
 
62 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 Came into fearful contact every hour. '] 
 
 Yet was it not sensation vague or dim, 1 
 
 Mere love of beauty, wondrously diffused \ 
 
 In all things like a soul, nor idle rest I 
 
 In profitless sublimities, which are l 
 
 But exclamations of poetic minds, ] 
 
 And bind no wholesome yoke upon the heart. | 
 
 The presence that was round him was the Hand ■] 
 
 Of a compassionate Master, throned apart \ 
 
 From all things, yet Himself sustaining all, \ 
 
 With all concurring yet from all distinct, 4 
 
 Fountain of duty, and Himself our law, ; 
 
 The Living God, the Spirit, Son, and Sire ! \ 
 
 Thus with his spirit did the wilderness ] 
 
 On God's behalf in solemn fashion plead, ! 
 Yea, sometimes with an influence that seemed 
 
 With an imploring utterance to urge ; 
 
 An attitude of thought more self-rebuked, •,; 
 
 More consciously abased before the Power, ^ 
 
 "Wisdom, and Goodness manifested there, j 
 
 The Threefold Cord which binds the frame of earth, j 
 
 And whence the dome of heaven suspended hangs. ~] 
 
 All nature seemed to labour with a sense \ 
 
 i 
 
 As of the hidden Deity, and oft 
 
 Appeared as though she would unveil the shrine ] 
 
 Which now she covers, while the patient eye j 
 
 Through her thin vesture may discern its shape, ; 
 
 And build upon its pattern a sweet shrine I 
 
 Far in the silence of deep thought withdrawn. i 
 
 The sounds of nature, the loud waterfall, ^ 
 
 The sea-like surges of the wind, the hum ] 
 
 Of busy midnight like a thousand looms j 
 
 Weaving the darkness for the hours, all were t 
 
 The Voice of God in earthly cadence veiled. I 
 
III.] THE BEAUTIFUL TEAE. 63 ] 
 
 The brightness of the earth and air and sea, v; 
 
 The radiant lineaments of day and night, j 
 
 Steadfast or tremulous, shadowy or serene, ] 
 
 Did at the least, if not much more, reflect ^ 
 
 The Eye, to Which all hearts of men lie bare. . 
 And silence might be thought, — but specially ^ j 
 
 The deep, impassioned silence of the hills, — ! 
 To be that awful, listening Ear of God, 
 
 At Which the sounding world all day and night ■ 
 
 With crying beasts, and infinite speech of man, \ 
 
 Lies close, and not a rustling in the wood, .1 
 
 Nor whispered sin, nor inarticulate thought, i 
 
 From that unsleeping Audience can escape. I 
 
 O miserably barren is the mind | 
 
 By feeling unsustained, the reason cold i 
 
 And, because cold, untrue, which in its acts J 
 
 And formal operations misseth not ] 
 
 The plaintive adjuncts of the heart, nor craves i 
 
 Alliance with the wants of humankind, ; 
 
 Smiles not when others smile, nor weeps with them, j 
 
 Nor in a unity of hope delights, ! 
 
 And in communion of belief still less, \ 
 
 But, wrapped in selfish ease, from out itself i 
 
 Works to a lonely end, and self-absorbed : 
 
 Can watch an empire fall, a church grow weak, } 
 
 And say wise things upon their waning powers, 1 
 
 With calmness uttered, not with prayers or tears, | 
 
 And which it falsely deems philosophy ! \ 
 
 O piteously betrayed is that young life, i 
 
 Which sees a grandeur in high thoughts exiled ] 
 
 From general sympathy, and fain would dwell 1 
 
 In a poor orbit of loves, hopes, and faiths J 
 
 Outside the beatings of the common heart i 
 
 Of venerable nature ! Doubly poor I 
 
 '■5 
 I 
 
 i 
 
64 SLR LANCELOT. [bOOK ] 
 
 The self-sustaining intellect whose creed 
 
 Is subject to itself, no outward help, ; 
 
 No strong ally from heavenly places come, 1 
 
 No solid tower from whence the soul may take : 
 
 Her observations, and from them divine \ 
 
 Of things to come and hidden destinies \ 
 
 Which, half perceived, may be her present scope. \ 
 
 Ah ! liberty, unwisely coveted, i 
 
 Slavish exemption from obedient love, J 
 
 To have a reason wherein is enshrined i 
 
 No truth acknowledged greater than ourselves, \ 
 
 Permitted o'er our littleness to cast ; 
 
 Consoling shadows, and to which we pay \ 
 
 An inward homage of our fear and love, j 
 
 And through that ritual, not unaided, grow, ^_ 
 
 Meting ourselves with measure thus sublime, ' 
 
 Up to the standard of divinest truths ! 
 
 Far otherwise in his most worldly days ] 
 
 Had been Sir Lancelot's mind, with feeling fraught, | 
 
 Mingling his moral being with the powers -i 
 
 Of his keen intellect, and to the faith ] 
 
 Of Holy Church submissive with an awe ! 
 
 Intelligent, not servile, and deep love. ] 
 
 To him the Creed substantial wisdom was, ; 
 
 Objective to himself, and bearing up \ 
 
 As a strono; hand the feeble faith of man. I 
 
 . I 
 
 Therefore it was that in his solitude , ] 
 
 His faith had failed him not, nor his whole mind : 
 
 Collapsed upon itself in weak dismay, 
 
 "When bodily health or lively spirits ceased 
 
 To feed self- trust, but called on him to lean 
 
 On holier aids external to himself, 
 
 In ritual appliances made known, \ 
 
 Or through a wise obedience to the Church '. 
 
III.] THE BEAUTIFUL TEAE. 65 
 
 Acknowledged as the visible Ground of Truth. 
 
 There was no need for nature to achieve 
 The healing of an intellect debased 
 Through unbelief or frivolous self- trust. 
 But the blind darkness of his moral eye. 
 Successive films by years of sin induced, 
 She couched by small degrees : her beauty was 
 Medicinal, her operation slow 
 But durable ; and something there appeared 
 Of sweet solicitude in all her shows, 
 While they applied perpetual euphrasy 
 Unto his moral vision ; and sometimes. 
 When hope of pai*don due proportion lost 
 Unto the greatness of his sins, and doubt, 
 Injected so, remained unwelcome guest, 
 She wanted not a virtue to dislodge, 
 By trivial apparitions oft supplied. 
 The intrusive stranger. From the high hill-top 
 In the calm sunshine did the Knight look down 
 Upon a frolic breeze below at play 
 With the light tresses of a grove of ash ; 
 And there was something in the gentle shock, 
 Wherewith sight did her office when surprised 
 Far off by objects she was used to judge 
 While hearing sate assessor at her side, 
 Which to uncertainty could reconcile 
 The inward mind, and, exorcising doubt, 
 Give a more ample liberty to faith 
 As to an eye, of reason's aid most glad. 
 Yet needing not the alliance which it claims. 
 
 And to this elevation of his faith 
 Were added now a trembling happiness 
 And scattered joys, which beat within his heart 
 Like intermitting pulses. By degrees 
 
^Q SIE LANCELOT. [bOOK j 
 
 A softness of demeanour gently stole ; 
 
 Upon him, and he bore himself as one j 
 
 Acting before the sight of those he loves, =; 
 Or a meek Saint, with mindful reverence fraught 
 
 Of those angelic witnesses who turn ; 
 
 Their beautiful regards on all he does, \ 
 Whether in attitude of prayer composed 
 
 Before his Crucifix of mossy wood, j 
 
 Or with calm gait abroad among the fields i 
 
 Seeking salubrious herbs, his simple fare. ■ 
 
 Thus was it with Sir Lancelot : and there grew I 
 
 A pensive tenderness within his mind, j 
 
 That soon bade fair to over- rule the gloom j 
 
 Which by ascetic ways he daily strove i 
 
 To deepen : a meek tenderness it was, \ 
 
 In localized affections taking root, i 
 
 Whence, out in life, domestic joys proceed i 
 
 And household sanctities, then only safe ' 
 
 When anchored to the earth by local ties. i 
 
 This new and gradual softening of the heart, ! 
 Which stole upon him like a silent bliss, 
 
 A feeling was, akin to love, disclosed I 
 
 In what may not inaptly be described . \ 
 
 As the domestic joys of lonely life, ; 
 
 The recompenses to the hermit given ] 
 
 For the sweet charities he has forsworn. \ 
 
 Not mean or few are they : the sense of home ] 
 
 Hangs like a charm about the lonely place ; ! 
 
 And solitary nooks are set apart ' 
 
 With daily consecrations, by some hour i 
 
 Of prayer remembered, or some gift of tears, i 
 
 Or some disclosure of long-pondered truth ! 
 
 Whose actual dawn broke on the spirit there. { 
 And somewhat too of mute significance 
 
III.] THE BEAUTIFUL YEAR. 67 
 
 And various character becomes impressed 
 Upon the solitude; here morning shines 
 Earliest and warmest ; there the green arcades 
 Suggest a lurking-place at sultry noon ; 
 And there in evening's shadow it is sweet 
 Upon the valley's sombre side to walk, 
 And with responsive gaiety look forth 
 Upon the sunlit mountain opposite. 
 The bonds of sympathy are drawn more close 
 Between the inferior creatures and the heart, 
 Whether it be to birds that on the spray 
 Close to the door at morn or eve may chant, 
 Or to the patient kine, and bleating tribes, 
 The nomads of the moorland, which send down 
 A plaintive greeting from the windy heights. 
 Nor do the deep affections want the power, 
 Whereby inanimate things may be embraced 
 Within the heart of man with pure delight 
 And wisdom not unthoughtful, till the flowers. 
 The many-featured trees, the dropping springs. 
 And frowning rocks, are thankfully received 
 And entertained as social presences. 
 
 These were his joys, to him true pleasures tried 
 By actual use, of real meaning full. 
 Yet ah ! the bare recital but sets forth 
 The poverty of his enjoyments, sheds 
 A gleam which lightens only to betray, 
 A wandering gleam which but illuminates 
 The solemn waste of his uncheerful life. 
 
 From such a scene how gratefully the heart 
 Turns to the sweetly-peopled hermitage 
 Of private life, where faith and holy hope 
 Are perfected in trials manifold. 
 And earthly love from heavenly love receives 
 
68 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 A blissful unction ; and the days serene 
 Vibrate with gentlest impulse up to Heaven, 
 Spent in the chaste delights not deemed unfit 
 To shadow forth God's love to humankind, 
 And even, a greater mystery still, the bonds 
 Wliich link the Bridegroom to His Holy Church. 
 
 O evening ! how thy gentle-footed hours 
 Glide on with silent pace ! thy silver tongues — 
 How happily they tell the lapse of time, 
 More happily were it less swiftly. — Oh ! 
 Like the calm wafting of angelic wings 
 Bevolve the days and nights, in love and prayer, 
 And mutual study of the blessed Word, 
 And interchange of i>\ive imaginings, 
 And humble confidence, and reverence bouo[hfc 
 By meek confession of besetting sins 
 And mingled tears repentant, setting forth 
 To all the neiojhbourhood an ima^e sweet 
 Of love in heavenly places felt ! Homes, 
 Ye countless Christian Homes, that in the Church 
 Are like so many grace-encircled shrines 
 "Where pilgrims rest upon their way to heaven, 
 And run while they are resting ! Happy Homes, 
 Of conjugal self-sacrifice and love, 
 Heroic, equable, calm-tempered love. 
 Where the sweet Son of God is known and loved, 
 And the dear Queen of heaven keeps watch and ward 
 O'er all life's daily round ! Oh ! blameless joy 
 Tenfold enhanced, when to a listening ring 
 Of youthful faces the parental lips, 
 God's Voice, to childish faith oracular, 
 With patient repetition strive to teach 
 The Prayer of Jesus or the great Belief 
 Of Christian ages, or the angel's words 
 
III.] THE BEAUTIFUL YEAR. 69 
 
 Hailing the Maiden-Mother of our God, 
 So sweet to childish ears, on childish lips 
 So doubly pleasant, while with anxious mind, 
 Discernment quickened by parental love. 
 Each, mutual solace seeking, doth predict. 
 The father now, and now the mother's heart, 
 From infant graces or expanding faults 
 The fortunes of these little ones of Christ. 
 Of earthly scenes this is the one most sweet, 
 Most graceful ; but to faith's exploring eye 
 What beautiful solemnity is there. 
 What imagery of the Ways Divine ! 
 The timid children to the Father look. 
 Yet by the Mother's eye directed, who 
 With such mute eloquence refers them there 
 For wisdom or support, yet wanting not 
 A vocal intercession when distress 
 Or penitent misdoing so may need. 
 An intercession — let the world attest 
 How rarely missing of the grace it asks ! 
 
 That isolated hill, whereon the Cell 
 Behind the ash-tree curtain stood concealed, 
 Was by a tinkling stream half clasped, which steered 
 In the long summer heats in glossy threads 
 Of amber-coloured water through a breadth 
 Of azure gravel, sparkling in the sun 
 With fragments of bright glistering ore detached 
 By vernal torrents from the mountain near. 
 Beneath a slope of waving broom there was 
 A little earthy bay that slept apart 
 From the main stream, which now Sir Lancelot's 
 
 care 
 With beaten turf had banked, and made secure 
 By two small sluices skilfully contrived, 
 
70 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 Whereat the cool fresh waters entrance won, 
 And, making circuit of the hollow baj, 
 Laving its verdant lips with mimic tides. 
 Found egress by a slanting channel delved 
 Across the sward, and with blue pebbles lined, 
 Which to the current gave a song-like sound. 
 With silver dace and speckled trout the creek 
 Was populous ; for so the Knight preserved 
 What with his skilful hand he had ensnared 
 In little hollows or beneath the stones ; 
 For love of the pure creatures, not for food 
 Preserved, for by his hermitage no flame 
 Of crackling fire or wreath of smoke went up. 
 Token of human life. 
 
 The fishy pool 
 With willow-herb was edged, and with a fringe 
 Of pithy rush, and tall osmunda's plumes. 
 And juicy stalks of brittle orpine made ; 
 And a dead hawthorn stood upon the bank. 
 Whose mossy branches summer yearly clothed 
 In pointed ruffles of lank bryony, 
 Kich in autumnal corals that the winds 
 Unclasp with difiiculty from the boughs. 
 Upon the middle of the bay there swam 
 A single Water-Lily, cradled there 
 In ceaseless agitation : year by year 
 That Lily came, and ever came alone, 
 By its green cordage anchored in the pool. 
 So merrily the lively waters shook 
 The central deep, and made the rushes nod, 
 And with brisk bubbles round the Lily wheeled, 
 They suffered not the snaky root to spread 
 Amid the shifting ooze ; so there it stayed 
 With its one yearly blossom from the deep, 
 
III.] THE BEAUTIFUL TEAE. 71 
 
 Like the old qiiejen of beauty, rising up, 
 A solitary planet which diffused 
 A flickering radiance on the bubbles near 
 And on the rushy rampart of dark green, — 
 A beautiful and waving orb of light. 
 
 Ah me ! how sweet are joys when we have few, 
 "Whose advent expectation prophecies 
 Far off, and on whose legacy of thought 
 Contented memory lives long afterwards ! 
 Such was that virgin Lily to the Knight, 
 Which chiefly by its touching singleness 
 Moved him as no inapt similitude 
 Of his own being, anchored safely now 
 Within the arbour of those lonely hills. 
 But that in its meek celibate the flower 
 Knew neither sin nor penitence ; but bloomed 
 In dutiful contentment on the pool, 
 Fulfilling for its hour the Will of Heaven : 
 Yet paler than was wont, for so it seemed, 
 A beauty sisterless, and like a star 
 Whose lonely twinkling rather grieves the eye, 
 Suggesting absent joys with thoughts that cloud 
 The vision of its solitary light ; 
 And eager like a spirit to descend 
 Beneath its veil of waters, when the touch 
 Of autumn gave it leave, a gentle touch 
 Upon its tremulous eyelids, — sensitive 
 As the love-broken heart of tender maid, 
 Who, wasting inwardly, grows daily less 
 A thing of earth, and meekly greeting death 
 As her deliverance, vanishes away 
 More like an apparition than a life 
 Of flesh and blood, of smiles and tears, like ours. 
 
 For that lone Lily on the waters cold. 
 
72 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 That fallen star, for so it might be deemed, 
 Which nightly to the distant moon looked np 
 With its unsteady eye, Sir Lancelot felt 
 A simple love, a moving of the heart 
 Which not ungratefully would find relief 
 Full oft in tears. There with a lover's hope, 
 Which no delays abate, he watched till spring. 
 Leaning invisibly across the pool. 
 Whispered the Lily from her dreaming sleep, 
 Lulled by the booming waters overhead. 
 But, when the breathing accents bade her wake, 
 The child of nature rose, and gently shook 
 The sprinkled ooze from off her genial couch. 
 And through the pleased and yielding waters went, 
 And, drawing her white wimple o'er her face, 
 She stood in nature's presence, while the sun, 
 Respecting her forlorn estate, allowed 
 Her beauty to decline his ardent gaze. 
 Silent companion all the summer long 
 Was she unto the Knight, and to his thought 
 There was within that flower a light and look 
 With which he communed inwardly, as though 
 A sweet intelligence was deeply couched 
 Within the lovely orb, whose starry smile 
 Among the sunbeams rippled on the bay. 
 
 Amid the crowd of Forms and fair Delights 
 Which beauty scattered o'er the hills and dells. 
 And lawns and woods, and rocks with herbage veined, 
 That pallid Lily's solitary gleam 
 Stood forth among them all, with single power 
 Contending, and eclipsing all ; so deep 
 Was her one image graven on his heart. 
 For in that glorious wilderness she seemed 
 An eye of nature, open visibly, 
 
I 
 
 III.] • THE BEAUTIFUL YEAE. 73 
 
 By that light flowery fringe but half concealed, 
 And bent with eloquent regards on him, 
 And with a wooing sensitively felt 
 Within the pensive quiet of his heart ! 
 
 Such is the love of nature, and the sweet 
 Suificiency of single objects, lodged 
 Deep in the Oriental, gently tranced 
 With love of single trees or chosen fount. 
 Such is the passion, if so wild a name 
 To that mute worship may be given, beheld 
 Upon the features of the silent groups 
 Among the graves collected on the knolls 
 Which overhang Stamboul, what time the sun 
 Sinks o'er the golden downs of grassy Thrace, 
 In meditation rapt upon the dead, 
 Or on the blissful Unity of God, 
 Believed unhappily, or with the love 
 More oft transported of the dreamlike scene 
 Which glitters at their feet. For hours they sit 
 While joy without a tide or pulse overflows 
 Their tranquil contemplations, all possessed, 
 Through every inlet of their being filled. 
 With love of nature as a source of prayer. 
 The cooing of a lonely ringdove locked 
 Within the fibrous fans of cypress leaves, 
 A single eye of deep blue sea beheld 
 Through the light foliage of the terebinth. 
 The evening breath which from the Euxine steals. 
 Heard fluttering in the walnut branches stirred 
 By the cool Bosphorus — these for many an hour 
 They worship with unmoving eye, as joys 
 Even to the disembodied souls which sit 
 Upon the heaving waves of turf around. 
 And yet no Arab in the wilderness 
 
74 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 So loved his solitary palm, no Turk 
 His sunset-gilded cypress, as the Knight 
 That virgin Lily, gently looking up 
 From off the moonlit bay into his face, 
 An eye o'erflowed with spiritual love ! 
 
 And nought assisted more to raise his heart 
 Above his gloomy thoughts than this sweet flower. 
 Haunting his deep affections with a love 
 Serene and simple, while old happiness 
 Was daily gathering strength for its return. 
 In vain he called up mighty powers of will 
 And masculine resolve to lay the sprite ; 
 Still it returned, like waves upon the shore ; 
 And in his own despite he daily grew 
 A man of gentler thoughts and lighter heart. 
 
 But this new lightening of his spirit seemed 
 A pleasure not legitimately his. 
 And joy, a stranger long, was entertained 
 With almost terror, lest his penitence 
 Should thereby miss of its accomplishment, 
 And with suspicion which went far to abate 
 Its joyousness. But nature's yoke was on him, 
 Mild yet irrevocably fixed, and claimed 
 Over his fickle moods serenest sway, 
 A safe and pleasant empire, if he durst 
 Yield himself up to it without reserve. 
 
 This year, so chance was over-ruled, all things! 
 Conspired against his efforts to retrieve 
 His ancient sadness ; for the vernal months 
 With an elysian softness early stole 
 Into the vales, and earth and sky performed 
 Their genial functions with a gayer rite 
 And more abounding grace than they were wont. 
 And, for the first time since Sir Lancelot came. 
 
in.] THE BEAUTIFUL YEAR. 75 
 
 Now in this year the foreign cuckoo threw 
 His homeless cry into that hollow dell. 
 And never had the many songs of birds 
 The sylvan chantries so frequented, never 
 With choral harmonies responsive sent 
 From off the vale's two sides, alternating, 
 With such a festal celebration paid 
 To God their vernal service of sweet sound. 
 How vocal too was evening, when the spring 
 Came with a gift of balmy sliowers, which filled 
 The twilight with cool incense from the earth 
 And aromatic shoots, while in the rain 
 With scattered voices many a thrush prolonged 
 The vesper hymn, and in each pause the ear 
 Caught the low whispered undersong of leaves 
 Struck by the rain-drops, like the distant chords 
 Of harps whose sound the breezes intercept ! 
 
 And not in all the seven preceding years 
 Had the sweet woodland tapestries been flung 
 So separately forth in wild-flower webs. 
 Or with such plain distinction of the kinds, 
 And with a spotless broidery less marred 
 By earthy rain-drops. Or to other eyes 
 That long variety of flowers might seem. 
 As month by month they defiled o'er the ground, 
 A Flemish guild, wherein the several trades. 
 By banners known, or cognizances quaint. 
 In waves of colour sinuously float 
 Along the streets of Bruges. In kinds they came, 
 Lawful successions, leading mimic pomps 
 Through the tall grass or round the twisted roots ; 
 And with calm grace each company withdrew. 
 Like a soft cloud borne further by the breeze, 
 Before the straggling blooms which, in advance 
 
76 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 Of their own bands, seemed forward equerries 
 Of their procession coming into sight. 
 
 The doorway of the Hermitage looked out 
 Upon a sunny bank of hazel wood, 
 With moist rich veins of moorland turf between, 
 "Winding irriguously among tlie copse ; 
 And frequent openings showed of softest lawn, 
 Screened by the natural trellis of the boughs, 
 Which very homes of checquered sunshine seemed 
 All interspersed with lichen-spotted rocks 
 Whose crevices were bearded with wild thyme, 
 And cuckoo-plant in pendent threads o'erhung 
 With kindly veil the portals of the wren. 
 Mid the dark stems beneath whose twilight shade 
 It was too dark for grass, the woodland floor 
 A thin apparel of sweet herbs put on, 
 A plaited work of knotted tendrils, lined 
 With silky moss of dusky golden dye. 
 Which, gently bruised beneath the foot of one 
 Intruding through the copse, exhaled a scent 
 As though the earth had medicated been 
 With freshly moistened spice and odorous drugs. 
 And shelving slopes of broken stones were there, 
 Enclasped with filaments of rosy moss, 
 And chained with belts of ivy to the ground. 
 While o'er the whole as at a venture thrown, — 
 Whether a growth of earth or air might be 
 A doubt, when it was swimming in the breeze,— 
 A gossamer of emerald fibres spun, 
 With flowery points of vivid white besprent, — 
 The cross-wort with a delicate array 
 Of holy forms enough to have supplied 
 All nature were she bent on a crusade. 
 
 There on that bank Sir Lancelot might watch 
 
III.] THE BEAUTIFUL YEAE. 77 
 
 The flowery troops in pageant moveable, 
 Both as they came and as they disappeared. 
 
 First, like a flock of cliildren, purely white, 
 The snow-drops lead the van, while every breeze 
 Seems visibly to drift the lovely foam 
 Upon the knolls ; so sweetly do they take 
 Each mossy nook and arbour by surprise. 
 Then, as one gazes on the evening sky 
 And sees the stars in little flashes come 
 Each to its place, so on the vernal earth, 
 Mocking the eye, the yellow primrose starts, 
 Till, ere the doubting sight be yet convinced, 
 The wood is twinkling with a thousand eyes ; 
 And, by harmonious shading reconciled 
 With that low-lying atmosphere of stars, 
 The deep Lent-lilies glow among the flowers 
 Like constellations girt with lesser orbs. 
 Kext, and most loved, as seeming to restore 
 The snow-drops perished in their infancy, 
 Comes that aerial veil of bridal white, 
 The thick anemones, which rather seem 
 The south wind's breath to mortal eye made plain 
 Than droves of separate flowers. Ere they be passed 
 Begins the march, spring hath no pomp more fair, 
 Of hyacinths which ring their purple bells 
 Into the drowsy ear of fragrant May, 
 Most spiritual chimes which none can hear 
 But poets slumbering sweetly in the shade. 
 
 When these are gone how vacant is the green 
 Of the same sward, a smooth and wind-swept floor 
 Where, like the intervals of some bright pomp 
 By groups in holiday attire engrossed. 
 The sprinkled orchis wanders up and down 
 With lychnis tender-eyed, and Bethlehem's star 
 
78 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 Among the tufted spear-grass glimmering, 
 
 And, happy he who finds it ! alkanet 
 
 With its deep ocean blue and bearded leaves 
 
 With crisp and silvery prickles studded o'er, — 
 
 With the bird-primrose joined, the mealy plant, 
 
 Whose pale pink leaves with gilt effulgence glow. 
 
 Streamed from the eye which like a sunbeam sleeps 
 
 Concentered in the hollow of the flower. 
 
 Then the red honeysuckle sits aloft. 
 
 All like a maiden queen with robe of state, 
 
 In attitude of one enthroned, her train 
 
 In royal folds depending from the boughs : 
 
 Till, like the rippling light of distant sea 
 
 Divulged by flying sunbeam far away, 
 
 There comes a silent glittering o'er the earth, 
 
 The advent of the sylvan pimpernel ; 
 
 And, when the day is still, the greensward seems 
 
 With living glowworms tremblingly inflamed. 
 
 Or when the wind breathes softly up the brook 
 
 A myriad eyes are winking in the sun, 
 
 And flashing golden light from off the earth. 
 
 Then the proud foxgloves bear their crimson 
 wands 
 In solemn beauty o'er the summer woods, 
 Nor yet disdain the melancholy bees 
 Plaining perpetually within their bells. 
 And, as they fade, the feathery meadow-sweet, 
 With undulating censer prodigal. 
 Drugs the warm breezes with its potent breath, 
 Through all the leafy shrines ubiquitous. 
 And, last, from autumn's oozy ground there springs 
 The snowy blossom, of Parnassus named, 
 Which in its cup of pencilled porcelain 
 
III.] THE BEAUTIFUL YEAE. 79 
 
 Great Rome's pontifical insignia bears, 
 
 Five peacock's fans with tremulous green eyes ; 
 
 And great St. John's wort guards the priestly flower 
 
 Through the dark woods with iron-mottled dress 
 
 And ebon-headed mace, while frosty winds 
 
 Send the loose rabble of autumnal leaves 
 
 In picturesque confusion thus to close 
 
 The annual Procession of the Flowers. 
 
SIR LANCELOT. 
 
 BOOK IV. 
 THE JOUENEY. 
 
BOOK IV. 
 
 ♦ THE JOUKNEY. 
 
 Not when in glittering mail along the streets 
 
 Of Tarsus, conqueror in the tournament 
 
 Sir Lancelot reined in his Arab steed, — 
 
 Not when, with dreams of love and war entranced, 
 
 In the clear moonbeam by his tent he stood 
 
 That night, and saw cold-running Cjdnus sleep 
 
 Mid citron groves (the frigid stream that gave 
 
 A well-nigh mortal chill to Philip's son, 
 
 And laid the imperial Frederick in the tomb, 
 
 What time he expiated in crusade 
 
 His disobedience to the will of Kome, 
 
 In Venice humbled) while far off the Falls 
 
 Solemn disturbance made among the woods, 
 
 And snowy Taurus glimmered like a star, 
 
 Or some celestial beacon newly raised. 
 
 The moon outfacing on the throne of night, — 
 
 Not then when youth its pleasant firstfruits paid, 
 
 And manhood with the ways of men began 
 
 To deal, with sense of power and growing pride 
 
 And inward exultation, was the Knight 
 
 So blytlie, or by magnificence of thought 
 
 So loftily above the world sustained, 
 
 As when, a Penitent in sackcloth shirt 
 
 And pilgrim's mantle worn, the day and night 
 
 Came to him in that green and lonesome vale. 
 
 Firmer his step, and, as more happy now. 
 
84 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 So was he slower in his walk, and apt, 
 
 By pressing thoughts arrested, to stand still 
 
 For long together, bj his little bay 
 
 Or on the moors or in the shady groves, — 
 
 A pensive shadow, flitting now, now still : 
 
 Where'er the thought detained him there he stood. 
 
 The mysteries of self, which to the eye 
 Of conscience half alarmed, a lonely life, 
 Tedious expositor ! full oft unfolds 
 Twere vain to sing. Who hath the sounding line, 
 Prophet or bard, or haply both in one, 
 If union such be left, who hath the line 
 Wherewith to fathom the profound abyss, 
 Or height, if so it should be rather named, 
 Of speculation won in solitude ? 
 A lesson terrible to learn and long, 
 Dismal the school, magnificent the prize, 
 Is that concentrating of the faculties 
 Of heart and mind in loneliness acquired. 
 No throng of worldly objects breaks the array 
 Of silent thought ; no many-coloured life 
 Stands in the front of God and intercepts 
 The awful tokens of His Presence here ; 
 Nor cares benumb the sensibilities 
 Then quick to recognize the touch of Heaven 
 Wliere'er the solemn contact be vouchsafed, 
 Oft given, and oft unheeded, in the glare 
 And flying tumult of our outward lives, 
 Save when divine afflictions interpose, 
 And open Heaven in vision to the soul 
 By dropping darkness o'er the dazzling world. 
 
 Meanwhile tlie herd of lower faculties. 
 Of earthly fashion, slumber undisturbed. 
 No puzzling multitude of avenues 
 
TV.] THE JOURNEY. 85 
 
 Lead to the regal chambers of the soul ; 
 
 But one alone stands open, ever watched 
 
 By silence, or, which is a thing as still, 
 
 Tlie sounds of nature undisplaced by man. 
 
 And thus the soul before the Eye of God 
 
 Is bare and open, as the midnight plain 
 
 Lies vacant to the shining of the moon. 
 
 And those few powers of mind, which have been 
 
 shaped 
 In their original form as instruments 
 Of such transcending intercourse, become, 
 When used alone, of comprehensive reach 
 And more than mortal grasp. Even as the blind 
 For one dull organ gain a recompense 
 In the strange quickening of some other power, 
 In musical perception of sweet sounds. 
 Or in a marvellous discernment given 
 Unto the sense of touch ; so doth the soul, 
 Nurtured in thoughtful solitude, perceive 
 Its nobler faculties thus magnified 
 By concentration and adoring prayer, 
 Whose energy is husbanded, nor lost 
 In spendthrift joys by fickle sense pursued. 
 Or poor delights of thought which gilds but earth, 
 And sings in lazy bowers of war and love. 
 And than such vain excitement seeks no more. 
 
 For seven long years Sir Lancelot now had been 
 The mate of solitude, and I would fain. 
 In unambitious verse as best beseems 
 The thoughts I must encounter on my path, 
 And names employ of dreadest sanctity. 
 Somewhat of this interior life depict. 
 By language hardly compassed, yet the soul. 
 Through feeling and the weakness of my words 
 
8Q SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 Informed in part, the rest may well divine. 
 
 Unwise is he who in the calm of age 
 Lightly regards the doings of his youth, 
 And, with false wisdom meting out the past, 
 Counts it but as the memory of a land 
 Through which he ti-avelled in his way ; but far, 
 Far more unwise is he who, being young, 
 Conceives a disesteem of youth, affects 
 To speak dishonourably of its powers. 
 And to deny that, in its changeful moods. 
 There dwells creative order that evokes 
 The spiritual fabric of our lives 
 From that wild sea of impulse, which may boast. 
 Though hard to find, a true philosophy. 
 
 How joyously the waters of the world 
 With many murmurs sound about our youth. 
 As o'er the haven bar it shoots, and turns 
 Eastward or westward with uncertain will ! 
 But, after leaving port, full oft there comes 
 In the first night a silent hand which gives 
 The helm a new direction, and at dawn. 
 Sole evidence of change ! we see the towers 
 And lighthouse of our childhood's harbour, touched 
 With sunbeams in an unexpected place. 
 
 Nought is there so minute, no wish so weak. 
 But at that season it may change our course 
 And shift our stars; nay, sometimes it may chance 
 A dream will turn the rudder of our lives. 
 
 Thus in the heat of his chivalric youth 
 Sir Lancelot had dreamed a vivid dream. 
 Which gave some colour to his after-years. 
 Down in the valley of the Drave the tents 
 Were pitched in sunset's eye, while to the west 
 The opening gorge with such resplendent dower 
 
IV.] . THE JOURNEY. 87 
 
 Of myriad hues was filled, as best beseemed 
 
 The climbing road whose end was Italy, 
 
 The paradise of European dreams. 
 
 And goal of envious tribes. Sir Lancelot, 
 
 By what thoughts urged young love alone may tell. 
 
 Fled from the noisy wassail of the camp. 
 
 And up the sounding dell of Siser went, 
 
 The Brave's romantic tributary ; there 
 
 The moonless night came on him mid the pines. 
 
 The mountains towered above, or rather hung, 
 
 And in the luminous darkness seemed to grow 
 
 To supernatural bulk, and to contract 
 
 A frown each moment deepening : to the south 
 
 A crescent Alp rose up with fractured cove. 
 
 In some contortion of the deluge rent 
 
 And disembowelled, or in olden time 
 
 The mouth of subterraneous flame, whose lips. 
 
 Chafed by the fiery tongue, had fallen in. 
 
 A sheeny glacier on the creviced slope 
 
 Its icy talons fixed, and down the hill 
 
 With annual progress like a tortoise crawled. 
 
 Doubtless is crawling now, while summer noon 
 
 And its relaxing ether smooth the path, 
 
 A path more slowly travelled in the frosts 
 
 Of winter, yet incessantly pursued. 
 
 By night and day the varying seasons round. 
 
 The feet of destiny are not more slow 
 
 Than that mute creature ; haply not so sure. 
 
 If the calm intercession of the Saints, 
 
 Or prayer of living Church, arrest her steps. 
 
 The white-robed mountain shed a wild wan light 
 In lieu of the absent moon, such light mayhap 
 As earth to other worlds may be ordained 
 Itself to shed. A thousand glittering stars 
 
88 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 Were braided in the pinetops or impaled 
 Upon the spearlike leaves, and with the trees 
 Appeared upon the low night- wind to sway. 
 And with inwoven dances, such as were 
 By feet of Delian maidens once performed, 
 When they set forth the wanderings of their isle 
 In mythic steps to tinkling citherns timed, 
 The fireflies played around the pillared stems. 
 And bore about their lanterns of green light. 
 Advancing and receding while the eye 
 Measured by them the depth of sylvan gloom. 
 And one small globe, in purple darkness set 
 Like emeralds, with a statelier measure wheeled 
 Over the foaming Siser, which o'erleaped 
 With gleamy flash a sheer and dizzy rock ; 
 While with the breeze that stirred the withered 
 
 leaves 
 Cool gusts of incense crept about the wood. 
 
 There did Sir Lancelot sleep, his ample tent 
 Of leaning pinetops was, made fast with stars. 
 He slighted not the fragrant floor of earth. 
 Nor feared the innocuous dews of summer night. 
 He sank to sleep, while images swam round 
 Of dearest import : to his eye there came 
 The hall at Heversham, and rushy fields 
 That seaward sloped ; and in his ear the Kent 
 Accustomed murmurs made among the boughs, 
 While now and then with light and sudden splash 
 A wakeful stag would bound across the stream, 
 And seek a lair among the dewy fern : 
 And with Ethilda's name upon his lips 
 The Knight passed onward to the fields of sleep. 
 Where a sweet vision waited his approach. 
 
 His eye, so seemed it in his slumber, strove 
 
IV.] THE JOURNEY. 89 
 
 To pierce the gloomy pinewood where it stretched, 
 
 In misty length, a single sombre nave ; 
 
 While, one behind another ranged, the rings 
 
 Of fireflies swung in circles of green light. 
 
 Like rocking lamps suspended from a roof. 
 
 There suddenly among the boughs the wind 
 
 Breathed a last sigh, and with it swept away 
 
 Those living stars, and all was silence round, 
 
 The silentness of an expecting dream. 
 
 Then at the close of that cathedral nave 
 
 A white and radiant vapour softly grew. 
 
 Dazzling and formless, which with silvery gleam 
 
 Lay like a tremulous pavement round the stems. 
 
 Far off, resplendent as an Altar-piece 
 
 Illumined from behind, a Figure rose 
 
 Of beauty such as art hath ne'er conceived, 
 
 The Virgin Mother with her Infant Son. 
 
 Upon her countenance, rounded like the moon, 
 
 An orb of open features, was impressed 
 
 The secret of her fortunes, which transcend 
 
 The loftiest surmise of created mind. 
 
 The sweet maternal instinct there divulged 
 
 In deep impassioned silence, to whose depth 
 
 Each lineament the while serenely lends 
 
 An utterance almost vocal, then appeared 
 
 Calmed and arrested by profounder thoughts, 
 
 And by the intense tranquillity of bliss 
 
 Brooding in chaste enjoyment on itself. 
 
 And yet not wholly wanting was the look 
 
 Of pensive self-collection that dispersed 
 
 On the celestial seeming of her face 
 
 A beautiful timidity, through which 
 
 Her mortal birth o'er every feature reigned 
 
 Triumphant, and harmoniously o'erruled 
 
90 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 The ineffable aspect which her heavenly lot 
 Upon her face transferred, where extasj. 
 Divinely glowing, by remembrances 
 Of grief was deeply moved, yet not displaced. 
 
 But in that Infant Saviour there appeared 
 Nought of celestial origin involved 
 In His fair features, where the loveliness 
 Of mortal childhood singly was diffused :•— 
 Yet such a Child as might in Sanzio's soul 
 Have dawned upon his seeking thoughts, and filled 
 His beautiful conception to the brim. 
 
 Smitten with love, where there was nought to check 
 The bold adventure, no monition given 
 Which might retard its unchastised approach, 
 Sir Lancelot gazed in rapture on the Child. 
 Worship of love he proffered, without fear, 
 And felt no fear, all seemed so beautiful. 
 Straightway the vision stirred : the Mother hid 
 The Child, too long, too tenderly beheld, 
 And a dim trouble up the surface passed 
 Of that bright vaporous pavement spread around, 
 Like the black curls of wind that crisp the lake. 
 Anon the sheeted silver smoothed itself. 
 And winding music played about the wood 
 With ringing clearness, like the concord made 
 By stars that slide with music in their grooves 
 All day and night across the vocal spheres. 
 
 From out the vapour with a tuneful noise 
 Arose the Maiden Mother, with her head 
 Star-crowned, her feet upon the subject globe, 
 The writhing serpent bruised beneath her heel, 
 Herself by grace assumed unto a throne 
 And neighbourhood unspeakable. Let verse 
 Seek not for craft of language to declare 
 
IV.] THE JOURNEY. 91 
 
 The seeming of the Woman glorified, 
 
 The mortal who was Mother of our God, — 
 
 Him only, singly worshipped evermore. 
 
 Singly, with equal glory to the Three ! 
 
 And underneath the globe was laid a tomb. 
 
 O'er which the twelve Apostles bending gazed. 
 
 Interpreting the marvel of the flowers. 
 
 The white and speckless lilies, that broke forth 
 
 And momently grew, budded, flowered, and swung 
 
 Their waxen censers in the vacant tomb. 
 
 Guiding the eyes of nations and of times 
 
 Aloft the Virgin pointed to her Son, 
 
 In palpable Divinity enthroned, 
 
 Yet lacking not one token of that birth 
 
 His creature was elected to confer. 
 
 Enough : such visions were familiar then, 
 And to the spirit of that age akin. 
 Mingling the uncertain with the true, while yet 
 They ministered to real works of grace. 
 Enough that Lancelot from that day forth, 
 In the true knightly fashion of the times. 
 Was sworn a serf of Mary, with a vow 
 Made inw^ardly, and worshipping full oft 
 With worship falling short and frustrated 
 By youthful inconsistencies, below 
 That high devotion which belongs of right 
 Unto the majesty of Mary, queen 
 Of heaven, and empress of the Sacred Heart, — 
 Yet worship such as sanctified his life. 
 And quietly detained him near to God, 
 Such worship as infallibly secures 
 Its purity to youth, or to old age 
 The placid harbour of repentant love. 
 
 Now in his mountain harbour, in the calm 
 
92 SIR LANCELOT. [BOOK 
 
 Of sheltered solitude, he loved to muse 
 Upon the Mother-Maid, nor sought to pierce 
 With bold enquiry tliat mysterious ring, 
 Where she is sphered apart from all the lives 
 Of us her fellow mortals, a reserve 
 Of honourable thought to her assigned, 
 Special, as is the blessing which our lips 
 In careful reverence couple with her name. 
 Enough that round her starry throne are stored 
 The precious treasures of re^leeming grace, 
 Which grow beneath her hands, and multiply 
 In miracles of mercy ; and enough 
 That easier access, so her Son hath willed, 
 Is nowhere granted to the sighs and tears 
 Of those for whom He bled upon the Cross ; 
 Enough that Mary hath become a part 
 Of the dear law of grace,— an aqueduct, 
 Strong and far-reaching, on all shores and times 
 With prudent prodigality to turn 
 The torrents of divine compassion, once 
 Poured forth on Calvary, — an ordinance 
 Pervading all the ways of God, — a truth 
 Laid deep in the foundations of the faith, 
 And part of its integrity, — a power 
 Which whoso slights shall rue it evermore. 
 O Mystery to Christian souls endeared ! 
 O chaste Virginity so sweetly crowning 
 Maternal Love ! what wonder that thou art 
 A joy to contemplate from age to age, 
 Such blending of all purities as draws 
 Unto itself the countless hearts of men, 
 And once drew God to take a Human Heart ? 
 
 And yet, not resting here, Sir Lancelot's love 
 Went sounding onward. With a feeble flight, — 
 
rV.l THE JOURNEY. 9S 
 
 A feebleness that daily gathered strength 
 As he was more and more assoiled from sin — 
 He tried the further depths of grace divine, 
 Further and further, by the upward light 
 Of that pure Mystery conducted thither. 
 Till so from love of Mary to the love 
 Of Jesus he adventured, while he learned 
 Through her transcending of&ce to explore 
 The depth of that descent which Love essayed, 
 When Christ from everlasting glory came, 
 And was incarnate, by His creature helped, — 
 O rare compassion ! most dear design ! — 
 With Veil of Flesh and Body Virginal. • 
 
 Yet, self- disdaining sinner as he was, 
 An abject Penitent, he rather sought 
 To find the glory of the Saviour's Throne 
 By the sweet moonlight of that lesser truth : 
 Unwisely, for Celestial Love is found 
 Man's neighbour, not in circuits to be reached. 
 But like an Angel cleaving to his side. 
 He that loves Jesus must already love 
 The Mother whom He loved Himself with love 
 Surpassing words ; and he who truly loves 
 The Mother hath already shrined the Son 
 In his heart's best affections, far above 
 All other loves, beyond all love of her. 
 Nay, our dear Lord will sometimes seem to hold ^ 
 Our love of Him as homage less direct 
 Than that which at His Mother's feet we lay. 
 Either to teach us to what marvellous height 
 He hath assumed His creature, or to show 
 To what abyss His condescensions reach. 
 Thus in his love of Mary had the Knight 
 Gained what he purposed only to approach, 
 
94 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOE 
 
 And needed not to seek the Son beyond 
 
 Who with His Mother was already found, 
 
 And to that Mother led the soul at first. 
 
 Yet such to his abasement had appeared 
 
 The lowlier wisdom, while through homage paid 
 
 Unto the Virgin Mother of the Lord 
 
 The Lord Himself was sought, and through that way 
 
 Love seemed to climb an easier ascent, 
 
 And even faith more sweetly venturous 
 
 Appeared, and Heaven far more within his reach. 
 
 While in past years he sojourned in the east 
 Something of a mysterious chance, heaven-sent, 
 His life had there encountered, whence he drew 
 This faith, — that he who would exorcise sin 
 Must strive by meditative power to place 
 Before his eyes in darkness and in light 
 The gracious aspect of his Suffering Lord, 
 An Apparition facing him all hours, 
 As palpably to tenant the blank air. 
 As if he saw a moving Crucifix 
 Meeting his eye with shadowy regards, 
 Such as on Peter rested in the hall. 
 Which, like a sunrise, look all sin away. 
 In lowliness to this most solemn task 
 He now betook himself, unaided there 
 By bodily similitudes which lift 
 The earth-attracted heart above the earth. 
 And by a monitory impulse raise 
 Our difficult devotions, and sustain 
 Them raised, until they freely breathe the air 
 Of faith's sublimest region : such supports 
 In loving wisdom doth the Church accord, 
 To him in that lone valley not vouchsafed. 
 But simple nature with maternal skillj 
 
IV.] THE JOURNEY. 95 
 
 A willing fellow-worker, might supply, 
 Whether of knotted growths that had forestalled 
 Device of art, or pliant matter shaped 
 With facile toil, an image of the Cross, 
 Which he had reared upon his lowly cell, 
 And on two points which earliest sunrise struck 
 And latest sunset left, and in those bowers 
 And oratories of the open air 
 Which he frequented most, and there he taught 
 The indocile ivy to restrain its wreaths, 
 And with an unambitious clasp to sign 
 The Cross upon the bosom of the wood. 
 
 With such appliance armed, he bent his mind 
 In long continuous musing on that Form 
 And grave benignant Aspect, which he strove 
 By power of inward habit to project 
 Into the unpeopled light and vacant gloom, 
 Outwardly realized, which, like the Ark 
 Of wandering Israel, moving or at rest. 
 In permanent companionship might bless, 
 And as It blessed, absolve and canonize 
 The long outgoings of his months and years. 
 
 The help of speech, and that access of power 
 Which meditation gains from utterance, 
 And vocal plaints from time to time indulged, 
 He was denied, a penance self-imposed. 
 And meekly borne. So with intense desire 
 And inward recollection now he strove 
 By recitation of the blessed Creeds 
 To imprint a lively image of our Lord 
 Upon his spirit. With unflagging strain 
 And unrelaxing grasp of thought he held 
 His mind long poised upon each wondrous Clause, 
 Each gracious lineament of saving truth, 
 
96 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK j 
 
 Uatil the countenance of the Written Faith J 
 
 Broke forth in silent voices, and each word j 
 
 Sang like a trumpet in his inmost soul : 'i 
 
 And with the ringing sound his fleshy heart 1 
 
 Glowed like a furnace, till the Tjpe of Him i 
 
 Whose love it echoed was annealed thereon. j 
 
 Even so, when on the Tuscan Apennine I 
 
 Descending autumn down the beechwooi slope | 
 
 Her russet mantle trailed, Sfc. Francis knelt. i 
 
 His spirit hung in steadfast rapture far i 
 
 Above the atmosphere of vocal prayer, ; 
 
 While 'twixt the beamy Seraph's folded wings ^ 
 
 He saw the Sacred Effigy depending ; 5 
 
 And from the gracious Wounds, five Wells of health 5 
 To stanch the sensual issues of our sins, 
 
 There came five rays of light which was not bora i 
 
 Of sun or moon, but from that Orb detached i 
 
 That sheds on Sion streets eternal day ; — '^ 
 
 The city undisclosed, whose outlines faint : 
 
 Tremble with indistinct pulsation now, I 
 
 Like sunset quivering on the clouds of night, J 
 
 Upon the bosom of the earthly Church. : j 
 
 Those starry pencils on his fleshly frame, i 
 
 By cleansing fast and vigil now sublimed, \ 
 
 Haply by love, too, partially transfDrmed, | 
 
 As, when the Judgment-Fire is passed, all flesh 1 
 
 Shall be, — played far a little while, and left, 1 
 
 By their sharp radiance copied to the life, I 
 
 The Saviour's awful Wounds. Such solemn power ! 
 Imagination on the bodily limbs 
 
 Usurps, concurring with intensest love i 
 
 And long unbroken singleness of thouorht, \ 
 
 And with miraculous effort outwardly ! 
 
 Keveals the habitual aspect of the heart, 1 
 
IV.] THE JOURNEY. 97 
 
 As grace and nature in the work combine. 
 Thus, hy a Iiundred witnessed, Francis came 
 Down from Alvernia, like a vessel sealed, 
 And stigmatized in fashion as liis Lord. 
 
 Anotlier means Sir Lancelot took to win 
 The vision that he sought, a means well known 
 To every generation of the Saints — 
 By meditating livelong days and niglits 
 On our Lord's Passion. Step by step he went 
 Along that lload of Sorrows, till he seemed 
 Even in the boldness of his pity moved 
 To glide into our Saviour's phice, and toil 
 Beneath the salutary Burden, laid 
 Upon the Guiltless for the guilty's sake. 
 dearest Fount of sadness and of weeping! 
 How few there are in all this busy world 
 That turn aside to drink thy sacred stream I 
 Was ever grief like that ? Was ever wo© 
 Divine as His, so blessedly endeared 
 To every human heart whose mortal pains 
 Additional fulfilments of our curse 
 Have been, darkening the earth? Oh ancient Grief! 
 The countless ages cry a blessing on thee ! 
 From out the depths of poverty where dwell 
 The Unnumbered, the Neglected, comes the song 
 Of sorrow that hath broken forth in hymns 
 Exultingly : and from the high-born, kings, 
 And peers, and palatines, and famous minds. 
 And godly warriors, sounds in stately march 
 The music of their world-renouncing vows. 
 
 O grief of griefs ! with what celestial love 
 Inflamed, we ponder on that Holy Week, 
 Within whose seven diurnal rounds compressed 
 Lies the whole sum and substance of the world, 
 7 
 
98 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 The measure of all time, the ultimate crown 
 
 Of human destinies and Love Divine, 
 
 All, all in one completion centring deep, 
 
 The Star that through the Passion gleams in sign 
 
 Beneficent, the ever-blessed Cross ! 
 
 Thus with determinate effort he retrieved 
 What memory in her faithful keeping held 
 In depths a mother's words alone can reach, 
 The order of those Sacred Woes, and form 
 Of their procession, by the Spirit shown 
 To man fourfold from four celestial towers 
 Of contemplation, movingly pourtrayed, 
 And with pathetic variations touched, 
 Touclied and illumed, by blest Evangelists. 
 
 Yet, craving every help, the more to prop 
 The unsteady balance of an earthly mind, 
 Upon the western slope of that lone hill 
 Whereon lie dwelt, above the valley raised 
 And from the heights detached, he for himself 
 A Kreuzberg made. A difficult ascent 
 He chose, a steep and natural stair time-worn 
 Amid the jutting stones, and to the wind 
 And rains with such a bleak exposure laid 
 As had repelled the meagre skin of moss 
 Which strove to creep upon the scalps of rock. 
 And now upon that rugged slope did he 
 Choose fourteen eminences, whence to frame 
 As many Stations of remembrance, havens 
 Where thought, and with thought prayer, might 
 
 disembark 
 In its too rapid voyage, and on the capes 
 Might worship of that monumental shore. 
 Which he was coasting with exceeding fear. 
 And, at the Stations, to the rocks he tied 
 
IV.] THE JOURNEY. 99 
 
 A simple Cross, erect save at the spots 
 Which should recall the sinking of our Lord 
 Beneath His Burden; there he laid the Siga 
 Prostrate upon the stone, and with a cord 
 Of supple ivy bound it in its place. 
 And at the summit in a fissure grew 
 A blasted holly, from whose trunk he cut 
 The withered boughs, but two he left, alive 
 And branching from tlie stem on either side, 
 So that it stood upon that slab of rock, 
 Facing the sunset, as a living Cross. 
 
 There at each Station daily on his knees 
 He wept ; for to the Kniglit the gift of tears 
 In like abundant measure had been given 
 With him, Assisi's Saint, whose streaming eyes 
 Gushed out with water for the holy Law 
 Of Jesus slighted among men, as though, 
 Invested with such function, they were called 
 To be vicarious fountains of remorse 
 For all mankind, and, ever on the verge 
 Of blindness trembling, only wept the more,- 
 And still to him the sunshine was ensured 
 By marvel, so men deemed, till near his death, 
 If death such calm translation might be named. 
 
 And not displeased was he fall oft to find 
 Upon each tightly-fastened Cross the wool 
 Left by the intrusive sheep, whose presence there 
 To his thought desecrated not the place. 
 But left appropriate tribute on the Sign 
 Of the true Lamb, as men should lay their sins 
 Upon the Cross, as though from servitude 
 Might those inferior creatures be redeemed. 
 Whose snowy fleeces on the mountain side 
 Gleam, like the righteousness that shall displace 
 
100 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 Our guilt, and whose most patient wrongs and pains 
 
 Elected are to bear about in type, 
 
 In language of a plaintive import preached 
 
 Oft to dull ears, the Passion of our Lord. 
 
 There, on that steep by touching symbols made 
 A sanctuary, did he now confront 
 That history of woe, which is not woe 
 To sinful man, but everlasting weal. 
 Thus, on its melancholy sweetness fed, 
 And by the pressure of the holy Creeds 
 Upon his inward spirit, and by hope, 
 And faith unfeigned, and assiduous love, 
 The personal image of our Saviour grew 
 Before his eyes, a Presence on the air 
 Depicted, and with self-sufficing light 
 Upon the field of darkness silently 
 Irradiate ; such a type as haunted once 
 The bashful intellect of Christian Art 
 In mountainous Umbria, when before the face 
 Of re-awakening paganism she fled, 
 Taking amid the barren Apennines 
 Those Moulds and Aspects of a tender grace 
 Divinely pure, — the Mother and the Son, 
 The Desert-Preacher, and the lineaments 
 Of the great Twelve, with Paul and Barnabas 
 Born out of time, — from ancient days received, 
 And in the western family preserved / 
 
 Of deep traditions, while the east ran wild 
 In forms debased. In exile over these 
 With reverential homage Christian Art 
 Brooded with many a tear, and mid those rocks 
 Died of neglect, or haply seemed to die, 
 Surviving still, a sleeper in the caves 
 "Where truths withdrawn await another hour. 
 
IV.] THE JOURNEY. 101 
 
 Such Image now Sir Lancelot beheld 
 Fronting him day and night ; such blessed Typa 
 Was his, a benediction evermore. 
 And at all seasons, whether day-break came, 
 And on the foreheads of tlie eastern hills 
 Ran over with an unction of sweet light, 
 As from a cup filled slowly, or the peaks, 
 In evening's downy purple riclily garbed. 
 Seemed from tlieir daylight nearness to retire, 
 This Pictured Faith was present to his eye. 
 But, chiefly and most calmly, was it prized 
 In the cold quiet of autumnal days, 
 When by the leaf-choked streams he took his road, 
 Or the dim-curtained afternoons of mist, 
 Of sobbing mist and intermitting rain. 
 Whene'er tlie silent-weeping woods all day 
 With melancholy dripping on crisp leaves 
 Foster a pleasant sadness, and there come 
 Sounds, as of children wakening from a dream, 
 Of raindrops soaking through the withered herbs, 
 Or creatures searching for their holes, obscured 
 By some accession of decay, or shower 
 Of yellow leaves in silent circle dropped, 
 Each underneath the bough on which it grew. 
 
 Environed therefore with such gracious aids, 
 And with such spiritual furtiierance now 
 Abetted, was it strange that lie should feel 
 Deep joy, almost sufficiency, therein ? 
 Yet such his lowliness of temper, such 
 The habitual self-abasement of his mind, 
 The very rising of a happy thought 
 Disquieted his covetous research 
 Of sorrow, and his love of gloomy fears. 
 Sought as a duty, mercifully foiled. 
 
102 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 He was a suitor of sad thoughts, but still 
 
 Nature was glad around him, and the peace 
 
 Of God was in his heart, and every day 
 
 Brought some new pleasure to the birth, some joy 
 
 That stood more clear of such incumbrances 
 
 As interposed before ; and many a time 
 
 Was he a prisoner taken unawares 
 
 In his own gladness, by a pleasant guile 
 
 Entrapped : even as a melancholy man, 
 
 Who with a lovely child may walk abroad, 
 
 With his own griefs too much in sympathy, 
 
 Or by the torture of unsettled thought 
 
 Abstracted from the soothing images 
 
 Of nature close at hand ; yet when he sees 
 
 How every face of every passer-by 
 
 Kelaxes into pleasure, shares at length 
 
 The general sunshine, and pursues his way 
 
 Caressing his sweet satellite, and full 
 
 Of gladness such as is the food of tears. 
 
 Such change now grew upon him as he faia 
 Would disallow, although by what designs 
 To counteract it he perceived not yet. 
 So much he saw, that he must first dislodge 
 That sense of home and localized repose 
 Which even to that poor wilderness attached 
 And scene of lone self-cliastisement, whose forms 
 Were by embodied memories now endeared, 
 And by the friendly aspect of the fields 
 Worn, when the heart and earth appear to come 
 To mutual understanding, through long years 
 Associate, and vicissitudes of lot, — 
 While things around, outgrowing their cold charm 
 Of novelty, their vacant freedom seem 
 To abjure, till tliey are peopled, like the isles 
 
IV.] the'journey. 103 
 
 Or happy fields where fable placed the shades, 
 
 With all our past existence bright and dark. 
 
 Then, with strange joy that life had yet to show 
 
 A field of self-denial unexplored, 
 
 With firm resolve he left the Ash-tree Cell, 
 
 As the eighth summer of his sojourn there 
 
 Gave early autumn leave to reign by night 
 
 O'er that green realm which she still ruled by day. 
 
 On Lammas Day at morn Sir Lancelot went, 
 Turning his back upon the quiet port, 
 Whereat the damage of his soul had been 
 Repaired witli such a noiseless skill. He climbed 
 The moor with hurried steps as in distrust 
 Of his own purpose, for he felt how much 
 He left behind in leaving that calm vale. 
 Onward he mounted with an obstinate gaze 
 Fixed on the blank blue sky, as though his heart 
 Had sworn an oath unto itself that he 
 Would send no backward lingering looks. But still. 
 The more he strove to cast his thoughts in front. 
 The more tliey lagged beliind. The very forma 
 Of the old places faced him as he walked. 
 The sister ash-trees and the low-browed cell. 
 The well-known aspect of its open door, 
 Which with a greeting of mute cognizance 
 Met his returning eye, the church-like breath 
 Of frankincense that ruled within from boughs 
 Of withered pine, the lily on her bay 
 Dimpling in nature's solitary eye 
 The lucid waters with faint flashing light. 
 The Crosses on the Kreuzberg with the wool 
 Left by the sheep flocks fluttering in tlie breeze. 
 Like the last leaves of autumn, — all came round 
 And stood before him, palpable and clear 
 
104. SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 As he well knew his backward-looking sight 
 Could yet encounter them. But with a speed 
 Such knowledge only quickened, up the hill 
 He strained, and some few footsteps interposed 
 A ridge between the valley and himself; 
 And then Sir Lancelot turned to look beliind. 
 The vacant waste of cold fresh waves that meet 
 The morning gaze of him who yesternight 
 Slept, by the crescent lights of some huge port 
 Embraced, could bring a not more sad surprise 
 Than that new landscape wliich he now beheld. 
 His eyes, that teemed with such sweet images 
 And household forms in vivid groups, now fell 
 Upon a sunny slope of verdant moor. 
 With rocky slabs of azure grey, whereon 
 The sun and shower with emulous intent 
 Bright maps of yellow lichen had designed, 
 And sailing low with flight that almost brushed 
 The grass, a buzzard-cock with creaking wings 
 And melancholy whistle swept along. 
 
 And now two loitering hours were gone, consumed 
 In frequent halts, before the Knight came down 
 The western spur of Kirkstone, on whose slope 
 A little hamlet stood, securely wedged 
 Between two hills ; a place it was that seemed 
 Half houses and half foliage, interspersed 
 "With such sweet skill that one might almost doubt 
 Whether the human habitations preyed 
 Upon the original forest, or the wood 
 Encroached upon the village, such an air 
 Of peace there was and natural solitude. 
 
 And calmly rose in curling volumes blue 
 The reeling spires of smoke, and to a stream 
 Of upper wind ascending, they were curved, 
 
IV.] THE JOURNEY. 105 
 
 And, melting in the sunbeams, faded off, 
 
 Dissoh-ed in odours vague of burning peat. 
 
 And to the Kniglit, a norlliern born, no scent 
 
 More delicately grateful e'er could wrap 
 
 His sense in livelier memories of the past. 
 
 For eight long penal years no fires of man 
 
 Had cheered him, with their tale so softly told 
 
 Of social bliss, and quiet histories 
 
 Of wedded hearts and f^iithful loves obscure. 
 
 And now witli thankful spirit he inhaled 
 
 The unexpected fragrance, like a man 
 
 Whose memory some most pleasant thouglit eludes 
 
 Long time, and meets him at a sudden turn 
 
 In far-off lands, a pilgrim like iiimself. 
 
 That morning smoke ! what depths did it unlock 
 Of childhood, by the pressure of stern years 
 Forcibly closed, or by the chill of age 
 Congealed, and wintry selfishness ! What days 
 Of boyish plans to fish in distant tarns. 
 To rifle some chance brood of eaglets found 
 By shepherd boy, or steal the wild swati's eggs, 
 When through the half-awakened villages 
 The early peat-smoke with the cold bright air 
 Mingled its pleasant incense as he rode. 
 All in his mother's life-time, — memory clung, 
 To later things with less tenacious hold ; — 
 All rose upon his mind and gently shook. 
 As morning shakes the dew-drops in the wood, 
 The depth of feeling, with a power as calm 
 As spring when at the bottom of the streams 
 She bids the long-haired plants anoint their locks 
 With lustrous verdure for her bridal morn. 
 
 Ah ! not untruthful is the wondrous light 
 Wherein the soul abides, with noblest thoughts 
 
106 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 Begirt, that wait their hour of utterance, 
 
 When Memory with Imagination sits, 
 
 Twin monarchs, throned upon the quiet mind : 
 
 Even as the rising moon and setting sun 
 
 Reign over no disparted realm, but each 
 
 Fills the whole circuit of the heavens with light 
 
 Peculiarly its own, and yet so merged 
 
 In mutual government, the very sun 
 
 In moonlight sets, the moon in sunshine climbs. 
 
 And not untruthful too, for all its sweetness, 
 
 Is that illumination which converts 
 
 The soul into a silent fairy-land 
 
 By sleight of memory, when the happy Past 
 
 Is with the Present gracefully involved. 
 
 So to one wandering in the tarnished woods 
 
 Beneath the bright autumnal moon, the boughs. 
 
 Half-stripped, appear in May's imperfect leaves 
 
 Of lucid green but just attired ; the orb 
 
 Restoring, while it hides their present hue, 
 
 That old transparent colouring of the spring. 
 
 Such double office when the memory fills. 
 
 Confusing times and places, who shall say 
 
 Whether it be the Present that illumes 
 
 The Past, or that same Past which is the moon 
 
 Of the fair Present ? Such perplexity 
 
 Of joy, half extricated from the shade 
 
 Of sadness, now beset Sir Lancelot's mind. 
 
 And solving this sweejt doubt he took his way. 
 
 Among the closed and silent cottages 
 He went, much wondering at the novel sight, 
 Till on the air there rose a joyous chant, 
 A treble of thin childish voices, stealing 
 Upon the quiet place and through the wood 
 Like the faint murmur of a brook dispersed, 
 
IV.] THE JOURNEY. 107 
 
 Mastered by rustling leaves and sighing airs. 
 
 Thus, by the music guided, he arrived 
 
 Where o'er a wall a drooping wych-elm hung 
 
 And roofed full lialf the road, which suddenly 
 
 Dipped down a steep descent, and there he fouud 
 
 A beautiful procession winding by. 
 
 The Guild of August in its old array. 
 
 The countrymen in holiday attire. 
 
 And dames in Sunday ki riles, and a troop, 
 
 Chief actors they, of little boys and girls 
 
 Bearing religious emblems, marched along 
 
 To celebrate their Loaf-Mass at the shrine 
 
 Of sweet St. Catherine by the silver mere, 
 
 With Host of ripest and selected ears 
 
 Of that year's corn, its happy first-fruits, made. 
 
 A fragrant basket of the new-won hay. 
 
 Amid those hills in early autumn won, 
 
 They bore in front, and wands of braided rush 
 
 With wild flowers filleted, and Crosses three 
 
 In simple thought of pastoral art devised. 
 
 One with a flower-like wreath of marvellous plumes 
 
 And radiant feathers trimmed, from wondrous lands 
 
 Beyond the sea by one far- travelled brought 
 
 For his betrothed, by her more fitly given 
 
 For such good end than used for personal pride. 
 
 Another was there all of virgin white. 
 
 Circled with one live twig of leafy vine 
 
 That neither too much hid nor too much showed 
 
 The gleaming outline of the symbol dear ; 
 
 No fruitage grew depending from the stalk, 
 
 For He who hung upon that Tree of Life 
 
 Himself was fruit, and other needed none. 
 
 The third more like a natural growth of earth 
 
 Appeared, with cup-moss overgrown, and crust 
 
108 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 Of beautiful green tilings akin to moss. 
 Then followed many a bright an<l gaudy show 
 And quaint device significant, and most 
 Fluttered with dangling chains and knotted rush 
 In honour, doubtless, of St. Peter's Chains 
 Of which the Church memorial makes that day. 
 
 Onward they marched; the weak-voiced choir still 
 sang 
 The Benedicite for rural wealtli, 
 For that year's vigorous growth of sappy wood, 
 For new-won hay and promise of the corn. 
 Sweetly it rose, though feebly, for 'twas ruled 
 That they alone who had not toiled should sing. 
 In truth a goodly sight it was, and type 
 To make men wisely sa<l, to see the feefe 
 Of children tottering with a lofty Cross 
 Of weight beyond their own, and seeking aid, 
 Like souls that stay themselves upon the Church, 
 Their hands within their mothers' locked, to bear 
 Their honourable burdens to the lake. 
 
 Still on the selfsame spur of Kirkstone lives 
 The ancestral custom, from its day displaced 
 Insensibly through lapse of time, or act 
 Of those unweeting of its ancient form. 
 Still is that flowery chain of olden time 
 By pressure of long centuries unsnapped ; 
 And I would pray, that have good right to pray, 
 A foreigner adopted to the hearths 
 Of that fair town and freedom of the hills, 
 That, from the troubled centre of the land 
 By nature cast apart, her sons may long 
 With simpler wants more readily obey 
 The instincts of a simpler faith, and live 
 In the calm light of cheerful usages, 
 
IV.] THE JOURNEY. 109 
 
 And rites and truths of happy ancient days ! 
 
 O'ercome by thoughts, where pain acutely strove 
 With joy, Sir Lancelot stayed behind to weep. 
 Onward the pageant swept ; no turning eye 
 Witnessed liis presence at the village pomp ; 
 For all, both liearts and eyes, were forward bent 
 To gray St. Catherine's on Winander's shore. 
 And, when the querulous voices of the band 
 Now died far off, he left the road and passed 
 A purling brook which fenced an ancient park, 
 That so he might not cross the peopled path 
 Of that sweet vision. 
 
 But another sight, 
 Less fair, he now was destined to confront. 
 Down a steep lawn there ran a green arcade 
 Trellised with boughs of Glastonbury thorn, 
 Beneath whose open shade three flights of steps, 
 Cut in the ground and clothed with native sward, 
 Led from a postern of a Saxon hall 
 Down to the park ; and at the wicket gate, 
 Which closed that covered way, a falconer stood : 
 Four birds in scarlet cowls upon his staff 
 Sedately perched, erect and motionless ; 
 And two dark palfreys by a groom were held, 
 In trappings gay for lady's use attired, 
 Who to that pastime, from the Saracens 
 At first imported, now were sallying forth. 
 
 Behind the drooping umbrage of a tree 
 Sir Lancelot stood, while down the dim arcade, 
 Like beams of light, two youthful maidens came. 
 In energy of mirth, and overflow 
 Of words in some grave presence long pent up, 
 Their voices, like a peal of silver bells, 
 In falls of laughter rang, most musical, 
 
no SIR LANCELO*. [bOOE 
 
 As if the very pulse of joy herself 
 Its rapid beatings clothed in bodily sound. 
 Blythely they talked, and by the Holy Mass 
 They ratified tliis idle s|yeech or that, 
 Or of our Virgin Lady's sainted name 
 Made frequent use and frivolous ; yet they chanced 
 On such light words and with such feminine air 
 Of innocent pretence, tliat he who blamed, 
 Except to save his conscience as a priest. 
 In hall and bower was deemed a base-born churl : 
 And who so hardy as resist the world 
 When it would canonize a graceful sin ? 
 Onward they hastened to a little mere 
 That northward lay, and wafted down the vale 
 By fits there came those silvery peals of mirth. 
 Forth from his covert too Sir Lancelot went ; 
 Each laughing sound that struck his ear but seemed 
 To spur him forward : not the morning smoke, 
 Nor simple psalmody of childish choir. 
 Wielded the powers of memory with a strength 
 And speed more irresistible than now 
 The voices of those children of the world. 
 No images of blameless times, past years 
 Whose shades are not less soothing than their light. 
 No distant landscapes of the long-left shore 
 Of childhood, did these present sounds invoke ; 
 But sinful joys, deluding dreams of power, 
 The vanity of enterprise in arms. 
 Months of soft self-indulgence, and wild hours 
 Lost in oblivious revel with his peers. 
 Or while he plied the bootless trade of love, — 
 And all that comfortless eclipse of Heaven 
 Which youth call knowledge of the world, and buys, 
 As men bought power of Satan, with a bond 
 
it.] THE JOURNEYi 111 
 
 Writtefi in blood, a woful covenant. 
 
 How merrily those laughters seemed to freight 
 
 The quiet of the vale ! How long the breeze 
 
 Played with the sound ! yet to Sir Lancelot's ear 
 
 It was a joyless, nay, an awful sound. 
 
 It fell with such interpretation there 
 
 As baffled all its lavish melody. 
 
 None but a child would deem the passing-bell 
 
 Blythe music, yet it woos to happier thoughts 
 
 Than all the songs and viols of the world. 
 
 Westward Sir Lancelot bent his steps, nor knew 
 By what blind choice he was impelled that way. 
 Such the strange instinct working in the hearts 
 Of aged men, who with habitual mood 
 Creep o'er the meadows to the setting sun,- 
 Their feeble backs bent down and aspect prone^ 
 "With tardy effort from the different stiles 
 Freeing their limbs ; yet ever by that lure, 
 That golden light, which gives them back their years,- 
 And from the ground flows upward to their eyes, 
 Drawn on, forget to measure with their strength 
 The distance of that unillumined way 
 They must perforce return. So westward went 
 The Knight, and by the Brathay's glittering shore 
 Eested at noon, where, opposite, there rose 
 A single hill, the transcript of his own 
 In Troutbeck Yale, a miniature, whose base 
 Half by a mountain road was clipped, and half 
 By the dark flood and mural parapet 
 Of tall osmunda with its halberds green. 
 And o'er the shady slope there lightly swung 
 A latticed network of depending ash. 
 Whose scanty elegance of folitige served 
 Bather for aid to guide the exploring eye 
 
112 BIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 To tempting coverts and moss couches spread 
 In sun- proof dingles, mid the whispering boughs, 
 And in the audience of tlie murmuring stream. 
 
 What thougl), retired in our calm temperate noons, 
 No admonition to the ear is given 
 Bj snow-white campanero in the woods. 
 From leafy- turrets tolling, like the bell 
 Of distant convent, all along the shore 
 Of turbid Demerara, summoning 
 The quiet listening creatures, and poor slaves, 
 To prayer in that intolerable hour 
 When toil were death ; — yet by the lisping leaves, 
 The gurgling of cool waters, and the sounds 
 That one by one are ceasing in the fields. 
 Noon here invites the soul to thought and prayer. 
 And tlius Sir Lancelot profitably mused. 
 With penitent acknowledgments relieved 
 By tears of gratitude and speechless praise, 
 Upon the double vision of that morn. 
 Those Aspects and those Voices which revealed 
 The twofold Powers, the friend and foe of man. 
 The Church and World, each travelling on its way. 
 
 Then up the stream he went through rusliy fields, 
 Or paths with trampled elderberries stained, 
 And knolls of grateful wood, until a ring 
 Of ancient oaks the secret entrance marked 
 Of a deep transverse valley: thence he passed, 
 Enchanted, tlirough the sylvan paradise 
 Of Til berth waite, and Yewdale's rocky shades 
 And grimly purpled steeps, and to the right 
 Ascending, wound along the stony flank 
 Of a tall mountain from whose terraced sides 
 His eye could rest upon a sunny lake. 
 Spread riverlike in silvery maze behind. 
 
SIR LANCELOT, 
 
 BOOK V. 
 BLACK COMBE. 
 
BOOK V. 
 
 BLACK COMBE. 
 
 The seasons are the keys of song : they can 
 
 Eich store of modulated thought unlock ; 
 
 But as in their ethereal wards they turn 
 
 There is full oft a sound of storm in heaven, 
 
 And sun and shower upon alternate winds 
 
 Eide in disordered speed across the earth. 
 
 But in the change, when summer's^ faltering hand 
 
 Yields her capricious sceptre to the grasp 
 
 Of noble autumn, days will intervene 
 
 Of an elysian softness which belongs 
 
 To other lands, not by our seasons claimed ; 
 
 A short-lived regency may it be deemed. 
 
 By some mild southern influence controlled. 
 
 And autumn prematurely came this year. 
 Or summer ended, from her place disturbed 
 By shocks of almost tropic thunderstorms. 
 
 Sir Lancelot journeyed slowly in the heat, 
 And halted often, not so much to rest 
 As to admire the beauty circumfused 
 With oriental softness in the air. 
 The sky was Hue, but by a pearly haze 
 Most exquisitely veiled ; the little clouds 
 iiay motionless in some bright element 
 
116 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 Of molten silver, which they had absorbed 
 Until they shone like planets np on high, 
 Or sunny fleets that rock far off at sea, 
 Half hidden by illuminated foam. 
 Eastward the distant mountains hung like bank8 
 Of toppling cloud, in tremulous violet hue 
 Or marvellous tint of roseate green arrayed ; 
 While to the north a lazy stifled wind 
 Trailed a white mist transparent o'er the hills, 
 Where, to unreal distance thrown, Sfcawfell 
 Was palpitating in the haze. 
 
 Yet while 
 The unwonted aspect of the lovely day 
 Of eastern lands reminded him, one thing 
 There was which to our clime recalled his thouglits: 
 It was the dim perspective of the view. 
 The vigorous outline, lucid and compressed. 
 And the clear darkness of the shadows thrown 
 Steadfast and motionless, the firmness given 
 To the faint aspect of the distant hills. 
 Temples, and groves of trees, are special gifts 
 Pertaining to the radiant atmosphere 
 And landscapes of a southern latitude. 
 But, to imagination far more rich 
 And to the reverential eye more sweet, 
 And by Sir Lancelot now confessed a charm 
 More graceful, are our waving outlines fixed 
 With an aerial trembling, while the earth 
 With glimmering motion on her anchor rides, 
 Tempting the eye, well pleased to be so lured. 
 To rifle all the unsettled hills and shades 
 Of nodding wood, and piece by piece retrieve 
 The distant objects slowly floating up 
 Out of the vague obscurity wherein 
 
v.] BLACK COMBE. 117 
 
 (The fairy-land confusion of the noon) 
 
 They swim, sometimes approaching to the sight, 
 
 Sometimes receding, as a ship will miss 
 
 The harbour-mouth, by feeble gusts betrayed. 
 
 But lo ! a lucid rim of brazen light 
 Steals o'er the northern hills, and from the abyss 
 Fabrics of castellated cloud mount up, 
 Labouring to roll themselves above the heights, 
 And, as in their unwieldy toil they dash 
 Against the mountains, muffled voices come 
 Of growling thunder, while the panting breeze, 
 First intermitting, wholly dies away. 
 
 It was a tempest such as rarely sounds 
 Among these English hills, and by a gale 
 Of wind succeeded, in whose boisterous rage 
 The creaking woods fell prostrate, and loose rooks 
 Clove their rough paths among the belts of pine, 
 A storm shortlived as fierce. Sir Lancelot, 
 Who once in woody Lebanon had dwelt 
 At Zarkle opposite the hoary plain 
 Of silent Balbec with the Maronites, 
 Thought of the snowy Sannin, in whose womb 
 Terrific storms are gendered ; and the past, 
 Eoused into wild accordance with the wrath 
 Of the blind elements, within him raged, 
 And with a swift eruption of hot thoughts 
 Ravaged that pure tranquillity, which made 
 His inmost heart for years a holy home 
 Of penitence, and very cell of prayer. 
 
 The storm had slackened ; on a platform green 
 "With hurried step the Excommunicate 
 Was driven to and fro by his wild thoughts. 
 Beneath was Duddon raving in the glen, 
 Now visible, now by a drifting shower 
 
118 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 Of sleet half veiled or utterly obscured, 
 
 While the lashed mountain-sides were heard to 
 
 moan 
 Beneath the impetuous cataracts of wind. 
 Soon, like a ponderous pageant upon wheels, 
 The mass of toppling clouds and flying mists 
 EoUed seaward, bellowing as it went : and then 
 Came the sweet sovereignty of azure sky, 
 And the warm sun, and breezes musical, 
 Not unacknowledged in the woe-worn heart 
 Of the lone penitent. He knelt and prayed ; 
 And when he rose, there was within his soul 
 A lightening which was almost happiness, 
 A sense that mercy did not yet disdain 
 To soothe his conscience. 
 
 And a pomp ensued 
 With such significant slowness on the hills 
 And such surpassing beauty, that his eye. 
 Fed from the scene, sustained his weary heart. 
 A mountain of a varying outline rose 
 Entangled in a vast array of mist, 
 Here dense and fleecy, there a lucid gauze, 
 Like a bride's veil, most beautiful to see. 
 Sometimes in tortuous columns it rolled forth 
 As from the chambers of the mountain breathed ; 
 Eearing its broad unsteady bulk aloft, 
 It seemed by sunlight kindled from within : 
 Then all at once it broke and fell, as if 
 Dropped suddenly from some invisible hand, 
 Wiiile it disclosed a hundred dizzy feet 
 Of peak and precipice ; then in the grasp 
 Of strong and eager wind caught up again, 
 As with a hurried impulse it involved 
 The mountain all in white : and it appeared 
 
v.] BLACK COMBE. 119 
 
 Like some gigantic creature that was torn 
 Upon the craggy armour of the hill. 
 And now lay writhing in contortions huge 
 And pitiful, with its voluminous spires 
 Catching a silver sunbeam here and there. 
 But soon the lacerated monster trailed 
 Itself across the ledges of rude scar, 
 And on the top of some subordinate heights, 
 Fir-capped, in five enormous folds coiled up 
 Sullen, but in repose the creature lay, 
 While to the open air and clear sunshine 
 The mountain sprung, a bold and buoyant height. 
 There, sculptured on the bending dome of sky, 
 A frieze of clouds in beautiful relief 
 Glowed on the ethereal concave of the west ; 
 Even like a land far off at sea evoked 
 From underneath the horizon by some spell 
 Of playful light into the upper air. 
 A chain of rosy mountains did it seem, 
 Fretted with shades of blue, and veins of pearl 
 Hung from the heights like trickling waterfalls 
 Voiceless, though fluent, on a summer day. 
 And folds of evening wood appeared to sleep 
 Upon those mountain sides, and single pines 
 On forward eminences stood, and rows 
 Of black-barred cedars, and the tapering spires 
 Of silky birch, and from the sunny glens 
 Eose up the smoke of fairy villages 
 Sunk in the cloudy gorges, and dark towers 
 And old cathedrals with effulgent domes 
 Were for awhile sustained before the eye 
 By the sweet light, which is its minister. 
 And then effaced. O beautiful Effect ! 
 Wrought by the love of God to elevate 
 
120 SIE LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 Our love to Him, and thus subserve His praise ! 
 How grateful is it to the impatient sight 
 Of those returning to their mountain home, 
 However brief their exile, so to meet 
 This prophecy, in characters of cloud 
 Engraved, of their own mountains still unseen, 
 And with what all-sufficient Joy they view 
 That heavenly imitation of the earth. 
 That exquisite and silent land of clouds ! 
 And gorgeous preparation did the sun 
 That evening make for his descent, a play 
 Of such ethereal intermingling hues 
 And blazonry of mists no painter durst 
 Depict their faithful unreality. 
 There dropped upon the hills, as though from heaven, 
 A vest of coloured air, for scarce a haze 
 Might it be named, so thin it was, in truth 
 Impalpable but for its watery tints. 
 Half purple and half crimson did it seem, 
 Wherein the mountains rose, all girded round 
 With shining bars of motionless white cloud, 
 While on the channelled vale of greenest turf 
 There lay a flood of rosy brightness shot 
 Slant-wise with gold in tremulous dusky threads, 
 Through which the green, unmingled, unabsorbed, 
 Gleamed with the rain- drops. 
 
 O how fair the view 
 When evening wandered up the vale, and touched 
 With gentlest visitation hoary cliff 
 And hanging wood and lawny mountain side. 
 Yet was the beauty heightened and set off 
 By many a plain memorial of the storm. 
 The foamy Duddon forced his clamorous way 
 Amid the opposing straits of rock, or brawled 
 
v.] BLACK COMBE. 121 
 
 With pebbly sound across the shingle blue, 
 
 Which in the morning sun had glanced like beds 
 
 Of diamond or topaz : and the brooks, 
 
 Sequestered in the few collateral glens, 
 
 Eaised to a strain more loud than they were wont 
 
 Their tributary music, soft-voiced streams 
 
 Half-stifled in the echoing ravines 
 
 By the close-roofing foliage overhead ; 
 
 And, sweeter symbol still of recent storm, 
 
 The pleasant exhalations of the woods, — 
 
 Fir-stem, and mossy earth, and silver birch 
 
 With aromatic breath, — how fragrant all ! 
 
 Like the soft converse of a heart which hath 
 
 But lately learned in tears and sufferings deep 
 
 The kindly wisdom of adversity. 
 
 And through meek bearing purchased a degree 
 
 In that exalted faculty, whose lore 
 
 More heavenly is than aught on earth beside. 
 
 Firmer and yet more hollow grows the voice 
 Of ancient Duddon, and more palpable 
 The tingling of the woodlands, as the night 
 Advances her engrossing silence there. 
 Along the uneven edges of the hills 
 The gradual muster of the stars begins, 
 While the green groves turn glossy and obscure. 
 How overbearing is the loveliness 
 Of night, the night divine ! with her dread show 
 Thus hushing all the timorous earth to rest : 
 As though, in some supernal mantle swathed, 
 A sailing spirit waved his awful wing 
 Scarcely above the surface. How intense 
 The tranquil midnight of that sunken vale ! 
 All sounds, the motions of the fluttering breeze, 
 The mirth of insects, and the troublous sighs 
 
122 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOk' 
 
 From the tall summits of unsleeping wind, — 
 All seem suspended as by angel's hand, 
 And gathered out from the responsive air, 
 That one Sound only, one dread Soul of sound, 
 Might in its fulness overflow the vale 
 With influence unannoyed. That Sound it is 
 Which in the Word of Life, both Old and New, 
 Bears the commission to set forth in type. 
 And nightly illustrate, the Voice of God, — 
 The Sound of Many Waters, calm and strong. 
 Most clear, most mighty ; as the thunder loud, 
 When the near storm its rolling voice divides 
 With sharp articulation mid the rocks. 
 Yet spiritual and subtle in the air. 
 The earth, the boughs, as are the whisperings 
 Of a man's conscience in his solitude. 
 
 Sir Lancelot's soul rose in him, like a flower 
 From which the sun with timely slowness lifts 
 The burden of the rain, and from whose blooms 
 The sprinkled soil falls off and leaves no stain. 
 His heart, o'ercharged with thankfulness, was soothed. 
 And by the very soothing roused to sing. 
 As if that Voice of waters in the vale 
 Called for his voice to give it words of praise. 
 
 Great God and Father ! (so in thought he sang. 
 Thought that could hardly keep itself from words,) 
 Great God and Father ! to acknowledge thus 
 In night, silent or vocal, evermore 
 Thy Presence with Thy creatures, doth fatigue 
 The enraptured and adoring intellect. 
 O raise my soul and spirit, and attune 
 My body to their heights, that so I may, — 
 Not with intensity of love outworn. 
 With beauty restless, or with terror chafed, 
 Or by solemnity dispirited, — 
 
v.] BLACK COMBE. 123 
 
 But with a lowly mind and venturous heart 
 
 Of child's affection, worship Thee, First Cause, 
 
 Fountain of Godhead, sole and unapproached, 
 
 Thine equal Son, from all eternity 
 
 Thy Son, to all eternity True Man, 
 
 And Thee too, infinite, coequal Spirit, 
 
 The personal and abiding Comforter, 
 
 And falling sinner's diligent Paraclete, — 
 
 Thee may I worship. Blessed Trinity, 
 
 Creator, Saviour, Paraclete of man ! 
 
 In all the glories both of night and day. 
 
 Of land and ocean, mountain-top and dale : 
 
 But specially vouchsafe that in the night 
 
 And darkness, too symbolical of sin. 
 
 No idle thoughts, nor evil haunting past, 
 
 May claim my heart, while I the rather seek. 
 
 Even in my midnight fears, a fount of love. 
 
 Of breathless prayer and musings grave and high. 
 
 Thee, by the action of a restless mind 
 
 And the quick beatings of a heart unweaned 
 
 From earth, can I escape or shun by day. 
 
 The radiant magnificence of light 
 
 Can be a hiding-place. Romantic turns, 
 
 And alternations of a blended interest, 
 
 The bold relief of colour, and the gay 
 
 Distracting details of bright loveliness, 
 
 Sweetly distracting, — these are coverts all 
 
 Where in the depths of daylight we may hide, 
 
 Impatient of Thy Presence : but the night 
 
 Disarms the spirit which had been so bold 
 
 In the sun's eye to feel, to speak, to act ; 
 
 And in the starry concourse of the sky. 
 
 The leaning moonlit mountains, and the woods 
 
 By dusk illumination magnified, 
 
124 SIR LANCELOT. [boOK 
 
 And above all in that deep typical Voice 
 
 Of Many Waters, now authentic made 
 
 By word of revelation, I discern 
 
 Thine awful Presence, Majesty Supreme; 
 
 And, by Thy Spirit thus solicited, 
 
 I worship Thee with trembling utterance, checked 
 
 Oft by adoring silence, till my heart. 
 
 By thought of sweetest mercies over-borne, 
 
 Mercies unasked far more than asked, will dare 
 
 To weep for very love before Thy Feet ! 
 
 Along the sounding shore Sir Lancelot went, 
 Till down the vale he saw the murky gleam 
 Of the wet sands far off, which like a tongue 
 Pierce the green woodlands there : then o'er a bridge 
 He crossed the Duddon, and northwestward turned 
 Over some mountain roots of shaggy copse. 
 Till in the Vale of Whicham now he stood 
 Beneath the steadfast shadow of Black Combe. 
 
 From time to time a restless watchdog bayed, 
 And a cock crew, or from the echoing hill 
 The wolfs low whiue, prolonged and multiplied. 
 Possessed the ear of night, and over-ruled 
 All other sounds, until the fitful breeze, 
 Impatient of the silence, woke once more 
 And with the dashing of the torrents played. 
 Throwing their music here and there at will. 
 The moon hung low : the starry firmament, 
 Shaking with lights innuraerous, was spread 
 Over the mountain like an eastern tent. 
 Whose rocking lamps and swaying canopy 
 Bend in the desert wind. The mighty hill 
 Kose with the moon behind, and, in the shade 
 And layers of purple darkness, seemed to swell 
 Beyond the proper measure of its size, 
 
v.] BLACK COMBB. 125 
 
 Through that appearance wherewith solemn night 
 Is wont to magnify the glimmering earth. 
 Sir Lancelot gazed upon its dusky breadth 
 With reverence, while his inward awe confessed 
 The more than common majesty which breathes 
 From the mysterious features of Black Combe. 
 Who for the first time sees that heavy hill, 
 Sombre and pale, but he acknowledges 
 Somewhat of its unwonted character. 
 The fearfulness of its dark aspect joined 
 With wild significance of feature, felt 
 Deep in the spirit, puzzling thought to find 
 Wherefore the presence of that singular height 
 Lays such a weight upon the feeling heart ? 
 A dark attraction hath that mighty hill 
 To fix the wandering gaze upon itself, 
 Whether the eye may light on its green sides, 
 Kuffled with combs of fretted rock, far off 
 At sea to Mona or the Solway bound. 
 Or in the distance looming, o'er the sands 
 Of Duddon's sylvan estuary seen 
 From Hawcoat or the end of Walney Isle, 
 Or in smooth Whicham where the quiet air 
 Is loaded with its shadow, while the sheep 
 Graze silently around its verdant foot. 
 A silent place is Whicham vale, and not 
 W^ithout some share of that impressive gloom 
 Which clouds the neighbouring hill incessantly, 
 A lonely spot which to the eye would seem 
 Most melancholy, if a prattling brook 
 In a damp woody channel overarched, 
 Like those who sing most sweetly when they deem 
 No audience nigh, did not full oft beguile 
 The traveller's spirit with its merry chimes 
 
126 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 Half baffled by the matted roof of boughs, 
 And yet more beautiful, false distance given 
 Unto the strain, cheating the well-pleased ear. 
 
 There the dark mountain stands, and seems like one 
 In a grim slumber by enchantment bound 
 Hard by the sea, whose murmur throws a voice 
 Into its inner glens, a solemn sound 
 Moaning along the treeless banks, less sweet 
 Than the rill's local music undisturbed. 
 But with a spell of power far more sublime 
 And mournful fascination, heavily 
 Ensnaring him who wanders there alone. 
 No matter whence the breeze may set, from land 
 Or from the sea, nor with what steady power 
 It flows along, still overhead the clouds 
 Mysteriously pause in their career. 
 By huge Black Combe retarded in the sky, 
 Dappling its brow with stationary shades 
 From hour to hour ; while all the summer long 
 The wizard hill with an ethereal gloom. 
 Soft and cserulean, wraps his grassy flanks. 
 
 For druid rite and horrid sacrifice 
 Of savage faith, long ages past might choose 
 A mountain- height thus visibly with awe 
 Invested, to the dwellers there no less 
 Than to chance travellers, or the sea-borne man 
 Who in wild weather passes by that coast. 
 
 Not unimpressive is it there to hear. 
 Far in the heart of those green solitudes. 
 The pastoral bleating of the flocks, annoyed, 
 Yea, and displaced upon the silent moors. 
 By the harsh plaining of the sea-fowl, driven 
 By rude Atlantic storms to shelter there. 
 How piteously they strew their broken cries 
 
v.] BLACK COMBE. 127 
 
 O'er the wet surface of the quaking moors, J 
 
 Oft by the hillside echoes taken up | 
 
 And in the sinuous coves prolonged, as though ] 
 
 That mountain were a giant horn whereon ^ 
 
 The sea might wind his own peculiar notes, , \ 
 
 Disheartening such plain lovers of the land j 
 
 As wander there, and question if Black Combe j 
 
 Be not a blending of both elements j 
 
 Most wild and mystical, throughout its breadth . ' 
 
 Claimed audibly by ocean for his own, \ 
 The nuptial chamber of the earth and sea. 
 
 With singular celebration set apart, J 
 
 And strangest rites prolonged from year to year. j 
 
 He hath but little of the poet's soul ^ 
 
 Who, passing underneath Black Combe, can go ■ 
 By Duddon's shore, or through the pleasant peace 
 
 Of hollow Torver, or with southward course ^ 
 
 To the Cistercian seat in Frudernesse j 
 
 A pilgrim bent, and yet confess no weight \ 
 
 Laid by the sea-side mountain on his heart, | 
 
 Or without difficulty extricates \ 
 
 The bly the and smiling scenes through which he wends 'i 
 
 From out the shadow of that sombre height. ! 
 
 While yet Sir Lancelot stood, in musing wrapped, ^ 
 
 The sunrise stole unto the higher ridge ; 
 
 Of the dark mountain, and the crest appeared ■ 
 
 Through the thin mist as though it had been strewn, | 
 
 Not with the sunshine, but a flaky shower .^ 
 
 Of sprinkled snow, while on the sides beneath \ 
 
 Dawn separated one by one bright knolls | 
 
 From out the purple mass, which swiftly grew j 
 
 Translucent with green light ; then from above I 
 
 And from the vale beneath, both up and down i 
 At once, the daylight tremulously crept. 
 
128 SIR LAKCELOT. [bOOK '\ 
 
 Thereat the Knight commenced the smooth ascent, ] 
 
 Betrayed full often by the slippery sward j 
 
 Already silvered by the moist sea-breeze, ] 
 
 Which carries autumn prematurely there, * 
 
 And tarnishes the fern before its time. ■ 
 
 Nigh to the dreary summit of Black Combe 
 
 There is a hideous fissure, scooped perchance | 
 
 By ponderous eddies when the deluge swayed ; 
 Incumbent on the broken frame of earth. 
 
 Therein Sir Lancelot fixed his hermitage, J 
 
 Wattled with clay and stakes in journeys brought j 
 
 Frequent and toilsome from the vale below. | 
 
 Behind the mountain's solid crest it stood ' 
 
 From the rude northwind sheltered, and ensconced i 
 
 Behind a natural rampart of green turf, • i 
 
 Safe from the wet and blustering south which throws \ 
 Its greeting of salt spray upon the hill. 
 The only objects from the door beheld 
 
 Were seams of ruddy earth which interlaced ; 
 
 The stony cliff, — torrents of fluid soil ' j 
 
 When the tempestuous rains came roughly down, i 
 
 And sometimes lighted up as though the steep \ 
 
 Were braced in wizard mail, with gilded plates ^ 
 
 Of sunshine with white silver riveted, i 
 
 As the wet trickling stones the brightness caught. ' 
 
 It was a rougher life than he had spent j 
 
 In the old Ash-tree Hermitage ; for here ■ 
 
 He had no vassals to forecast his wants. ; 
 
 His toils were doubled, and his scanty fare, | 
 
 Rude as it was, precariously supplied. ; 
 Yet not unprofitable was the change, — 
 A loss which over every feature threw 
 
 Somewhat of doubt, which haply might evoke ' 
 
 Meekness and trust, in little things most hard ; 
 
v.] BLACK COMBE. 129 
 
 As aiding not to feed that self-respect, 
 
 Whereon endurance leans with dignity, 
 
 And a proud patience, for awhile sustained, 
 
 Mimics the gait of Christian fortitude. 
 
 A profitable task it was to learn 
 
 Amid anxieties of such a sort. 
 
 And petty hindrances, to keep unsoiled 
 
 The springs of prayer, and copious as before. 
 
 The hedgerow birds for whom the Lord purveys 
 
 Have leisure morn and eve to sing His love : 
 
 And even the abasement of a beggar's life 
 
 Is hourly sowing, oft in sterile hearts, 
 
 The seeds of patient love and happy faith. 
 
 Then sometimes would he leave his lofty cell 
 For days, and wander on the smooth sea-beach. 
 Sleeping in ragged copses which deform 
 That windy shore, or with a plank content 
 Of some wrecked ship upon the moonlit sands. 
 And round by pastoral Milium many a time| 
 Belated men would cross themselves, and tell 
 How they, night-foundered in the forest, saw 
 Sir Lancelot sleeping in a shaggy brake ; 
 While the red vivid embers of his fire. 
 Fanned by the fitful airs, appeared to bring 
 The gloom of midnight closer round, until 
 The darkness hung in almost visible folds 
 From bough to bough, like waving tapestries. 
 And oft, attracted by the flickering light 
 From the cold moor which bordered on the wood, 
 With head and neck protruding through the leaves 
 The kine were seen, guarding, the shepherds thought. 
 Haply commissioned from above, the sleep 
 Of that forlorn and solitary man ; — 
 Such patient vigilance and doubtful sense 
 
 9 
 
130 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 Of what the scene imported was portrayed 
 In quiet fear upon their lineaments. 
 And in their touching way the peasants called 
 These midnight slumbers in the dusky wood 
 His Kests in Egypt, prompted by the scene 
 Kudely depicted on their chapel wall, — 
 The wood in Egypt, where the rushing Nile 
 Made a strange distant undersong all night. 
 The lantern hung upon the broken bough 
 Above St. Joseph's head, whose sleepless eyes 
 From time to time explored the umbrage round, 
 Yet ever came to rest upon the Child, 
 Aa though the sight an admonition were 
 To watchfulness ; and, seated on the ground, 
 Our Lady with her left hand held the Babe, 
 And with her right she strove to shade her eyes 
 From the red streaming lamp, that she might see 
 His Countenance more clearly as He slept. 
 While with affectionate caution she had drawn 
 A wimple o'er His Face to keep the light 
 From troubling His repose ; and through the leaves, 
 So dimly pictured, that, at first unseen. 
 It only grew upon the eye that looked 
 For long, the Ass with silent shadowy head 
 Gazed on the Infant Saviour, as He slept. 
 The only Sleeper there ; — ^yet that wild scene 
 With sweet felicity was named a Eest : — 
 Calmer than sleep that Mother's pondering thoughts, 
 Vigil for Christ the most restoring peace 
 St. Joseph's heart could know, and for the Asa 
 To gaze on Him who saves both man and beast 
 Lifted his patient nature to a calm 
 Transcending far the purposes of sleep. 
 Oft would Sir Lancelot wander from the Point 
 
v.] BLACK COMBE. 131 
 
 Which fronts the Isle of Walney, to the north, 
 
 Until the sacred headland of St. Bees 
 
 Should greet his earnest gaze ; but most he sought, 
 
 For its peculiar desolation loved, 
 
 That wild sea-bank, so beautiful and lone, 
 
 Where ocean roughly knocks upon the strand. 
 
 Or laves with fawning tongue the bright-ribbed 
 
 shore. 
 And hardly wins the admission which he seeks 
 Into the sand-locked bay of Ravenglass ; 
 Where, but a reign before, a few poor men 
 Set up their fish-garths at the mouth of Esk, 
 Vassals protected by the powerful arm 
 Of the bold Eenningtons, and by the Sword 
 Much more of great St. Michael, from whose shrine 
 A blessing to the rugged fishers went. 
 And nights serene upon the moonlit gulf. 
 
 No common inlet is that jealous bay, 
 A curious chamber where the Atlantic comes 
 Smoothing his ruffled swell, and so receives 
 With an innocuous ripple on his brow, 
 (A graceful barter of the land and sea. 
 The rental paid for his reluctant calm,) 
 An ancient tribute of sweet waters, there 
 Brought by three vassal streams which gently mix 
 Their mountain music with that other strain. 
 The sea's soft thunder on the outer shore. 
 The Esk there is, by clusters of wild tarns 
 Suckled in sylvan places, which shoots forth 
 From its rich vale by lordly Muncaster, 
 And shallow Mite, which from its moorland dell, 
 Winding amid low dislocated hills. 
 Comes lisping o'er the pebbles ; and clear Irt, 
 Translucent as his solitary lake 
 
132 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 That images Seatallan when the sun 
 Burns in the glowing sky, with many a bend 
 Affectionately lingering near the hills, 
 Clasping and then unclasping many a knoll. 
 Procrastinates his meeting with the deep ; 
 Fetching a wayward sweep almost to touch 
 The sea, he runs within the shore awhile, 
 Until, by ocean found in his strange creek. 
 Spite of his skill he yields at length to fate, 
 And mingles his sweet crystals with the brine. 
 
 Four years a Hermit was the Knight enclosed 
 Within that mountain's solitary heart. 
 An utter solitude it was, yet not 
 By silentness enhanced, but resonant ' 
 Mltii a perpetual sound which might appal 
 The timid listener in the depth of night. 
 Or in the misty calm of noonday moors. 
 Whether it was the murmur of the sea 
 Which travelled heavily among the glens, 
 The meeting of far echoes, or the moan 
 Of some unsleeping wind in that drear place. 
 Or the thick respiration of the hill 
 While to the sunshine it exhaled its mists. 
 Or greedily imbibed the globes of dew. 
 Or if it were the sailing of the clouds 
 Whose rudders made the cloven ether sound,-— 
 I know not, but a resonance there is, 
 Strange and perpetual, in that savage hill. 
 
 The wind is viewless : but its voice and path 
 Are spiritual ; upon the mountain side 
 It leaves no impress ; sea or inland lake 
 Sustain it, as the hard highways may bear 
 A chariot or the throng of nimble hoofs ; 
 A momentary ruffling of the dust, 
 
v.] BLACK COMBE. 133 
 
 A momentary drifting of the spray, 
 
 And all is over ; on the waving woods 
 
 The elastic foliage starts ere it be passed, 
 
 And with a studious speed obliterates 
 
 The wake it scored upon it now; and who could 
 
 hope 
 One livelong day to chronicle the winds 
 Or fluttering breezes which at times may throw 
 Into the mantled faces of the woods 
 Expression sweet, and skilfully displace 
 The show of mute reserve wherewith they hide 
 (As Holy Church secretes her mystic trutlie 
 And touching rites, until with voiceless call 
 The Spirit,^ for the humbling of an age 
 Or its tuition, may solicit them, 
 In glad spontaneous teaching then expressed) 
 Their beautiful interiors, trunk and branch, 
 Sylvan arcades, and dimly lighted naves. 
 And marigold windows pierced among the leaves, 
 And transepts dusk, and crypts of underwood 
 With honeysuckle groined ? Ah ! who could hope 
 To fix in song the beauty of one day 
 Written upon the woods, and by the wind 
 Upon their flexile lineaments impressed. 
 And at one stroke expunged ? Such interchange 
 Of look have those green seas ! 
 
 Like fruitless task 
 Is his, who should endeavour to record 
 The daily path which natural objects make 
 Across the spirit, trailing hope and fear 
 Like ploughshares after them, that, not by chance, 
 Here idly skim the surface, there indent 
 A furrow which the man walks in for years, 
 But knows not when or how it was upturned. 
 
V6i SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 Beauty and terror, sunshine, storm, and calm, 
 Write their obscure inscriptions as they pass, 
 Rarely decyphered then ; the feeling heart 
 Counts the bright landscapes which have moved her, 
 
 dates 
 From sunsets, rainbows, or cool starry nights 
 Which, with a strange prerogative endowed. 
 Inward or outward, above other nights 
 That were as bright, as cool, as beautiful, 
 Have troubled her so sweetly with a sense 
 Of joy, or influx of poetic power. 
 
 Thus nature acted on Sir Lancelot's soul, 
 Spreading her blameless empire in the dark, 
 And now and then in chance disclosures gave 
 A sign, whereby to measure the degree 
 Of inward change her influence had wrought. 
 Somewhat of rude sublimity there was. 
 By strange ennobling circumstance conferred, 
 Which o'er that Excommunicated Man 
 Hung like a cloud of glorious thoughts, when they 
 Beset the astonished minstrel ; and his mind, 
 To a continuous adoration strung. 
 Sustained his bodily strength, insensible 
 To the rough agency of heat and cold. 
 Even such propinquity there often is 
 'Twixt miracles and nature's humbler works, 
 Those higher or lower cycles which embrace 
 In single law the order of the world ; 
 Single, yet with distracting aspects seen 
 By our weak minds, which therefore have disjoined 
 Palpable wonders from the common things 
 So much more wonderful, that their true size 
 Transcends the measures of our mortal thoughts, 
 And we account theni but for what they seem. 
 
v.] BLACK COMBE. 135 
 
 Thus the elevation of Sir Lancelot's mind 
 Hardened his bodily frame, till he approached 
 The eye undimmed, the unabated force, 
 Which on the Hebrew lawgiver of old 
 The frequent Presence of the Almighty shed, 
 When years went by and farrowed not his brow, 
 And toil inspired had wearied not his limbs. 
 
 Amid those high capacious solitudes 
 The silent stars beheld the Man insphered 
 Among themselves ; and there alone he sat. 
 The ample brow of that dread height his chair. 
 In musing wrapt, above the reveries 
 Of blind astrologer, and communing 
 With that intelligent Presence in himself 
 Wherewith our being is possessed through faith, 
 And heavenly hope, and silent love of God, 
 And works of mercy, shadows of the Cross. 
 Yet like Chaldsean mystic might he seem, 
 Who in the plain of Tigris, on a knoll 
 Above the undulating vapour raised. 
 Ponders the starry writing of the skies. 
 On that high chair, a more than kingly throne. 
 His thoughts were crowned by local dignity, 
 Sharing the elevation of the place, 
 And the strong freedom of the lofty height. 
 
 Above the clouds or in them, or in air 
 With cold and pallid brightness circumfused, 
 Whose dewy breathings made the stars appear 
 To waver in the dome, he sat ; and there 
 Full many a night with those three powers conversed. 
 The Moon, the Mountain, and the Sea. Dread life 
 It was, unearthly, yet not all of Heaven ; 
 A life wherein each passing hour he felt — 
 Inwardly bleeding as he warred therewith— 
 
136 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOKV. 
 
 The vehement beatings of the impeded soul 
 Against the bars and hindrances, which met 
 Its upward aspirations, while it clung 
 Unto a thousand relics of self-love. 
 And in the very act the union loathed : 
 Disheartening warfare were it not for faith, 
 For supernatural alliances 
 In worlds unknown contracted by the soul. 
 For heavenly gifts, inlayings deep and rich 
 Of sacraments, forbidding us to deem 
 Unworthily of our immortal flesh, 
 No longer ours alone, incorporate 
 And knit with His, a mortal Maiden's Son, 
 And Word Eternal ! Therefore we endure 
 The languor of this miserable strife, 
 As being with Him "Who is invisible,-— 
 More truly present with our Lord in Heaven 
 Than absent from His Presence while on earth. 
 
SIR LANCELOT. 
 
 BOOK VI. 
 THE SPIRIT OF THE SEA. 
 
BOOK VL 
 
 THE SPIKIT OF THE SEA. 
 
 Magnificent, and, I would dare to think 
 
 Intuitive, the courage of the man, 
 
 The immortal Genoese, the .demi-god 
 
 Of modern legend, who upon that sea 
 
 Sublimely shadowed over by a cloud 
 
 Of ignorant faiths, once turned his dipping prow 
 
 Right onward to discover worlds unknown, 
 
 And boldly plunged into the Atlantic fogs, 
 
 Lost to his age behind the fearful sea. 
 
 And no less hidden from it in the depth 
 
 And darkness of his solemn thoughts, withdrawn 
 
 Into the unshared grandeur of his dream. 
 
 Him I behold in spirit on the waves 
 
 Some breezy midnight contemplate the stars. 
 
 And pierce with gaze intense the livid gloom 
 
 Through which his prow sang cheerfully, and then, 
 
 With a blind motion suddenly possessed. 
 
 Twist the helm north or south with daring hand, 
 
 Impelled he knew not why, and yet elate 
 
 And tranquil, as a mighty seer who knows 
 
 How far his incantations may prevail. 
 
 Such, on his solitary mind at sea, 
 "Was now the bearing of Sir Lancelot. 
 On Troutbeck Hill the mountain's rugged arms 
 Had clasped his spirit in a rude embrace. 
 And so confined his thoughts till they should search 
 
140 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 The chambers of his conscience o'er and o'er, 
 And with the scourge of self-condemning grief 
 Should cleanse the temple. Now the ocean waves 
 Burst like a vision of infinity 
 Upon his heart and soul and intellect, 
 A sight as new, as strange, as wonderful 
 As though it never had been seen till now. 
 Cold bars were broken down, partitions rent. 
 His faith emancipated from all doubt. 
 And like the moon at sunrise, hope grew wan 
 Through nearness to the world which it had sought. 
 And by that nearness superseded now. 
 The wildness of his present solitude 
 Touched him, and with its royal touch set free 
 His thoughts, his habits ; nay, his penitence 
 . Became another thing from what it was. 
 The lashing surge, the hollow thundering voice 
 Spake like a pontiff who had power to annul 
 His excommunication : and forthwith 
 His spirit was uplifted by the sea, 
 And his whole being shared the enfranchisement 
 Of its wild scenery : grandeur around him 
 Begot an inward grandeur whence he dared 
 To deal more boldly with himself ; the joy, 
 Which tried its half- fledged wings in Troutbeck Vale, 
 And which he feared as being a joy too much, 
 Now forth into transcending rapture burst. 
 
 By day, by night, he looked from huge Black 
 Combe ; 
 The solemn sea, the deep, the unenslaved, 
 Booking and roaring, angry or at rest. 
 Was at his feet : a gush of glorious thoughts 
 Kose like an unresisted tide within. 
 Bursts of impassioned aspiration sprang 
 
VI.] THE SPIRIT OP THE SEA. 141 
 
 From an impetuous strife to realize 
 
 That which was most within him, which he felt 
 
 To be a power of immortality, 
 
 Wounded with beating at its prison bars, 
 
 And now impatient grown to be uncaged. 
 
 And as he felt the knocking more and more 
 
 Of that mysterious instinct in his soul, 
 
 His spirit rose, from off its ashes rose, 
 
 Like Job of yore, and with a hardihood 
 
 Which was an act of faith it was so bold. 
 
 He turned the helm of his whole life at once ; 
 
 And with calm interval of confidence 
 
 He listened the new music of his thoughts. 
 
 Which louder sang, as when they give the ship 
 
 More to the wind ; then before God sank down 
 
 In breathless worship, and that broken prayer 
 
 Which the rapt soul in such high hour may breathe. 
 
 Thus in the Knight's declining age, — decay 
 Unfelt, though inwardly at work, — the sea 
 Delivered his imprisoned thoughts, and broke 
 With oft recurring impulses the chain 
 Of heavy grief about his spirit bound, 
 A blessed pupilage, but now fulfilled. 
 For they who would confront the thought of death 
 In that proximity with which the old 
 Must meet its silent aspect, and would fain 
 In unalarmed companionship therewith 
 Walk onward to the tomb, must first have quelled 
 All trivial hopes and fears, and by some shock 
 Of inward grace or outward providence 
 Have with intelligent solemnity 
 Dethroned the world within them, and dissolved 
 The meddling pageantry of visible things. 
 
 Thus in a hymnlike strain of glorious power 
 
142 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 So spake the vocal Spirit of the Sea 
 
 Within Sir Lancelot's heart, as those deep bells 
 
 Of holy Advent, four times tolled, break forth 
 
 On the calm peace of the declining year. 
 
 Startling the soul perchance forgetful growu 
 
 Of all its fearful fortunes yet to come. 
 
 In the long train of less memorial feasts 
 
 And nameless Sundays, while within the shrine 
 
 The trumpet winds four several blasts of fear. 
 
 Heard from the trembling corners of the world. 
 
 For first the long terrific notice peals 
 
 Of the tremendous Advent of the Judge ; 
 
 A second blast resounds to wake the soul 
 
 To meet with lamp and oil at dead of night 
 
 The Infant God, who is both Spouse and Judge : 
 
 While the third trumpet sounds in sweeter strains 
 
 Exhorting us in all our fears to find 
 
 Fresh cause for exultation in our faith ; 
 
 Then the fourth trumpet, like the first one, dares 
 
 Bold love ! to bid the Judge come speedily. 
 
 And thus those advent clarions wind their blasts, 
 
 In thrilling admonitions, while the Church, 
 
 With evening antiphons most like the sighs 
 
 Of the old world before Messias came, 
 
 Bids her majestic collects hand in hand 
 
 Walk with her children, until Christmas Eve 
 
 Dismisses the vibration from our ear, 
 
 And the fair Church illumined from within. 
 
 Her altars garnished for the midnight mass, 
 
 On the benighted world around outpours 
 
 Her gladsome witness of the Virgin-Born. 
 
 And children sing that night unto the Babe, 
 
 And Angels with them, scarce above their heads. 
 
 Delight to swell the echoes of the hymn 
 
VI.] THE SPIRIT OF THE SEA. 143 
 
 Into the tingling ear of starlit skies, 
 And the four tolls of Advent are displaced 
 By that nocturnal peal which shakes the towers, 
 And keeps the Christian cities all awake, 
 Between the midnight and the morning Mass. 
 
 To one within close mountains always pent 
 How blissful is the riot of the eye, 
 "When it expatiates o'er the desert sea 
 With its exulting waters resonant, 
 By nought except the white horizon fenced ! 
 Taught by thy lips^ majestic Sea ! how dread 
 Seems the vast range of man's immortal hopes. 
 By calm confessed more solemnly than storm. 
 Time how unreal, and the cells of space 
 How unendurable, infinity 
 How possible, how near, yea, at her feet 
 Imaged in thee ! When from some cape the ear 
 A livelong day hath listened to thy voice, 
 A livelong day the eye insatiate fed 
 Upon thy plains, in gleamy distance stretched, 
 Grateful expanse, what wonder that the soul 
 Should feel herself there winged with thoughts as 
 
 strong 
 As eagle's pinions, keen as eagle's eyes. 
 Whether for upward soaring, by the sun 
 Undazed and to his radiant vicinage 
 By royal instincts drawn, or for descent, 
 Stooping from some invisible altitude. 
 Swift and unerring on their earthly prey ? 
 
 So wrought the vocal sea within his heart 
 That he undid the yoke of Silence laid 
 Upon his lips, the old ascetic fast 
 From words, the wholesome abstinence assigned 
 To raise the too light spirit, and sustain 
 
144 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 The heavenly tone of thought thereby acquired, 
 
 As hunger on the body is imposed 
 
 A scourge to quell the frankness of the flesh, — 
 
 This first, but afterwards a means to gain 
 
 A contemplation far above the heights 
 
 The world- impeded soul can hope to reach. 
 
 Thus to the obedient doth it ever come 
 
 To find in self-denying ordinance 
 
 A two-fold use, the undressing of the soul 
 
 From its outworn attire, the purple robe 
 
 Lent by the world in cruelty to mock 
 
 Its high pretensions, and the investing it 
 
 With the pure visions and abiding joys 
 
 Of Neighbourhood unto the Throne of God. 
 
 toil most difficult it is to tread 
 Our Master's royal road of hungry Fast 
 And aching Vigil, and a steep ascent 
 Leads upward far to gain the starry heights 
 Of Silence, when the host of vexing thoughts 
 And low conceptions, into tumult stirred 
 By all the incessant trouble of the tongue, 
 Through such stern discipline is banished thence ; 
 And the tranquillity, thus hardly won, 
 Eestores unto the fallen soul again. 
 In spirit found though locally withheld, 
 The primal garden where the Almighty talked. 
 Disdaining not man's feeble innocence. 
 
 Methinks they deem but weakly of the height 
 To which man's love of God may well aspire. 
 Who in such deep observances and rules, — 
 By generations of ascetic Saints, 
 As needful found, invented and made over, 
 The sacred science of the Canonized, 
 To us poor bearers of the Cross, — can see 
 
VI.] THE SPIRIT OF THE SEA. 145 
 
 Nought but a cold contemptuous neglect, 
 
 And handling most disdainful, of the good 
 
 And harmless creatures, and of God 
 
 A slavish unaffectionate belief. 
 
 And base opinion. Thou, dear Church of old ! 
 
 And thou no less, true Church of modern days ! 
 
 Canst testify the pure extatic love. 
 
 The tender spirit, self-forgetting thought. 
 
 The childlike adoration of thy Saints 
 
 Following to martyrdom the Spotless Lamb, 
 
 Their love of nature as the mirror calm 
 
 Of Him, the merciful Creator, seen 
 
 And recognized therein far more than now 
 
 When boasting knowledge hath defiled the spring 
 
 With its ignoble licence, which in pride 
 
 Kepudiates the blessing of the Church, 
 
 And having bleared the eye of conscience, smites 
 
 With barrenness the regions of the mind. 
 
 Thou canst bear witness to the fervid zeal, 
 
 Wherewith they vindicated this fair earth 
 
 And the mute animals, as types beloved. 
 
 From heresy profane : thou didst behold 
 
 In them a love of Jesus unsurpassed. 
 
 An ardency of transport best concealed 
 
 Behind the curtain of a difficult tongue. 
 
 Lest in the mind impure the words should breed 
 
 Vilest similitudes of earthly love. 
 
 O then if to our fancy aught should seem 
 Among those reverend men uncouth or strained, 
 'Twere well to love the sweetly skilled device 
 Of an affectionate jealousy, which puts 
 Far from its presence, needlessly perchance, — 
 So men will speak, but to those who strive, 
 However puny or remiss their toil, 
 
146 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 Most needful found, and of a holy life 
 The lowest root and very topmost crown, — 
 Such blameless joys as haply might beguile 
 The singleness of their deep love to Christ :— 
 A jealousy, by true self-knowledge taught 
 That to be timorous with outward things 
 Is wisdom, for the moral world within 
 The shadow is of outward circumstance, 
 As utterly as outward seemings are 
 By the inward mind created and controlled. 
 Yet better far, so living as we do. 
 In softness and an anxious disesteera 
 Of unseen things, and homage of base wealth, — 
 O better far if so we could mistrust 
 Ourselves, and nurse our hearts in humbling fear, 
 Lest what we bear should be a mimic Cross, 
 So all unlike the solemn burden borne 
 By those who died for Christ in ancient days ! 
 But the stern yoke of Silence, self-imposed. 
 Sir Lancelot now put from him : and the power 
 Which abstinence confers upon the use 
 Of daily blessings, heightened to a joy 
 The common gift of vocal utterance. 
 Prayer, sweet before, how much more sweet became^ 
 Winged on articulate words ! and thanksgivings 
 Flowed with a more abundant liberty. 
 Through the resounding channels newly turned 
 Of sacred language, which itself alone 
 Is a perpetual sacrifice of song 
 Unto the Eternal Word who gave at first, — 
 In heaven long used before, or haply then 
 A fresh creation for the sake of earth, — 
 The gift of that sweet mystery to man. 
 Glory and praise unto the Son be given. 
 
VI.] THE SPIKIT OF THE SEA, 147 
 
 Himself the first, the most expressive Word, 
 
 The Language of the Father, wherewith He 
 
 Interpreteth Himself unto mankind 
 
 By His Co-equal Son. Ah rae ! how pure, 
 
 How few our words should be, and full of truth, 
 
 Lest with a too light tongue and thoughtless mirth 
 
 Or worldly usage frivolous and vile. 
 
 We should profane this primitive liturgy, 
 
 This voice by God mysteriously conferred 
 
 On man, that there might never fail on earth 
 
 The sound of rational and vocal praise ! 
 
 Sir Lancelot paced for hours upon the mount, 
 And bent his memory to recall some words 
 From the grave ritual of the Holy Church, 
 Some turn of her wise language which might hang 
 Its solemn fulness of petition still 
 About his spirit, some sweet antiphon. 
 Or notable inflexion of a chant. 
 Which with a congruous music happily 
 Embalms some aspiration of the heart 
 Of Sion's king, the heart which hath absorbed 
 AH hearts within its own capacious range. 
 And to mute feelings still in every age 
 Hath been a spiritual tongue, the heart 
 Which, after God's Own Heart select, doth now 
 Beat like a spirit in the depths profound 
 Of our humanity, and in the Church 
 Seven times a day with cadence audible 
 Times the sonorous voice of Christendom. 
 Such fragments, as with effort he retrieved 
 From the remembrance of old services, 
 With measured recitation did he strew 
 Upon the flowing wind and ample hill. 
 Or upward sent into the blue concave 
 
148 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 Of starry nights. Oh ! what a joy it was, 
 Accompanied by many a sweet relief 
 Of tears, and some keen reminiscences 
 Brought from the past, the spur upon the rose 
 Of his new-born delight ! There is no sound 
 In earth or sky one half so musical, 
 One half so moving as man's voice, in prayer, 
 In praise, in meditation clothed with words 
 And uttered on the mountain-top, no sound 
 Which can attain so near the Throne of God, 
 Or so divine in its original. 
 
 O not so sweet the noise of falling streams, 
 Or voluntary of the jocund breeze 
 Shaking its dewy wings in early morn, 
 Or fingering visibly its instrument 
 With changeful pressure of the keys, whene'er 
 The sunshine ripples on the waving woods ! 
 Man's clear divided accents rise on high. 
 Service of natural sound more pleasing far 
 Than pastoral anthems breathed from off the moors 
 By bleating flocks, which to the wandering bell 
 Murmur responses, with a harmony 
 Set off with strange expression by the voice, 
 Uninterrupted, solitary, sent 
 From some far field or wattled pen by one 
 For blameless taint divided from its kind, 
 And listened to with sympathetic awe, 
 And with acclaim of beatings to console. 
 Exhort, or cheer, responded to by those 
 To whom the moorland's breezy range is free. 
 And not, though it be prayer, so soft a plaint 
 As man's, is that which rises round the farms, 
 The grateful supplication of the herds, 
 When on their placid features, gently bound 
 
VI.] THE SPIRIT OP THE SEA. 149 
 
 In imexpressive calm, an instinct comes, 
 
 An inward thought which moves them, on the grass 
 
 Eeclining at noon-day, to low as if 
 
 They spoke to some invisible Presence nigh ; 
 
 A poor pathetic sound which, like the roar 
 
 Of hungry lions, God accepts for prayer. 
 
 And memory then so wrought with his intent, 
 That in a few short weeks he had retrieved 
 Whole portions of the Psalter, Collects brief 
 Condensing truths with deep felicity, 
 High-hearted antiphons, and woven words 
 Of sweet responsories, by marvellous power 
 Evoked from boyish reminiscences, 
 And hymns, especially the soothing words, 
 And grave acknowledgment of unseen foes. 
 Wherewith the Compline cheers us, when we seek 
 Our nightly sepulchre for such soft sleep 
 As must be scanty if it would be pure. 
 So with quick psalms and swift- winged litanies, 
 Whose reverent speed precluded wandering thoughts, 
 Seven times a day his soul was raised on high. 
 Raised to the liberty of cheerful hopes. 
 And snatched from those wild humours of dismay, 
 That strange disrelish of industrious prayer. 
 That causeless inward fainting of good thoughts, 
 And that vague perturbation of the mind. 
 Wherewith the demons will dispirit him 
 Who, for Christ's sake or for self-punishment. 
 Confronts the visions of a lonely life. 
 Its chilling aspect, and the cheerless voice 
 Of solitude, deep in the conscience heard. 
 Yea, thus the demons, whose own proper realm 
 The anchoret invades, dispirit him 
 With thoughts, with apparitions, frightening soimds, 
 
ISO SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 And brutal contacts, and wild glaring lights, 
 And imitations of celestial forms, 
 Till he sheds vexed and unrefreshing tears, 
 And like a dusty wrestler, bruised and faint. 
 Comes forth a vanquished victor from the strife. 
 
 But highest privilege, with fervent thanks 
 Acknowledged, was the power once more to breathe 
 On the still night or fluent air of day 
 The Name of Jesus, of all mortal words 
 Dearest and best, with sacred riches fraught 
 Of meditation, and an endless store 
 Of spiritual meanings, which distil 
 With slow and silent dropping in our hearts. 
 Most like the sweet exudings of a tree 
 From out whose creviced rind the honeycombs 
 In the warm sunshine trickle. Tuneful Name, 
 Too common made by sinful lips which use 
 Their Christian rights more boldly than beseems 
 Their worth, inheriting unconsciously 
 From past sin, ill repented of, a quick 
 Self- trusting temper, and unbridled tongue 
 By reverence unchastised ! 
 
 The humble Knight, 
 Tutored in nature's school, with sparing use 
 Yet with enjoyment into transport raised. 
 By sacred awe more keenly edged, would mix 
 The Blessed Name with his soliloquies ; 
 And, solaced thus and sweetly dignified, 
 His hours of lonely converse now became 
 Enjoyment such as he had never dreamed 
 Might to his wounded conscience be vouchsafed. 
 Of all our catholic rights, a marvellous store 
 And numberless, is none more sweet than that 
 By which we can console our grief, or else 
 
VI.] THE SPIRIT OP THE SEA. 151 
 
 Our love of Jesus gratify, or wia 
 
 With diligent lips indulgence for our souls, 
 
 Or for the souls in penal fires detained, 
 
 The privileged iteration of that Name. 
 
 Yet never was that royal word pronounced 
 
 Without obeisance duly interposed 
 
 With an affectionate scruple ; when alone, 
 
 A homage is it to the Saviour paid 
 
 As present, with a sense that Angels nigh 
 
 Were bending as that Name escaped his lips ; 
 
 And in the throng of social intercourse 
 
 That gesture, in the Written Word ordained, 
 
 Witness may be unto oblivious eyes, 
 
 And gentle check restraining giddy tongues. 
 
 Alas ! how very far remote are we, 
 Whose Christian freedom with our growing sin9 
 Grows in proportion, while our sense of siu 
 Becomes obtuse, — how far remote are we 
 From that deep meditative heart of love. 
 Which on our lowest privileges set 
 A price more precious than we deign to put 
 Upon our highest, — from the mind remote 
 Wherein the Church an annual feast ordained 
 In honour of that simple-sounding Word, 
 The Name of Jesus, feast of fervid hearts. 
 Like Bernard's, or like Bernardine's, which glow 
 With sweet intolerable fires within. 
 While all without is winter's frost and sleet. 
 
 Nor wanted he another liberty 
 From which he had endeavoured to refrain. 
 Unwisely as self-guided men are wont, 
 A holy practice which he now renewed, 
 At first through impulse he could not control. 
 For self-invented penance has no balai, 
 
152 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 But irritates the wound it fain would heal. 
 
 When he had left the Ash-tree Hermitage, 
 
 And in the storm had crossed the distant hills, 
 
 Hounding the cornice upon Walney Scar 
 
 Entangled in a fringe of lucid mist, 
 
 He turned the invidious eminence which stops 
 
 The prospect southward ; suddenly, the cloud 
 
 Uplifting at that moment, down the vale. 
 
 As through a telescope, he saw the sea. 
 
 Angry and purple, far and wide outspread 
 
 In stormy grandeur ; with the sight there rushed 
 
 A torrent of old memories then let loose, 
 
 As from a dungeon, by the glorious view. 
 
 Unto the ground he sank upon his knees 
 
 And, trembling, signed the Cross upon his breast, 
 
 For years unworn upon that guilty heart. 
 
 He knelt in trouble, and he rose in peace ; 
 
 So tranquilly the admonition wrought ! 
 
 And now with reverent licence did he seek 
 The aid that Sign unto his soul supplied. 
 Both when he knelt and when he rose from prayer. 
 And when a thought more touching than was wont 
 Flashed o'er his mind, or sight more beautiful 
 Than common greeted him, he bowed and signed 
 With love and awe the Cross upon his breast. 
 Partly in ritual acknowledgment 
 Of that invisible Presence where he stood. 
 Partly in admonition to himself 
 By outward symbol made more forcible. 
 And partly in the faith that Heaven so loves 
 The blessed Sign, that meditated wrath 
 Allows herself to be thereby disarmed. 
 And Angels come more promptly to our aid, 
 While evil powers behold and, shuddering, fly. 
 
VI.J THE SPIRIT OF THE SEA. 153 
 
 O blessed Sign ! which from my youth hath been 
 (Prompted by inward want, by books untaught, 
 Nor from example copied) my true shield 
 Against the invasion of unholy fears 
 Troubling my nights too populous with dreams 
 From thoughts by day too wildly overwrought ; 
 Dear Sign ! which hath in later years full oft 
 Eepaired the mirror of eternal things 
 Within my heart, by angry mood displaced 
 Or by profane conceptions broken up. 
 How hast thou been to me memorial calm 
 Of my New Birth, a fence between my soul 
 And the dark world, a benediction felt 
 As the mute pressure of the Saviour's Hand, 
 Assuring timid love with healing touch, 
 Exorcist too of demons which beset 
 The Christian in his loneliness ! May shame 
 Of my dear Mastex*'s Cross ne'er teach my heart 
 That unimpassioned lore, which would extol 
 The cold formalities of barren mind 
 Above the tender spirit of the Faith, 
 From which these pensive rituals are evoked ! 
 
 O sweet Theology of nature ! thou 
 Dost the poetic sense inform and feed 
 With beautiful bright symbols, round us strewn 
 In sybilline confusion, whence we may 
 By diligence a Christian cypher make. 
 Piecing the brilliant fragments one by one 
 Through guess or intuition, till we read 
 The mystic truths of Heaven in obvious type 
 Illuminated on the scroll of earth. 
 Attractive Scholarship ! thy first essay, 
 Thine earliest task is o'er the blessed Cross, 
 In nature's alphabet the letter chief, 
 
154 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 Most often found. With what an eye of love 
 Did thej of old that sacred Sign detect 
 Among the boughs, and in the crossing clouds, 
 And o'er the plains, and on the skins of beasts, 
 And in the cloven roots by ploughs upturned ! 
 The gentle birds before the daylight eye 
 Of the blue heaven outstretch their little wings, 
 And, while they make the Cross, are safely borne 
 Through the thin ether, but if they should mar 
 That Sign with pinions closed, they fall to earth. 
 He, who on shipboard ventures, gladly finds 
 (Once hath it been a needful aid to me!) 
 The mast a Cross, and when they spread the sail, 
 A Body hangs thereon which doth propel 
 The labouring vessel ; and the voyage becomes 
 An admonition typical, the ship 
 Figuring the Church, the chafing sea the World, 
 The Body, dimly seen upon the Cross 
 Through the dark air and frequent drifting spray. 
 With no inapt similitude shows Him, 
 Whose Presence is the haven of our lives ; 
 The lifting up of whose Immaculate Hands, — 
 Outstretched upon that cruel Tree of Life, 
 In the prophetic evening of the world. 
 Whose tardy twilight lingers round us still, — 
 Was the sweet Vesper Sacrifice foretold. 
 And for long ages sung in Hebrew psalm, 
 Chanted within the expectant Synagogue. 
 Another change too had his outward life 
 Wrought imperceptibly within, a change 
 Not without import to the man who seeks 
 Admittance by whatever road he may 
 Into the world of spirit. As the sea 
 Had snapped the fetters of his mind, and thrown 
 
VI.] THE SPIRIT OP THE SEA. 155 
 
 The habit of his thoughts beyond the range 
 Of this terrestrial scene, so through his sleep 
 The silent night distilled that liberty 
 Into his dreams, which close relation bore 
 To his new circumstances ; for erewhile 
 In liveliest apparitions had the past 
 Been nightly unimprisoned, and his soul 
 With darkest inundation of old sins 
 Insufferably possessed ; but now his dreams 
 Knocked softly at the portals of the grave, 
 And entrance won, and through the livelong night 
 Kanged in the misty space that lies beyond, 
 And, home returning as the stars grew pale, 
 Had gathered truths which even his waking hours 
 Could recognize as holy and divine. 
 
 What though our dreams, which I may boldly call 
 One branch of human knowledge, yet elude 
 The form of shapely science, still shall we, 
 Through disesteem of universal faith. 
 Or doubt for wisdom taking, or a wish 
 To guard the frontiers of our barren sense 
 Against the encroachments of the world unseen,— 
 Shall we, who so much need them, disregard 
 Chance revelations to the spirit made 
 Through God's once chosen instrument, outpoured 
 By Angels through the conduits of sleep 
 In silent-stirring pictures, or sometimes 
 With an aerial music wheeling by. 
 Akin to sound, but something far more sweet 
 And distant ? If it be allowed to man 
 To look upon his own immortal soul, 
 Next to the vision of his God the sight 
 Most coveted, it can alone be given 
 In the clear spectral twilight of a dream. 
 
166 SIR LANCELOT, [bOOK 
 
 And in the bosom of this cheerless age, 
 If we would duly estimate the skill, 
 Wherewith these rites and strong persuasions built 
 The Individual Mind, and gave a tone 
 Through that unto the Social State, not vain 
 Will be the admonition that auch things 
 Unto the spirit of those times were not, 
 Bomantic speculations, as to us. 
 Wherewith imagination plays, and thought 
 Herself bewitches for a few sweet hours 
 From false conventions and the littleness 
 Of act and feeling, equalized too much 
 Beneath the social tyranny which now, 
 An intellectual feudalism, defeats 
 Great purposes through coward love of peace. 
 Dispiriting the hearts which would retrieve 
 Our civil grandeurs lost, or re-cement, 
 In all the breadth of its harmonious life. 
 Sovereign and subjugate at once in things 
 Terrene, the spiritual commonwealth 
 Of Holy Church. Among those ancient men 
 These faiths were entertained as moral powers, 
 Were solemnized in daily acts, tlie moulds 
 Wherein their lives were cast, and which achieved,, 
 With mightiest effort in unlooked-for ways, 
 The freedom of the Individual Mind, 
 The choicest of all social gifts, and source 
 Of all political magnificence. 
 
 Yet if the mountain-top and boundless sea 
 To his enfranchisement of spirit gave 
 Somewhat of wildness, the dark vicinage 
 Of his rude cell had sights and sounds enough 
 To mellow and subdue, and to reclaim 
 Thoughts which might haply wing their flight too far. 
 
VI.] THE SPIRIT OP THE SEA. 157 
 
 There offc he sat, with many a sombre fold 
 Of weeping cloud pavilioned, while his mind 
 By the pale melancholy light inspired, 
 Drew mournful morals out of little things. 
 There, couched on high among the nodding ferns, 
 He dimly traced the curse of Adam's Fall 
 Ubiquitous, which won its silent way 
 Into the kingdoms of inanimate life. 
 As here and there a plant, beneath a law 
 Of beautiful arrangement made, transgressed, 
 And, with its nature breaking covenant. 
 Swerved from its sweet propriety of shape, 
 And putting forth unwonted powers in search 
 Of freedom, missed of beauty, and became 
 A thing deformed ; yet ah ! not like poor man 
 Transmitting an hereditary flaw, 
 But in its own sin dying on the hill. 
 
 And on his hermitage had curious chance 
 (For so we name such acts of Heaven as hide 
 The order and connection of their law) 
 Bestowed an awful faculty to train 
 And discipline his mind in fear ; as earth 
 Through providential accident full oft 
 Thus ministers unto the soul of man. 
 
 There is a cheerless glen outside the walls 
 Of old Jerusalem, a dark ravine. 
 Not by the action of the torrent scooped, 
 But in some throe of earth a fracture rent, 
 The gloomy vale of Josaphat, a place 
 Where Christian legend and wild Arab faith 
 With old tradition, drawn from Hebrew source, 
 Strangely concur to fix the solemn scene 
 Of the Last Judgment. There on Olivet, 
 Even where He wept and prayed, and bore the curse 
 
158 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 Of all our generations, Christ shall sit, 
 
 While through the dusky strait before His Eye 
 
 The spirits, in their bodies newly clothed, 
 
 Shall defile one by one. O kindly faith ! 
 
 O beautiful belief! which so could fix 
 
 The last and hardly tolerable woe 
 
 Of our humanity in that dim vale. 
 
 Where mother earth with venturous love might hope 
 
 To breathe sweet admonitions to our Lord 
 
 Of the pure Flesh which He vouchsafes to wear. 
 
 And, with allowed constraint, might so inspire 
 
 The Saviour to prevail against the Judge. 
 
 And still more touching fitness will appear 
 In this tradition, if we bear in mind 
 That on the selfsame mount the Master sat, 
 While Judas bargained with the wicked priests. 
 On the fourth evening of the Holy Week, 
 With Four selected from His chosen Twelve ; 
 And spake of Sion's fall in words that seemed 
 To overshoot their end, and covertly 
 The shadow with the substance to confuse, 
 Till the Last Judgment rose in His discourse 
 With awful plainness; then did He once more 
 The kind relievinor veil of figure throw 
 Over the aspect of that Solemn Day, 
 And of the Virgins spake who went to buy 
 Oil for their lamps at midnight — ah ! too late — 
 And of the Talents left with Jew and Greek 
 By Him, who with ascending travel sought 
 With His true Flesh the far-off land of Heaven, 
 Present as God, — and of the Corporal Works 
 Of Mercy done by those who shall discern 
 Through faith their Lord vouchsafing to the End 
 To suffer and be needy in the Poor. 
 
VI.] THE SPIRIT OP THE SEA. 159 
 
 Haply, with these localities around, 
 
 If there we must confront the searching Day, 
 
 The reminiscence of the Passion might, 
 
 Even in the awful business of that Pomp, 
 
 Stir on the infinite Abyss of Love, 
 
 As the soft breaths which flutter o'er the sea 
 
 Eivet the azure calm more sweetly there. 
 
 The fissure of Black Combe, wherein the Knight 
 Had built his little hermitage, appeared 
 In its rude details strangely similar 
 To that prophetic vale of Josaphat. 
 There nightly from his window would he lean 
 And look into the chasm wherein the moon 
 Troubled the darkness, but dispelled it not : 
 And by the hour his trembling soul would faco 
 The Vision of the Judgment, till serene. 
 Yet not without alarm which faith as oft 
 Controlled, he could contemplate that array, 
 Pictured as to his memory it might be 
 In that most gloomy gorge by Sion's wall. 
 
 So had he gazed full often from his tent, 
 Pitched on the dusty slope of Olivet ; 
 Over against the tombs of Judah's kings ; 
 Where through the darkness the sepulchral stones 
 Floated, white ghastly motes, in glimmering light ; 
 And the slant moonbeams thrown into the glen, 
 Just faintly silvering o'er some crisp-leaved dome 
 Of mastic, vainly strove to penetrate 
 The murky bosom of the deep ravine ; 
 And the gaunt olive-roots, which forced aside 
 The fretted head-stones, seemed like crawling beasts, 
 In hideous volume coiled upon the earth. 
 Feeding by moonlight on the lately dead ; 
 "While the dim vale was fathomed hj the eye 
 
160 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 Through aid of one broad hoary seam which ran, 
 Most like a throbbing vein of tremulous light, 
 Along the raven gloom, — the channel dry 
 Of yellow Cedron, trickling underground. 
 
 Thus while the sea by day could harmonize 
 His thoughts, to tranquil meditation given 
 Upon eternal things, the cleft by night 
 Exhibited that grave Solemnity, 
 Mutely delineated on the spot. 
 The very thought of which can purify 
 The thronged imagination, and rebuke 
 The sin which to its presence may intrude. 
 Thus life, the past, was wholly put away. 
 And thrust behind the more engrossing thoughts 
 That drew him forward to the misty breadth 
 Of prospect, which the near approach of death 
 And the grave's portals, on their silent hinge 
 Half turned already to the prescient eye, 
 Disclose unto the Christian soul, informed 
 With some faint knowledge of the secret things 
 And region of vast truths, which lies beyond 
 And in its measure may be travelled now ; — 
 Travelled with escort of unworldly thoughts. 
 Through rites with an adoring faith performed. 
 And by the clue from ancient days consigned 
 In Creeds, recited not without some stir. 
 Felt in high Heaven where Angels offer up 
 The choral liturgies of Mother Church, 
 And simple cottage prayers no less, complete 
 With the rich incense of His Merits, who 
 Travelled erewhile in three short solar days 
 The passages beyond the gates of death. 
 And doubtless left such mystic footprints there 
 As shall transcend the office of a sun, 
 
VI.] THE SPIRIT OP THE SEA. 161 
 
 Where neither sun nor moon are free to shine, 
 To be by us discovered as we go 
 Inevitable voyagers that way. 
 
 And finally, as if to close the scene 
 Of that harmonious discipline, wherewith 
 The Seaside Mountain and its neighbourhood 
 Had furthered, and, as best it could, filled up 
 The education of his soul, there came 
 A vision of symbolical intent, 
 And yet a simple pomp of natural sights. 
 To him accorded in the open fields. 
 
 North of the bay of Kavenglass the shore, 
 A champaign hitherto, begins to swell 
 Into blythe slopes of cultivated land. 
 There in a spacious field he sat, where kine, 
 Spotting the grass in social couples, grazed. 
 While he beneath a stunted oak, which leaned 
 To give the sea-breeze passage o'er its crown, 
 Stooping to save its boughs, a shelter found. 
 The day was one of almost breathless heat, 
 With unrefreshing rain-showers interspersed, 
 And fogs from off the sultry ocean lay 
 Upon the hills and plain, that seemed to shake 
 In the white haze-fires dancing o'er tlie scene 
 In spiral columns, while upon the west 
 There hung a cloud of dusky violet hue 
 With the live lightnings tremulously edged. 
 Yet was the body of the mighty cloud 
 Soft as a cygnet's plumage, whence there came 
 Low thunders, fired like distant minute-guns 
 Below the horizon and far-off at sea. 
 Then on the heated plain, which intervenes 
 Between the mountains and the deep, there passed 
 A singular mirage, pompously and slow. 
 
162 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 With an uneasy heaving there appeared 
 
 A river huge, with glossy waters filled ; 
 
 Far off it stretched into the woods, and bore 
 
 Eeflected on its face the silent trees 
 
 With exquisite fidelity, and then 
 
 To a vast lake expanded, and consumed 
 
 The solid plain and laved the mountain's base. 
 
 Forthwith the mighty ridge, parting like ships 
 
 That swing upon their anchors, opened out 
 
 Into bright straits whereby the shining lake 
 
 Made islands of the summits that were left. 
 
 And in the midst, seated upon the breast 
 
 Of the clear waters, as the travellers tell, 
 
 Of Mexico, a city now uprose. 
 
 Built of a dull red stone, with tower and spire 
 
 And battlemented gate, and most of all 
 
 Innumerous windmills fanning the warm air. 
 
 Then with the impulse of a whispering breeze — 
 By such a fragile tenure do we hold 
 All beautiful appearances on earth — 
 The pageant rocked, and into pieces fell, 
 Buin grotesque ! and stately visions shrank 
 Till they were recognized for objects tame. 
 From the broad landscape singled by the mist 
 For such transfiguration. 
 
 Thus am I, 
 With patience never weary of the fraud. 
 Daily deluded by three cones of rock 
 Bearing aerial domes of vocal pine. 
 At blue Winander's head, and from my hill 
 The vivid silver of the lake beyond 
 Dazzles the sight, and cleaves the triple rocki 
 To separate islands, which upon the mere 
 Swim indistinctly and in motion seem. 
 
VI.] THE SPIRIT OF THE SEA. 16S 
 
 Even as the Enganean hills descried 
 Floating like pyramids of misty blue, 
 By one who from his gondola at noon 
 Hard by the Lido looks across the sea. 
 
 But now unto the meditative Knight, 
 The apparition pondering, it appeared 
 No less than a mute prophecy of death, 
 On nature's part a visible shadowing forth 
 Of that transfiguring of earthly things 
 Caused by the light upon a death-bed streamed 
 From out eternity. Sweet type it was 
 Of that most beautiful apparel, veils 
 Clearing not hiding, which in time to come 
 The sacred knowledge of a future state 
 Shall over all the naked memories throw 
 Of this our mortal life, so ill discerned 
 In its most proper loveliness by us 
 Blindfold through our transgressions, and so led 
 By angel guides about the Promised Land, 
 Dwelling therein although we know it not, 
 Feeling the grapes of Escol, hearing sounds 
 As of the blessed Jordan flowing by. 
 But all as dark blind men, bewildered rather 
 Than by great truths, so dimly taught, informed. 
 
 Such was the nurture which Sir Lancelot drew 
 From his imprisoning and secluded Vale 
 And the free Mountain-top, while Loneliness 
 Held him, an unweaned infant, at her breast. 
 
 Tyrant, and Tempter, Mother and Nurse austere. 
 Fulfilling manifold functions to us men. 
 How shall 1 name thee, mighty Solitude ? 
 Person or Thing, a Presence, Place, or Life, 
 Invisible Life environing our soul ? 
 Silent or Sounding ? vacant, bare, and waste, 
 
164 SIR LANCELOT, [bOOK 1 
 
 Or populous with motley, turbid shapes ? I 
 
 I know not if I love or loathe thy touch ; j 
 
 And while I daily grow thine intimate, ] 
 
 The more I converse with thy power, the less ^ 
 
 Can I discern thy nature, but detect ; 
 
 Thy changeful Aspects ever multiplied, ■ 
 
 Charms tliat repel and horrors that allure ; j 
 
 So that to gaze upon thy desert fields j 
 Quickens such perilous impulses within, 
 
 As might most apt yet faintest figure find \ 
 
 In the wild fascination which disturbs ? 
 
 The thoughts of one on airy steeple fixed, j 
 
 Or leaning verge of windy precipice, j 
 
 Only that thou canst tempt us to a fall \ 
 
 Involving worse mishap than mangled limbs, — I 
 
 Irreparable mischief to the soul ! | 
 
 One while I deem thee a close prudent power ■] 
 
 That husbandeth my spirit's inward strength : j 
 
 Another while thou art a preying fire, | 
 
 Or fiery, wasteful, intermitting wind j 
 
 Which dissipates ascetic wealth, acquired j 
 
 Tiirough difficult ordinance cheerfully performed, ] 
 
 And to my strife-worn temper thou dost prompt ] 
 
 A languid introversion of my thoughts, I 
 
 Most cruel devastation of the heart. ■ 
 
 One while thou art a fierce iconoclast, j 
 
 And then a builder up, transmuting so j 
 
 Thine offices that we may well proclaim \ 
 
 One only truth about thee sure and safe, — 1 
 
 That without clear vocation from on high ^ 
 
 No Christian man may join his hand in thine, ; 
 
 Save for brief respite from the sinful world, i 
 
 And only thus when in the vicinage ] 
 
 Of Church, and Priest, and ready Sacraments, j 
 
VI.] THE SPIRIT OP THE SEA. 165 
 
 And that deep harbour, the Confessional. 
 
 Therefore I name thee neither Place, nor Thing, 
 Nor Presence (for thou canst not be withdrawn) 
 Nor Person (for it were too bold a word, 
 A title wholly sacred and divine 
 When that which bears it is not localized). 
 But thou art rather a created Life, 
 A life without a nature of thine own, 
 A Capability of good or ill. 
 Thirsty, insatiate, limitless, profound ; — 
 A Living Vase with an indwelling Power 
 Of dark possession or angelic strength. 
 Whose keen pervasive thrills find speedy road 
 Through Conscience, Intellect, and wayward Will, 
 Not without physical disturbance felt 
 In Contests, Sins, and Graces mystical. 
 
 Thou hast a Voice, an Eye, an Ear, a Hand, 
 Which have by shrinking men been realized. 
 Thou hast a Voice — would that we could fear, 
 More than we do, all sounds and silent things, 
 Which breed a wholesome dread of powers unseen ! — 
 Thou hast a Voice, which in the depth of night. 
 Or in the utter loneliness of noon, 
 A tingling concourse of innumerous sounds. 
 Speaks to the conscience as a priest might speak, 
 Whose words we honour yet will not obey. 
 An Eye thou hast, which can expression give 
 To the dumb features of the earth and sky, 
 Or ordinary chance of daily acts. 
 Piercing, reproachful, terrible, to those 
 Who have at heart a secret weight of sin, 
 Or sinful details lingering unconfessed. 
 And silent darkness is thine open Ear, 
 Greedy to drink the secrets of the soul, 
 
16^ SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK VI. 
 
 And prowling near like some nocturnal spy ; 
 
 And therein, seeking in its uttered words 
 
 Foolish relief, unguarded conscience tells 
 
 Sins better trusted to a pitying priest. 
 
 A Hand thou hast, which thou canst lay on those 
 
 Who in the tumult of the world forget 
 
 Duty and Self, their neighbour and their God, — 
 
 A Hand so crushing cheerfulness within, 
 
 And overlaying animal spirits so. 
 
 That underneath its pressure we may deem 
 
 Ourselves already at the Judgment Bar. 
 
 O mutable and double-featnred Power ! 
 
 Silent thou art and sounding, both at once : 
 
 When thou art still and seemingly inert, 
 
 Thou art the Quiver where the demons keep 
 
 Their loathsome shafts : and, when all resonant 
 
 'To man*s enlivened conscience, thou canst bo 
 
 The Trumpet of God's Presence in the Soul I 
 
SIR LANCELOT. 
 
 BOOK VII. 
 THE LEPKOSY. 
 
BOOK VII. 
 
 THE LEPKOSY. 
 
 In waking vision, through the fear of death 
 
 Engendered or the imposing calm of night, 
 
 What time the lively heavens were set with stars, 
 
 And the imperfect moon had sunk, I saw 
 
 Humanity, the multitudinous tribes 
 
 Of mortal men upon the hilly waste. 
 
 The spirit-peopled desert of the world, 
 
 Pining in obstinate suUenness apart, 
 
 Or in a fretful wandering seeking rest 
 
 Not unsuccessfully, and half consoled 
 
 Even by an irritable eloquence 
 
 Quick to disprove whatever hope might prompt. 
 
 And couched around them, as it were a rinof 
 
 Of lions keeping guard, were marvellous Forms ; 
 
 Some lay supine, and might be deemed asleep 
 
 But for the mobile gesture of their eyes, 
 
 While others ever and anon arose, 
 
 And pacing restlessly about in search 
 
 Of something which they found not, came again 
 
 Where they had couched before, and other some 
 
 Went in and out with noiseless step and swift 
 
 Among the quiet sentinels, and gazed 
 
 Upon the pallid stars, and seemed to move 
 
 As though they read an obvious mandate there. 
 
 Such scene it was as though in Arab wilds 
 
170 BIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 One came by nighfc upon a caravan 
 
 Of pilgrims bound for Mecca, with its groups 
 
 Of sleepers scattered o'er the moonlit sands ; 
 
 And if it be the desert wind that stirs 
 
 A garment here and there, or if it be 
 
 The shudder that i-e veals some inward dream 
 
 We know not; — thus those wondrous Creatures lay. 
 
 No sound bat their imperious breathing smote 
 
 The listening ear ; and with infectious thrill, 
 
 Or like the soft continuous wake of wind, 
 
 There ran full oft a quick and angry start 
 
 This way and that across the voiceless herd, 
 
 Most like the breaches which a fearful dream 
 
 Makes in the slumber of a man now first 
 
 At sea, or who the day before hath climbed 
 
 A steep and ever seems to fall therefrom. 
 
 Methought that by some tokens I perceived 
 Those creatui'os were the impersonated shapes 
 Of all the manifold sicknesses that prey 
 On our sin-tainted flesh ; and mid them all 
 An Angel sat who made their wrath subserve 
 His ministries of love ; or I will say 
 Of seeming love and mere eventual good, 
 If it be more according to the mind 
 Of Holy Church to deem the spirits, who wield 
 Sickness and sorrow, instruments of ill 
 Indulged in their base haired of mankind, 
 And for the proof of men ; yet sweeter far. 
 Sweeter, if lawful, the consoling hope 
 That to our Guardian Angel's hand the scourge 
 Hath been consigned; for, if terrestrial love 
 When deepest is least backward to inflict 
 Kemedial pain, angelic hands might deal 
 The unsparing blows, and it were sweet to lie 
 
VII.] THE LEPROSY. 171 
 
 So suffering, sweet for sinners to look back 
 
 On sorrow with that tearful yearning love 
 
 The memory of parental chastisement 
 
 Breeds in our after years. But shall faith dread 
 
 Even in Satan's hand to rest awhile ? 
 
 The tempter's touch is but an outward thing ; 
 
 And his repelled suggestions leave no stain 
 
 But what a penitential psalm, i^hearsed 
 
 For love of Christ, may wholly cleanse away. 
 
 The grasp of sickness, if it be his arm 
 
 Which awfully encircles our poor limbs, 
 
 May, while we shudder, be full well endured, 
 
 In memory of that passage through tlie air 
 
 When Christ vouchsafed to entrust His spotless 
 
 Flesh— 
 O love by us so miserably paid ! 
 To Satan's handling, while he bore the Lord 
 Unto the temple roof. 
 
 From out the crowd 
 A white and voiceless creature, dull of eye 
 And silent-footed, was that night detached, 
 And on a direful ambassage sent forth 
 To the lone summit of the huge Black Combe. 
 There with envenomed kiss, as though it were 
 The bodiless contact of the infected wind, 
 And not a living spirit, it set a seal 
 Upon Sir Lancelot's forehead as he slept. 
 O Leprosy ! in byegone days thou wert 
 An awful presence mid the sons of men, 
 A sign set up in merciful disdain 
 To overawe the soul, the like whereof, 
 A miracle to succour that weak faith 
 Which needs the arm of sight, we now possess. 
 Who, with deep self-reproach and muttered prayer, 
 
172 BIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 Shrink as we daily see the homeless Jews, 
 A strange and cognizable people, cast 
 Their preternatural shadows in our streets. 
 But thou, dread Sickness ! witness of the power, 
 And faithful image too, of human sin, 
 How art thou melted from among us, gone 
 Like unabiding snow, we know not when I 
 Earth hath a token less, and misseth thee 
 Even as the Dead Sea shore did one day miss 
 That single pillar of white salt that stood 
 Looking towards Sodom — one unlawful wish 
 Of base self-will most horribly fulfilled ! 
 
 This is no theme for song : the stricken man, 
 At length the manifest victim of disease. 
 Descending from his mountain, bent his steps 
 To Calder Abbey ; there, his naitie concealed. 
 He sought the intercessions of the Church, 
 Her potent rites, and the vicinity 
 Of her great sacraments ; for to his mind 
 His sickness plainest admonition was 
 Of God's compassionate will, that he should leave 
 The nurture of his mountain solitude. 
 And brace his soul mid Christian sights and sounds 
 To suffer now, and for the end prepare, 
 The end which he beheld was drawinor niorh. 
 Like a bright sunset following on a storm. 
 
 Was never consolation so confused 
 With awe-inspiring menace, or man's hopes 
 So wedded to man's fears, as then 
 In that old Liturgy of Lepers, — rite 
 Fearfully beautiful, within whose forms, 
 As in a piteous drama, were set forth 
 The woeful fortunes of our fallen race. 
 Which yet we love because it is our own. 
 
VII.] THE LEPROSY. 173 
 
 faithless world ! thou growest weak and old ! 
 How hast thou sinned that the wrath of Heaven 
 Should have withdrawn this presence from thy fields, 
 This supernatural token of the power 
 Of Adam's one contagious sin ? And thou 
 Dear Mother Church ! with what affectionate rites 
 Didst thou consign the tainted to their cells, 
 Immured in dread tranquillity therein 
 With God and their chastising Angel, there 
 To evoke from penance those high gifts once found 
 "Within the Font, and in the heats of youth 
 Bartered and lost through passion or mischance. 
 In their first fulness nowhere found again ! 
 
 Haply the Angels, whose far-kenning sight 
 Can trace the world through all its tortuous ways 
 And its long discipline of ages, see 
 How it hath ever been throughout all time. 
 That what men deem improvement in the lot 
 Of humankind is but a putting off 
 Some power to be like Christ, the getting rid 
 First of one Thorn and then another, so 
 Despoiling and diminishing the Crown 
 Which only gives the right to rule in Heaven. 
 Where are the daily rudenesses of life, 
 The imperfect satisfaction of our needs. 
 The keen discomforts of our mortal state. 
 The hardships which annealed the men of old. 
 The sense of want which every hour brought homo 
 To sinful man ? Are they not put aside. 
 So far as may be, with unblest success, 
 Thanks to officious science ! as the lot 
 Of monks and of poor men, kept at arm's length 
 By all the effeminate appliances 
 Of our luxurious skill ? And we perchance 
 
174 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 Are either venturous or unwise, when we 
 
 Eegret the growing softness of the times, 
 
 As being ourselves effeminate, afraid 
 
 To give ourselves to God, or bravely dare 
 
 The ancient measures of saint's love. Should we 
 
 Without these comforts summon up the heart 
 
 To do the little that we do for God, 
 
 Or persevere in those few puny acts 
 
 Which we esteem so great ? What wonder then 
 
 That if in purple and fine linen swathed. 
 
 The world should play the part of Dives more 
 
 And more each passing age, and less affect 
 
 That Christ-like sorrow which the Angels seek 
 
 To penetrate with their enamoured gaze. 
 
 And, were they not so calm, might envy too 
 
 Through wish to embrace the self-same life as Christ, 
 
 And have their acts identified with His, 
 
 The exclusive privilege of Catholic Saints, — 
 
 What wonder if the jealous wrath of Heaven 
 
 Should silently withdraw neglected ills, 
 
 As slighted sacraments, which men no more 
 
 Should have the liberty to scorn ! The plague, 
 
 Which recognized the sacred touch of kings, 
 
 Vanished from earth when kingly hands were held 
 
 Sacred no longer ; for the world brooked not 
 
 The presence of a supernatural thing ; 
 
 And so that token went, leaving the State 
 
 Weakened, yet of its weakness unaware, 
 
 Proud of the open sea, and grand career. 
 
 And with the sunshine drunk, yet full of taunts 
 
 Gainst Peter's bark that had convoyed it there. 
 
 Ah ! silly kings will learn, but learn like kings, 
 
 Too late to profit by the lesson taught. 
 
 That churchless states obey not royal helms, 
 
VIT.] THE LEPROSY. 175 
 
 And that St. Peter^s keys were light as air 
 
 Compared witli Kevoliition's heavy hand. 
 
 O Sovereign People ! whither wilt thou steer 
 
 These old historic states of Christendom ? 
 
 Hast thou a chart, are soundings ascertained, 
 
 Did ever true discoverer report 
 
 Safe harbours o'er that wild and stormy sea ? 
 
 Or shall we one day, drifting on our wreck, 
 
 Bespondingly believe wliat some have said, 
 
 Which would be almost madness were it true, — 
 
 The world's improvement is the Christian's loss ? 
 
 So long then as the favoured earth possessed 
 One Corporal Work of Mercy more than now. 
 The tending of the Lepers, Holy Church, 
 Mindful how oft our Saviour had vouchsafed 
 To appear in leprous guise unto the Saints, 
 Drew into one her most consoling acts. 
 With bland denunciaticns intermixed. 
 She took the Leper from the affrighted world, 
 Sprinkled her holy water on his brow, 
 Entitling him dear Victim of our God, 
 And gifted him with Gloves, with Knife, with Lamp, 
 Trumpet to hold communion with his kind, 
 Pannier for alms, and Pitcher for the wells. 
 Symbolic gifts whose meaning could sustain 
 A patient temper ; thence unto liis cell, 
 The abbey cross borne to the threshold first. 
 Was he consigned with prayer, and so exiled 
 From that false world whose joys delude the soul. 
 At Easter only suffered to emerge, 
 For not the tombs tliat day could keep their dead. 
 And for some ages wlien the Leper died. 
 So solemn was the love men bore to him 
 And almost reverence for his mystic woe, 
 
176 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 That Mass was chanted for him in the Church 
 (By after Councils solemnly refused) 
 As for a true Confessor of the Faith, 
 And witness of some supernatural thing. 
 
 Thus, in symbolic vestments all arrayed, 
 Within a cell Sir Lancelot was immured 
 What time, the chanted compline o'er, the star 
 Of peaceful eve with uncontested right 
 Vicegerent was for her still absent queen. 
 And with the help of lingering sunset shed 
 A dusky brightness o'er the dewy woods. 
 
 How beautiful that night was Calder Vale ! 
 The golden moon with shadowy splendour lent 
 A depth of mottled foliage to the boughs 
 Still leafless, and the abbey's leaden roofs 
 In the soft flashing beams were multiplied 
 An hundredfold, and on the shining meads 
 The whiteness of the frosty grass appeared 
 A portion of the moonlight, while the stream. 
 With its occasional broken water lit 
 With an uncertain scattered brightness, dived 
 Through the dark grove like an irregular band 
 Of men with lanterns in a midnight wood. 
 Threading their way together or dispersed. 
 O Moon ! thy light is like the honied tongue 
 Of one who tells false parables to gild 
 Or prompt a dubious act : when morning comes 
 How changed will all that sunken vale appear ! 
 
 There is no image of unbroken peace 
 Which is not gathered now around the spot 
 Where so much suflfering dwells, so much disease 
 Of mind, and labour of remorseful thoughts 
 Within that penitential House ; and yet 
 Misdeem not thou the quiet beauty shed 
 
VII.] THE LEPROSY. 177 
 
 Upon this stern abode ; for it is not 
 A mockery of nature, but sets forth 
 In parables to disobedient man i 
 How lovely are the ancient offices 
 Which these obedient elements fulfil, — 
 How sweet the travail of unbroken laws, 
 Thus imaging that pure tranquillity. 
 Which reigns where'er the Will of God is done. 
 The beasts, whose shadows, indistinct and dark, 
 Spot yon illumined field, lie down in peace, 
 If lower, yet more perfect than the peace 
 Which man attains ; for instinct unto them 
 Is a deep law that hath more promptitude 
 To act, than reason which is ever set 
 'Twixt doubtful contraries ; so unto man 
 Hath God, beside his reason, deigned to give 
 The instinct of obedience, and for this 
 With merciful acceptance He vouchsafes 
 To take, what it is misery to withhold, 
 The intelligent surrender of our wills 
 And ways to His. 
 
 In many a secret cell 
 Within that convent doubtless may reside 
 A man, whose wrecked and shattered life is cast 
 On this seclusion after thoughtless years 
 Of worshipping self-will, who, haply freed 
 From the more heinous acts of mortal sin, 
 Hath so disturbed his inward faculties, 
 That when grace found him, and he turned to seek 
 The oracles of conscience, no response 
 Came from the desecrated shrine ; his soul, 
 Eyeless and voiceless both, was overcome 
 With that intoxication which ensues 
 On long self-worship, and within his heart 
 
178 &IE LAircELor. [book 
 
 Mercy must interrene to plant afresh 
 
 The finer sense of right and wrong. Ah meT 
 
 What a blind fight is life to such a man I 
 
 Hating to be alone, yet every day 
 
 Plunging more deeply into solitude, 
 
 By frequent transit into separate spheres 
 
 Of action self-imposed ; craving too much 
 
 For sympathy, yet ever out at sea, 
 
 Where they who labour at appointed tasks 
 
 At best can give him but a distant hail ; 
 
 Accumulating knowledge so disjoined 
 
 From honest practice, that it soon becomes 
 
 A load that overwhelms his cheerfulness ; 
 
 Toiling without a blessing through neglect 
 
 Of those less lofty toils which God ordained ; 
 
 Too covetous of home, yet finding none 
 
 For his unfixed affections. Wretched man ! 
 
 His very nature is a law which blights 
 
 The face of home, and yet he knows it not. 
 
 How is he like the sea-birds that by night 
 
 Sleep on the dull dark ocean, and by day, 
 
 Float on the sunny billows, and they see 
 
 Where'er they go the self-same images, ^ 
 
 The sun's white glory far within the deep. 
 
 And the blue vale of water 'twixt the waves, 
 
 Ever the same, yet ever changed ; no mark. 
 
 No sign whereon to fix a local love, 
 
 No home to be remembered for its peace, 
 
 No shapely bough well known and best beloved 
 
 Within the crowded forest. Hence it is 
 
 They carol not, but wail from off the deep, 
 
 In piteous accents of impatient grief. 
 
 And some, like spirits hardened by despair, 
 
 Joy in the savage tempest ; — so with him— 
 
YII.] THE LEPROSY,. 179 
 
 The home, which he so fretfully pursuesi- \ 
 
 Glides from beneath him, and he sinks at last I 
 
 Beneath the direst burden man can bear, ^ 
 
 That constant uniformity of change, I 
 Wherein consists the worship of Self- Will. 
 
 This moonlit earth is not the earth which man* ^ 
 
 Tills from the dawn unto the setting sun r j 
 
 And neither is the moonlit world of joy, • 
 
 Feasting, and poetry, the real world j 
 
 Where man achieves or misses of his crowm i 
 
 There is a second world behind the veil, i 
 
 More nigh to God, a more mysterious place, 1 
 More thickly peopled with great deeds, more full 
 
 Of spiritual Presences, — the world I 
 
 Of sorrow, sickness, and of secret grief, 'i 
 
 Where life, ejected from the outward throng,, i 
 
 Dwells in the quiet vestibule of deathv j 
 
 Look at yon summer city on the shore 1 
 
 Of that Italian lake ; the moon is up, , 
 
 And, mingling strangely with her quiet beams^ I 
 
 The incessant lightning of the voiceless clouds \ 
 Clothes with white fire the hills and tremulous lakev 
 And there is music on the quay, and sounds 
 
 Of singers on the water far away ; ^ 
 
 And youth is moving gaily on the banks, j 
 
 Where age is sitting and appears to have i 
 
 A deeper-seated joy^ and in the port I 
 The lights from out the open windows cast 
 
 Thin pillared shadows in the rippling deep, ] 
 
 And barks with gaudy flags shoot up and down j f 
 
 And the cool freedom of the night appears ' j 
 
 To be sufficient of itself to cause j 
 
 This universal mirth ; and mid it all, | 
 
 The song, the movement, and the shooting barks, \ 
 
180 SIR LANCELOT* [sbOK 
 
 And the pale lightning flapping o'er the hills. 
 How silent stands yon solemn mountain tower 
 Behind the city, borrowing from the moon 
 Darkness, not light, and frowning on the scene 
 As though it were a monitory thing 
 Appointed to restrain men's thoughts. And yet 
 Behind the face of this enjoyment lurks 
 Another world, which teaches us that life 
 Is not the dream of one short summer-night 
 Mid the moon's visionary landscapes ; no ! 
 Death is in the city, sickness, and sin. 
 Suffering, remorse, despair, the unheeded priest. 
 Haply the unknown passage of a soul 
 Is being accomplished at this hour, for oft 
 Amid the multitudinous poor death comes 
 And finds his victims lonely ; want, neglect, 
 And hunger, being their only retinue : 
 With these stern nurses round them they confront 
 Their last great act, as utterly alone 
 As the sick beasts that lay them down to die 
 Beneath the pressure of their Maker's Will, 
 Iq the deep noon mid Afric's sunless woods 
 Or the damp lairs of Asiatic caves. 
 
 Sickness and death ! Ye twin beneficent Powers ! 
 I in the freshness of my youth am bold 
 To hail you as benignant spirits ordained 
 To lead my soul to Heaven ! Ye do I hail 
 Ere ye have come, and practising my thoughts, 
 As best I may, to look you in the face, 
 Aye, to confront your dreadest aspect, still 
 Would I implore with trembling self-distrust, 
 Won from preceding falls, the gracious Aid, 
 That in your actual presence can bestow 
 A manly peace, which shall not make ashamed 
 
VII.J THE LEPEOSY, 181 
 
 This hardiJiood of words. For manifold 
 
 And dire, Sickness ! are the crucibles, 
 
 Wherein thy torturing alchemy essays 
 
 The spirit of man ; and they who sought for gold 
 
 In molten stones, vain mortals ! reaped a field 
 
 Hardly more profitless, great Power ! than thine. 
 
 Now there are sicknesses which in a day, 
 And with our bodily strength all unimpaired 
 And love of life unquenched, would have us greet 
 Death, as we would an unexpected guest; 
 These are too fierce. Then there are slow, slow fires 
 Which burn the patience of a man, and dry 
 His prayers, and give him no vicissitude 
 Of suffering, wearing off that novelty 
 Which made him feel disease a sacred thing ; 
 These the Saints have. And other ills there are, 
 Winning no sympathy, as not believed, 
 Lurking like serpents in some secret place 
 Within the body, stinging out of reach ; 
 And these are fearful : for complaint is met 
 With chilling admonition, or received 
 With that half credence which is worse to bear, 
 And patience undergoes the martyrdom 
 Of passing for impatience. O 'tis meet 
 That they who tend the sick should have more faith 
 In them, than in the art which ill conceals 
 Its little power o'er man's mysterious frame! 
 And, with the rest, there are some sicknesses 
 Which are the obvious consequence of sin ; 
 Vain scourges do they seem, which are by most 
 With a hard heathen manliness endured. 
 Whose strength is in false pride that would prefer 
 To reap the harvest it hath sown itself, 
 Than suffer by the simple Will of God. 
 
182 SIR 'LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 And, lastly, in that there are stubborn men 
 
 To whom indigniby is ten times worse 
 
 Than torment, there are other sicknesses, 
 
 Which shame tlie sufferers ; these are hard to bear, 
 
 And they fall chiefly on the proud. But all 
 
 Have one beneficent unity, one source 
 
 Deep in the fountain of God's love, and preach 
 
 One soothing doctrine to the docile heart : — 
 
 Sufferings are Gifts, a Judgment is a Grace, 
 
 As short of that One Judgment which alone 
 
 Tries not, and purges not, but only seals ! 
 
 And Thee, most mortal of all mortal things. 
 Thee would I hail, O Death ! as being the gate 
 Which I in search of Heaven shall enter. Thou, 
 The commonest of daily acts, art not 
 Common to each, but happenest only once. 
 Thou wert a tyrant, for weak nature knew 
 "No means to bring thine overwhelming power 
 Within the grasp of habit, and she wept 
 For want of that poor knowledge how to die. 
 This science hath been granted to her tears : 
 From meanest self-denials we extract 
 A power beyond the compass of thy strength ; 
 For faith dies daily with her Lord, and so 
 By this sweet mystery art thou now dethroned. 
 O men ! we are but actors all our lives ; 
 We must be real once, even at the hour 
 When we lie down to die, and is not this 
 A consolation, while the light it sheds 
 Unteaches us the love of self-deceit ? 
 
 All hail, Ye Kindred Powers ! Pass on, pass on 
 Across Time's bounded realm, to do a work 
 More lasting than yourselves, to sanctify 
 The Elect of God ! And Thou, Tyrant Time, 
 
VII.] THE LEPEOSY, 183 
 
 Art Thou not weary, Despot ! flapping thus 
 
 Thy unwieldy wings across the suffering world, 
 
 Like a huge land-bird lost upon the ocean 5 
 
 For such the Endless Ages are to Thee ? 
 
 What though Thou rollest o'er the tribes of men 
 
 Most like a hurrying storm, the Angel waits 
 
 Who knows thy sentence and hath learned the words 
 
 By heart, and thy tremendous frame can cast 
 
 No shadow on the Infinite Mind of God, 
 
 Nor yet impair the least of His Decrees. 
 
 Such are our tyrants, Fellow Men ! and such 
 Our ancient gods. let us claim the rights 
 Of that celestial servitude which makes 
 These powers our daily vassals ; let us choose 
 That perfect liberty which none enjoy. 
 But those whose will is with the Will of God, 
 And is, through Faith and Hope, enthralled by Love ! 
 
 Such were the Presences and Powers that filled 
 That world, amid whose shadowy regions now 
 Sir Lancelot passed, a peopled loneliness, 
 Peopled yet not with men, as earth might seem 
 To outcast Cain, but conscious to himself 
 Of sweet alliances that hopeless man 
 Knew not ; yet even to the hermit Knight 
 There was a deepening of his solitude, 
 Which he encountered not without alarm. 
 Truly there is a mute companionship 
 Between our animal strength and living soul, 
 Which, like the intercourse a lonely man 
 Oft seeks with some inferior creature, serves 
 More ends than we opine, until disease 
 Hath parted them, and drained the subsidy 
 Of cheerful spirits which from our bodily power 
 Flow in upon the mind. In Troutbeck Vale, 
 
184 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 And on the misty summit of Black Combe, 
 The features of the open solitude had grown 
 Familiar to him ; yet he now perceived 
 That in imprisonment, the narrowed range 
 Of sense and motion, and the broken trust 
 In his own strength, there was a loneliness, 
 Which, till it hath begun to sanctify, 
 Is terrible oppression. 
 
 Ah ! how great 
 To one who bears impatiently the load 
 Of his unuttered thoughts, his privacy 
 Beyond the active circles of the world, 
 Like an untravelled frontier, placed — how great 
 The consolation, and the inward strength 
 How wonderful, which he in secret draws 
 From deep reflection on the lonely Life 
 Our Lord vouchsafed to lead ! If he be rich, 
 And hath with bootless envy oft desired 
 That poverty ennobled by the choice 
 Of God Himself, — if he be strong in health, 
 And, further than the common griefs of life, 
 Lacks sorrow which might make him like his Lord, — 
 If the world love him, praise him, and he pines 
 For outward chastisement to certify 
 His heavenly sonship, — let him be alone. 
 Let him be solitary, not from choice, 
 The baseness of a lettered ease, or wish 
 To abstract himself from that unequal strife 
 In which the bad keep down the good, — and there 
 The Saviour's Life is imaged on his own. 
 There is his Cross, a burden sanctified 
 With special and exact endurance, there 
 A treasure of perfection, which the Saints, 
 Cast on the social happiness of life, 
 
VII.] THE LEPROSY. 185 
 
 Might envy, for its silence and its pains. 
 How lonely was the Infancy of Christ, 
 Beset by thoughts which rose into a sphere 
 Beyond the reach of mortal sympathy. 
 And burdened with the foresight of the Cross, 
 And vision of that whole amount of sin 
 Whose price He came to pay ! How lonely too 
 His untold Youth in Joseph's humble house, 
 And sordid occupations I And His Life, 
 Beginning in the desert with the dark 
 And fallen angel for companion, seems 
 More and more lonely still, because He knew 
 What was in man, and trusted not Himself. 
 So that the true Creator of the world, 
 Environed with the obscurity of flesh, 
 (0 that a leper such as I should dare 
 To speak the words !) moved on the earth He made 
 A Homeless Pilgrim mid the countless homes 
 Of men, and lairs of beasts, and nests of birds. 
 And rooted flowers which He Himself had clothed, — 
 Moved on the earth as excommunicate 
 From His own sweet creation, for the love 
 He bore to us, and to a low estate I 
 Amid His Twelve was one betrayer found. 
 Another to deny Him, and the rest 
 To flee His hour of need, and on the Cross, 
 While Mary's presence added to His grief 
 More than it soothed, His utter loneliness 
 Beached its unspeakable accomplishment. 
 When from the depths of anguish He complained, 
 That He, who was erewhile disowned of man. 
 Was left of God ! and bowing then His Head 
 To that reluctant foe, which had withheld 
 Its hand through agonies enough to quench 
 
186 SIR LANCELOT. [BOOK 
 
 Another's life long since, He gave consent, 
 
 And Death, most awful thought! drew nigh the 
 
 Cross, 
 And smote, last act of power ! the Son of God. 
 And through His desolate Life we must believe, 
 And His protracted Passion most of all, 
 That to His Human Nature the Divine 
 Auxiliar proved, to lessen not the weight 
 Of untold griefs, but as a prop to give 
 To human flesh a superhuman power 
 To suffer, and to live a dying life, 
 Unsuccoured by the prompt relief of death. 
 
 Thus did Sir Lancelot muse, till he was cheered. 
 To think that Desolation had been borne, 
 And sanctified, and through its whole extent 
 Traversed with scrupulous survey by our Lord, 
 Until it had become a Holy Land : — 
 The very thought is wine unto the sick 1 
 He was in want of soothing truths, more want 
 Than we can haply measure, who too much 
 Feed on the balsams of the Cross, ere yet 
 The gall hath done its work ; for in those times. 
 Those days of high attainments, less proclaimed, 
 Because with less authentic waiTant proved, 
 "Were Saint Alphonso's charitable rules. 
 Whose safe facility he bade the world 
 Enjoy, and yet denied it to himself. 
 
 Months passed away with him, while sickness 
 wrought 
 Her silent transformations : from above 
 -She seemed to drop, and on her difficult field 
 Toiled like a patient Angel, and observed 
 A beautiful order in her separate acts. 
 For first she cleared it of the unsightly shades 
 
VII.] THE LEPROSY. 187 
 
 Of self-deceit, which baffle even the eye 
 
 Of conscience when it strives to penetrate ; 
 
 Then the rank herbage stripped, and laid all bare 
 
 The unlovely surface and discoloured soil. 
 
 And thus she killed self-trust : then delving deep, 
 
 "With general and confused commotion shook 
 
 And troubled all the ground, both far and near, 
 
 And singled out the dry insidious stones 
 
 Which lure the fertile moisture to themselves, 
 
 And traced with special care the arid roots 
 
 Of discontinued sins, which now deprived 
 
 Themselves of power to sprout, yet intercept 
 
 The roots of virtuous plants as they descend ; 
 
 Thus Self was wholly killed, a real death 
 
 Accomplished by the severing of the Soul 
 
 From the sick Body, its chief aid in guilt. 
 
 The Body's outward hindrance set aside, 
 
 And Sin's mysterious coverts now disclosed, 
 
 She, casting her gross implements away, 
 
 Leaped in the grave, and settling fast on Sin, 
 
 Transformed herself into a cleansing fire. 
 
 Which searched the pestilence in its secret home. 
 
 And with accumulated pains burnt out 
 
 The poisonous substance, whose infectious power 
 
 Had scorched the dew-damped earth ; this second 
 
 Act, 
 Which followed on the painful death of Self, 
 Effected by increase of torture, seemed 
 An Act of love, to its dread office nerved 
 By its own death, by no vindictive enda 
 Suggested, but unmixed beneficence. 
 Mysteriously inventive to avoid 
 A fruitless toil ; and this, as after Death, 
 The mystical and inward Death of Self, 
 
188 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 Might in the baths of Purgatory find 
 
 An apt resemblance, whereof some men speak 
 
 As of an ultimate baptism of the soul. 
 
 Many there are who grievously misdeem 
 The unfathomable ends of Corporal Pain, 
 And its remedial powers : and thus account 
 The observances of an ascetic life 
 As bloodless shadows, and the men who fight 
 Therewith as they who beat the elastic air; 
 Or haply censure their hard usages 
 As an afi'ront to His benign&nt Love, 
 Who, from. His boundless Mercy, hath allowed 
 His own eternal Glory to receive 
 Increase from His subordinate creatures' bliss. 
 Happy are they, if when they reason thus, 
 They seek, though blindly^ to extol His love, 
 Not rather for themselves evade those acts 
 The joy of which they do not comprehend, 
 Or thro' the instinctive hatred of high thoughts 
 Which passes current now for lowliness, — 
 The wisdom of a pusillanimous age. 
 Yet do they err, in pondering not the griefs 
 That Love is multiplying on the earth 
 All hours, and in adoring not the mode 
 W^hich He vouchsafes to use with our poor race, 
 Love seeking love among the shades of pain, 
 In the cool times of life, when suffering frees 
 The spirit from the ardours of the world, 
 As once at eve in Eden He pursued 
 His flying creature : and not less do they 
 That humble courage disesteem, that heart 
 To give as kings unto a king, infused 
 By our transcendent union with our Lord, 
 Both God and Man, the heart wherewith the Saints, 
 
VII.] THE LEPEOSY. 189 
 
 Seeking for pain when it seeks not for them, 
 Have ventured to be Gods unto themselves. 
 And error beckons error : there are men, 
 And some not proud, whose blindness might be 
 
 termed 
 The failing of mistaken gentleness. 
 Who cannot with a child's heroic trust 
 Lean on the Church's arm, while she displays 
 The final vision of Eternal. Pain. 
 O unaffectionate Hearts ! Ungrateful Souls ! 
 Go to the Passion, in the balance weigh 
 How great the amount of our Atonement made 
 Through corporal Suffering, count the separate 
 
 Thorns, 
 The midistinguishable number guess 
 Of cruel Lashes ; dive into the sea 
 Of overwhelming Sorrows to whose deeps 
 Language may do no more than point the way 
 Unto the reverent silence of our thoughts : — 
 And is there not a fitness that the pain, 
 Thro' which in part our price was paid, should be 
 The curse of those who have disowned the debt ? 
 When sorrow comes or sickness, ye are first 
 To cry, A blessing : shall the Saints on earth 
 Be sanctified by pain, yet it be called 
 Unseemly for the torments of the Lost ? 
 And, seeing that Grace hath been conferred on all, 
 Sufiicient grace, or proximate or remote, 
 O shall Eternity be thought too long 
 For that appalling exile, when the Love 
 And Justice sinned against are infinite ? 
 For as the measure of the sin hath been, 
 So are the bounds of expiation ; one, 
 One infinite Eansom is already paid, 
 
190 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 And till a second be found it needs must be 
 
 That Hell should be eternal. Wouldst thou know 
 
 What are the limits of thine actual guilt ? 
 
 Of Catherine learn, the Sainted Genoese, 
 
 Who prayed that to her soul might be disclosed 
 
 The heinousness of but one venial sin, 
 
 And when her prayer was answered, swooned away. 
 
 Spread out your minds, ye faltering disputants ! 
 
 Until they compass what the Church hath ruled ; 
 
 For if ye teach an infinite Mercy joined 
 
 With only finite Justice, ye do err 
 
 Against that equal majesty which reigns 
 
 Amid tlie awful attributes of God, 
 
 And erring thus, it may be ye blaspheme. 
 
 But while Sir Lancelot, in the mystic realm 
 Of Sickness, passed thro' that benignant Death 
 Of Self and thro' her purgatorial fires, 
 No less had he experience of the truth 
 That Sickness is not wanton with her rod, 
 But she too hath a third estate, a place 
 Hard by her fires, a land where none can go 
 But they who have won patience by their prayers ; 
 And from whose fields the visitants bring back 
 Strange narratives : this is her Paradise. 
 
 O worth, yea ten times worth the weary days, 
 The uneasy bed, the long dream-haunted nights, 
 Are those permitted intervals of ease. 
 When pain is stayed from interrupting prayer, 
 Or marring holy thoughts, and feebleness 
 Disarms the body of its power to prompt 
 Self- trust, or nurse those spirit- wasting moods 
 When with a sinful foresight many a man 
 Builds and unbuilds his thriftless schemes, and makes 
 An intellectual banquet of the future, 
 
TII.J THE LEFROST. 191 
 
 In sueh poor revel squandering golden hours, 
 Which might, through patience and conformity 
 Unto the Will ol God, have yielded him 
 A usury the Saints would not disclaim. 
 And oft our childhood, like a summer cloud 
 Borne backward by the wind, returns to cast 
 A radiant shadow on the sin- worn mind, 
 And with it brings that softening of the heart, 
 That leaning towards the innocent and good, , 
 
 Which in past years was virtue's best ally, 
 And now, an unexpected visitant, ' 
 Like a sweet apparition from the dead. 
 Melts the hard heart with one benignant look. 
 Most like the unspeakable Kegard which fell 
 On Peter, yea, to faith's clear eye it is. 
 Veiled in our human memories, the Same ! 
 
 Such intervals of painless calm befell 
 The patient Knight ; the scourge in Satan's hand 
 From time to time was partially restrained. 
 That mercy might enquire how far her ends 
 Were furthered by affliction : for the Powers, 
 Justice and Mercy, love to walk the earth 
 Wearing each other's garb ; and in their strife, 
 Outreaching one another in their zeal 
 To do the work of love, a man discerns 
 That marvellous concurrence of the good 
 And ill of life, which in respect of him, 
 And manifested only to himself, 
 A private revelation sweetly clear. 
 Is the supreme and blessed Will of God. 
 
 And such a respite chanced to be his lot 
 One morning when a fresh access of pain, 
 And of the inward burning, through the night 
 Had tried unto the uttermost his power 
 
192 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 Of meek endurance. From the half clothed boughs, 
 And the wet-laden ivy leaves which hung 
 Above his mullioned window, fell the rain 
 In fitful splashes, while the cheerless wind 
 Fought with the mighty buttresses that met 
 And broke its violence : if that deep joy, 
 Which the soul tastes at such an hour, were born 
 Of sunny prospect or of welcome news. 
 It had not then been his ; but what he felt 
 Needed not outward circumstance, but leaned 
 Upon the invisible heights from which it came, 
 No self-supporting faculty, but more — 
 The Gift of Grod's Own Presence in the soul ! 
 
 O Gift unspeakably divine ! to be 
 At peace and yet in penance ; — this it is 
 Which forms the secret science of the Saints, — 
 To endure the vision of our sins, and yet 
 To bear, with spirit tranquillized by awe. 
 That Justifying Presence in ourselves 
 With so much love as stays the guilty mind 
 From being too much abashed ; and hence we learn, 
 That even self-accusation is a thing 
 Of which wise men are parsimonious, lest 
 They should speak evil of the things of God, 
 And in their estimate of sin involve 
 A consequence of grace ; and lowliness 
 Is not what some men deem it, but is nursed 
 More when the greatness of God's mercy falls 
 Like an o'erwhelming shadow on the soul, 
 Than when it sits in judgment on itself, j 
 
 Upon his narrow bed Sir Lancelot lay. 
 Though not in vocal prayer, yet with his thoughts 
 Upraised to Heaven in wondering gratitude : 
 For not less sudden was the welcome change 
 
VII.] THE LEPROSY. 193 
 
 Than to the storm-tossed voyager when his ship 
 From the vexed waters springs, as from a bow, 
 And in a moment glides within the mole 
 Of some smooth port, and on her anchor there 
 Rides like a bird upon an inland lake. 
 Ah ! who shall say what transport then was his ! 
 Wonder, and peace, and joy, and fervent love. 
 Lightness of heart, and that unearthly sense 
 Of God's forgiveness which so offc ensues 
 On bodily pain, or on misfortune borne 
 In penitent submission, and, with all, 
 That consciousness of an immortal soul. 
 And of a life beyond death's reach, which grows 
 Upon the ruins of our animal strength. 
 Whose separate liberty we realize 
 With modest exultation and with prayer. 
 And with the influx of these glorious thoughts 
 His childhood passed into his soul once more, 
 Taking his nature with such calm surprise 
 That, ere he was aware, his ancient heart. 
 His simple heart of childlike faith and love. 
 With blissful travail was brought forth again. 
 And scarcely conscious of the heavenly change, 
 He wept some few sweet tears, and knew not why. 
 Long had his thoughts of mingled love and fear 
 In arduous meditation been sustained 
 Upon the Passion, not unduly deemed 
 The Christian's chief devotion, yet a scene 
 So dark, so humbling, that it well may be 
 At certain seasons more a source of fear 
 Than consolation and confiding love; 
 And a long vigil round the Saviour's Cross 
 For our weak nature needs an Easter joy 
 To follow, while a further help is sought 
 13 
 
194 SIB LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 In those bland intermissions, neither fast 
 
 Nor wholly feast, the Sundays interposed 
 
 As stations in the toilsome hills of Lent, — 
 
 Toilsome for those who climb their stony sides 
 
 Amid the obscuring mists of penance wrapped, 
 
 But for the purer souls who go that road 
 
 For contemplation, and to gain some place 
 
 Nearer to Jesus, rather may we name 
 
 Those welcome heights the Happy Hills of Lent. 
 
 With this one subject occupied, his thoughts, 
 Like weary birds too long upon the wing 
 With nought but sea beneath them, had been fain 
 To light, but found no resting-place till now, 
 When, haply by suggestion from above, 
 A new direction given unto their course 
 Brought them above one solitary isle. 
 One region of sweet truths which lies apart, 
 Severed by secrecy divine, whose stores 
 Are haply left as part of that reward 
 Which is reserved for faith, — the Infancy 
 Of our Incarnate Lord ; a radiant tract. 
 Which from the Angel's covert message grows 
 Upon the adoring eye, while on its shore 
 The Shepherds watch, the Watching Angels sing, 
 The Cattle low around the new-born Child, 
 The Maglans travel with the Star above. 
 The obedient Star, a still slow-moving point 
 Threading its way among the crowded orbs 
 Without collision, like the Will of God 
 Amid the multitudinous sins of men 
 In heavenly peace accomplishing Itself. 
 Beautiful Eegion ! on its wondrous fields. 
 As in compartments, but for twelve short years 
 The Gracious Mystery is depicted ; then 
 
VII.] THE LEPROSY. 195 
 
 Beneath a veil of heavenly clouds withdrawn. 
 It mocks the disappointed eye, till faith 
 Finds in the muteness of the Written Word 
 A place for adoration more sublime, 
 And loving acquiescence, than might be 
 Haply in fuller knowledge. 
 
 On this shore 
 Sir LanceTot'^s thanghts alighted, with surprise 
 As great as though it had not been a place, 
 Which with his mother's guidance he had oft 
 In early days explored. For so it seemed 
 All new, and more than new, for it was clothed 
 With freshness such as novelty alone 
 Could never give ; and on its fragrant fields 
 He fell, like one who with his spirits depressed, 
 And wonted cheerful visions overcast, 
 By too long sojourn amid summits bare 
 And the tremendous silence of the snow. 
 The birdless sky, and giant-featured crags. 
 Sinks on the Val Misocco from the heights 
 Of Bernardin, and feeds his hungry eye 
 Upon the sunny lowlands ; and in folds. 
 Dense folds of sylvan light and shade, enchains 
 And masters that wild rapture which has held 
 His chilled imagination in its grasp 
 For many a wakeful night, and silent day 
 More visionary than the night itself; 
 And his unfettered thoughts, which fly abroad 
 Amid the exuberant change, fix here and there 
 In some bright spot an instantaneous home, 
 As dear as though the accidents of years 
 Had worn its features in the very soul. 
 
 Silence! self- trusting Thoughts ! — and Phantasy, 
 Back to thy home ; thou art not needed here; 
 
1^ SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 And here too be the anxious craft of verse 
 Suspended for awhile. Thou, Spirit of Grace ! 
 Who from the Eternal Father and the Son 
 Eternally proceeding, dost uphold 
 Meek wills, and modest intellects no less 
 Informest with sweet knowledge, guide my song. 
 Guide it along a path of simple words, 
 Amid whose reverential plainness men 
 May better hear the echo of Thy Churck, 
 In festive liturgy or deep discourse 
 Illustrating the Childhood of her Lord. 
 
 And if with sedulous meaning I have sought 
 And anxious purpose, to reflect the strife 
 Of these our painful days upon my verse, 
 With such suggestions as may lend some aid 
 To those who walk in this dark land of ours, 
 Now let it be permitted to retire, 
 Where the mute Shadow of my song invites 
 And beckons, into a chamber where the noise 
 Of angry disputants is heard far off, 
 If heard at all, a chamber of sweet truths 
 Where for my profit I may dwell awhile 
 With Mary and Saint Joseph, and the Three 
 Who came with mystic Gifts, and Angel Choirs, 
 And simple Shepherds, and the jubilant troop 
 Of little Martyr-brethren who went out 
 First followers of the Lamb, dear pursuivants, 
 Who laid their bodies on the road, as pearls 
 Or as sown stars, to signalize the way. 
 Whereon the Apostles afterwards should tread, 
 Martyrs and Virgins, Saints and pious Kings, 
 And the vast concourse of the holy Church. 
 O let us seek at least brief shelter there, 
 And turn the helm of our half-shipwrecked thoughts. 
 
VII.] THE LEPROSY. 197 
 
 Our load is hard to bear ; — the world that seems 
 So wise, and in some aspects so reformed, 
 So needful to us, and full often kind, 
 And of our very selves so much a part, 
 Hath drifted from the sole authentic Church, 
 Believes the false predominant therein, 
 And in its very piety blasphemes 
 Him who is true ; yet doth it raise, with speech 
 Respectful, and with no apparent guile, 
 Full many an anxious question, that demands 
 A ready answer, not so soothly found. 
 And yet which may not now be long delayed 
 "Without the loss of many thousand souls. 
 The load is hard to bear ; — the chance, that he, 
 Who, as an act of faith, shall boldly cut 
 All ties that bind him to his times, and thus 
 Live out of sympathy with modern things, 
 May scare the souls he haply might have won, 
 And wound the Heart of Jesus by a zeal 
 Unlike His own ; — this is an anxious fear. 
 And then there lies the opposite chance, that he. 
 Who with a facile deference to the world 
 Should make the Church seem world-like, and 
 
 give up 
 Some of her heavenly maxims, and so clear 
 His mind by making free with truth, should learn 
 Hereafter to his cost that ha mistook 
 Selfwill for lowliness, and so become 
 To one whole generation an offence ;.— 
 And in this fluctuating doubt is grief 
 Enough to cause gi*ay hairs before their time. 
 
 O problem of an unbelieving world I 
 The hearts, that have been stretched upon the rack 
 Of this most piercing doubt, m^-y well Wi^v-e 
 
198 m-R LAisrcELOT. [book 
 
 Ko inward anguish can surpass its pain. 
 But Oh ! there is a torture worse than this, — 
 The problem of the misbeliering good ! 
 For we would fain believe sweet things of those. 
 More dear to us than words can t^ll, who seem 
 So near the truth, yet ever fall away- 
 Further and further when they come mosife *near. 
 And altogether when they almost touch. 
 Hard task to faith to leave all these to God, 
 To trust Jlmi and enquire not, but adore, 
 In darkness wMch He wilk not should be light. 
 The merciful severities of truth. 
 Only by holy living can we wring 
 Light from the darkness, and at length go free 
 Of our perplexing thoughts, while this great truth, 
 Like a slow sunrise, dawns upon the soul, — 
 That Goodness baffles Wisdom when they strive, 
 And that they dwell together when at peace. 
 
 And meanwhile let us seek not to be spared 
 One jot of our perplexity, nor strive 
 To -extricate ourselves and stand aloof 
 From the woi4d's travail, nor forswearing thus 
 Our special heritage, let us succumb 
 To love of quiet, or the vile repose 
 Of literary ease, than pomp of life 
 More irreligious far : but let us strive 
 To absorb a thousand hearts into our own, 
 And force with irresistible success, 
 Through secret prayer and outward sympathy^ 
 A Christian wisdom and magnanimous change 
 Upon the sickly spirit of the Age. 
 For love of Christ, we may not stand apart 
 From ihe w^rkf s -strife, nor basely satisfy 
 Our indolence, by that ignoble boast, 
 
VII.] THE LEPROSY. 199 
 
 So oft the ready refage of conceit, 
 
 That our sole dealings are with ancient days, 
 
 And that we scorn to suffer with our own ? 
 
 Eemembering this, yet we may enter now 
 The hermitage of peaceful thoughts hard by,' 
 And with the Shepherds kneel before the Child. 
 
 Say, Mightj Mistress, Celestial Faith ! 
 Why in untroubled rapture standest thou 
 Straining thine eye into the ages past ? 
 Ah! thou hast lit upon a wondrous scene. 
 Withheld from mortal gaze, — that secret Hour, — 
 Whether before sunrise at early prayer, 
 Or the noon-day retirement of the East, 
 Or meditative eve, or starry night — 
 When, as the mother of mankind conceived 
 From Satan's whispers that undying sin 
 Which is the sin of all, so at the words 
 Of Gabriel did the blissful Mother-Maid, 
 Surprised yet acquiescent, then conceive 
 Within her virgin-womb that Eighteousness 
 Who is the Eighteousness of all. First fount 
 Was that predestined hour of all those truths. 
 Which in harmonious order rising, each 
 From each, with inward melody construct 
 The Catholic Faith wherein we live and breathe 
 And are transformed into the sons of God, 
 And made joint-heirs with Christ the Holy Child. 
 
 Ah ! see Him lying on our Lady's lap. 
 The Saviour and the Maker of the World, 
 Amid the winter's cold, the uneasy straw, 
 And patient feeding beasts ! How wonderful 
 His Childhood, seeing He was God Himself ! 
 And, because wonderful, how winning too 
 To us for love of whom it was endured ! 
 
200 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 Those Sacred Feet shall walk the stony ways 
 
 To do men good, who shall with foul return 
 
 Transfix them with a nail : those Infant Hands 
 
 Shall heal and bless and multiply the Bread 
 
 Of His own Flesh, and they too shall be nailed 
 
 Upon the bitter Cross ; and yet for us, 
 
 To be at that Eight Hand is all our hope, 
 
 To be upon that Left our only fear : 
 
 And to faith's eye that Infant Head is crowned 
 
 Already with ensanguined Thorns, which love. 
 
 Weeping, may recognize for all her sins 
 
 Foreseen and suffered, and thus learn to love, 
 
 Like Magdalen, with more importunate hope. 
 
 So did He elevate our mortal acts 
 
 And sanctify our natural griefs : He spoke, 
 
 He wept. He thirsted by the well at noon, 
 
 Haply He smiled, and yet tradition saith 
 
 He smiled not all those three and thirty years ; 
 
 But wept — we cannot tell how oft He wept. 
 
 And He endured the shame of Nakedness 
 
 With the new Wine of His dear Passion wet, 
 
 In that same hour wherein He stayed the Flood 
 
 Of sin by Adam on the earth let loose ; 
 
 As Noe once had blamelessly endured 
 
 In type, with words inspired upon his lips, 
 
 The drunkenness wherewith the joyous Church, 
 
 With her fresh Sacraments beside herself, 
 
 Was rudely charged ere she was three hours old« 
 
 O Nakedness of our most loving Lord, 
 
 What comely cheering figure dost thou seem 
 
 Of Adam bared unto the eye of God 
 
 And shameful in his own, yet clothed again 
 
 By Christ's unclothing of His glorious Self ! 
 
 How sweet the affectionate tradition too, 
 
VII.] THE LEPROSY, 201 
 
 By mindful Peter to the Church consign«d. 
 
 That in the lonesome night would Jesus rise, 
 
 And visit the rude couches af His Twelve, 
 
 And re-compose the garments disarrayed 
 
 By graceless slumber ; thus in outward deed. 
 
 Gesture, and miracle,, illustrating 
 
 Through all those wondrous three and thirty years 
 
 Tlie invisible graces of His future Cross. 
 
 Then from a Boy, O marvellous ! He grew 
 
 Like other men, in stature,, and He seemed, 
 
 Semblance for some mysterious reason worn. 
 
 To grow in wisdom, and increase in grace. 
 
 Yet sickness came not nigh Him, nor old age: 
 
 But otherwise our true in&mities 
 
 He with these notable exceptions borev 
 
 And let sot these seem strange j what cause there 
 was 
 We know n€>t, but with reverential love 
 May ponder to our profit, if we keep 
 Fast hold of that analogy of faith 
 The Church exacts. Haply it was not well 
 That He who was eternal shoutld grow old 
 Even in appearance : haply 'twas to show 
 That now the length of years hath been unclothed 
 Of its first Jewish blessing,, that to die 
 And be with Christ is better far than age. 
 Sickness, which fkd before His gracious Touch 
 Or at His distant Word,- might be forbidden 
 To assail Himself,- that so His Sacred Frame, 
 And all its capabilities of grief, 
 For that thrice blessed Woe might be reserved 
 Wherein the world's Atonement was achieved : 
 Or it might be that where the breath of sin 
 Hath never passed, nor sickness nor old age 
 
202 filB LANCELOT, [bOOK 
 
 Have privilege to enter.; were it so. 
 Then from our Lord's Humanity we learn^ 
 That holiness may be a means of health, 
 Ascetic fast a secret source of strenorth. 
 Vigil more true repose than purest sleep, 
 And from its wells virginity distil 
 (With inward singleness of heart combined) 
 An agile freedom, an elastic joy, 
 And a matured simpiieity of youth, 
 Which may perchance anticipate the bliss 
 Of that angelic vigour which shall wait 
 Upon our bodies when they rise .: — and yet 
 {Mindful of one how rightly dear to me !) 
 Let not the soul of him, who on the bed 
 Of weary sickness lies, be overcast 
 Because Christ hath not borne this selfsame woe^ 
 Nor honoured it in this specific form. 
 Whether it be .the aching strife of mind, 
 Torture of heart or weight of bodily pain. 
 Enough that in the Garden, on the Cross, 
 And in His Life, all grief was sanctified. 
 
 Lord ! who hast unto Thy humble Saints 
 IFull oft imparted graee to sing or teach 
 The Sorrows of Thy Passion, grant to me^ 
 Without offence or rude surmise to sing 
 The Sorrows of Thine Infancy, a depth, 
 An inland sea of Heavenly Love^ enclosed 
 And overshadowed by the awful hills 
 Of Olivet and Calvary, which calls^ 
 As deep to deep, to those surpassing Acts 
 And final Woes oi which it was the source.. 
 The man, wlio had no ^childhood, fell ,; how straaage 
 The thought appears! yet Adam had a time 
 Of peace .and joy, but Thine irom first to last. 
 
VII.] THE LEPEOST. 203 
 
 From the rude Manger to the ruder Cross, 
 Was one assiduous martyrdom^ but crowned 
 And consummated, deepened not begun, 
 Amid the darkness of Thy closing days. 
 The solitude, the -ehillness, and rough scenes 
 Of Thy N'ativity, the willing Blood 
 Which at the bidding of the Law was shed^ 
 The Flight to Egypt, and hard sojourn there. 
 The obedient Privacy within the house 
 Of Thy reputed Father — ahi how great 
 Were these humiliations to the Lord 
 Who fashioned, and in all those selfsame years. 
 As God, sustained the fabric of the world ! 
 
 Yet these were but the surface of Thy Grie£ 
 Before Thine Eyes the Passion ever stood, 
 A vivid apparition : Thorns and Nails, 
 Each separate act of fierce indignity 
 And wanton outrage wounded then Thy Heart 
 With a mysterious keenness-: for 'twas said 
 By them of old, who with tradition's help 
 Interpreted the doctrine of Saint Paul, 
 That, for Thy use predestined, was prepared 
 A human body, specially ordained, 
 And with most exquisite organs all attuned. 
 For suffering and capacity of pain, 
 Within the ijounds of true humanity. 
 And long ago with plaintive eloquence 
 In old prophetic song Thou didst address 
 Thyself to God, From My youth up have I 
 Thy terrors with a troubled mind endured, 
 And yet a second time. My heaviness 
 Is ever in My sight; — yea, ever. Lord:! 
 And growing with Thy growth •: and yet 
 There is behind a more surpassing grief, 
 
204 SIE LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 Exceeding far tlie foresight of the Cross, 
 A grief men cannot measure, till they learn 
 Within the perfect schools of Heaven to take 
 The altitude of sin, and of the bar 
 It rears between the human soul and God. 
 
 The vision of sin was with the Holy Child ; — 
 All sins that lurking in the long,, long, past 
 Cried for His expiation y all the sins 
 Now daily perpetrated in the worlds 
 The hidden things of this most beautiful night. 
 Our own short-comdngs of the day just gone,. 
 All pressed into His spirit, like the Thorns 
 Crushed by th« smiting reed into His Head, 
 Amid the delicate years of Infancy^ 
 Mary's exuberant love, and Joseph's care* 
 Full of affectionate awe,, and watchful joy^ 
 Envying the Mother's freedom,. — mid it all. 
 Age after age defiling in His sight, 
 He had respect to eaeh particular sin, 
 O' weary, weary burden ! borne for us 
 Even by the Infant Saviour, on His Heart 
 Bearing the Cross He bore in open day 
 In after years, no heavier load than this.. 
 And while He saw how men; would slight Hi* Love, 
 And how ea<;h age in its peculiar way 
 Would crucify their Lord afreshy He cried 
 Unto the Father in p-ophetic plaint, 
 My God I what profit is there in My Blood ? 
 And Thou wert Man !. O Everlasting God ! 
 And in Thyself vouchsafedst to adorn 
 And beautify humanity, and found 
 In fashion as a servant, didst descend 
 Oa our behalf to sanctify Thyself I 
 
VII.] THE LEPROSY. 205 
 
 <3-aze on His Childhood, Faith and Hope and 
 Love! 
 Oaze with the Angels that are stooping still 
 From heavenly heights o'er this mysterious work. 
 In mute or vocal adoration fixed! 
 Ye, above all, who seek to oome forth Saints 
 From this perplexing strife, O rise and gaze 
 On this new thing created on the earth. 
 The Lord's Humanity : upon His Youth, 
 His Ministry, His crowded Passion gaze I 
 Ponder it well ; for many have there been. 
 Who with false reverence, and a scanty love, 
 And an unquiet ignorance, have misdeemed. 
 To their own hurt, this doctrine of the faith. 
 Lowering the rule of holy life, to augment 
 Their trust, which is no trust, in Christ Alone, 
 These, when they read of some celestial height 
 Of our Lord's virtue, as a perfect man, 
 "With undistinguishing impatience cry. 
 Behold His Godhead ! oft transfemug thus 
 To His Divinity the sacred fruits 
 Of His unspotted Manhood, till they lose 
 The force of His example, and contract 
 The truth to heresy, and soon forego 
 In act or even endeavour that strict life 
 "Which His Humanity doth illustrate, 
 Or haply as an absolute rule impose. 
 Condemned theology it is to say 
 That in the law God bids impossible things 
 Unto His creatures : when He bids He warns. 
 Warns us to do what we can do, to ask 
 What lies beyond our strength, and by His grace 
 Puts it within the compass of our strength. 
 So rule the Fathers, who in council sate 
 
206 SIR LANCELOT, [BOOX 
 
 In that fair city whose cathedral bells 
 Blend with the rushing of the swift Adige. 
 
 O rather fearing greatly to be wise 
 Above the Writfeen Word, let us return 
 And through the fourfold Gospel trace the signs' 
 Of His pure human virtue, on the Church 
 And her Tradition leaning, lest we err. 
 There let us contemplate with emulous awe 
 How, like a man and by a human way. 
 Though from the first all depths of grace were His, 
 And an ungrowing sanctity. He seemed 
 To learn obedience, and by suffering taught 
 To grow to that great perfectness, whereby 
 He was the author of eternal life 
 To all the obedient ; haply pondering this, 
 We may through prayer wia courage to behold 
 And go some little way towards those heights. 
 Which grace and our dear Lord's example make. 
 If hard, yet possible ; and this the more. 
 Supported by the knowledge that we are 
 Of His Humanity participants. 
 Couched in the fluent Water and the Grain 
 Of Chosen Wheat, the mighty Sacraments 
 Which make us just with God, and deify 
 Our human nature through the power of faith. 
 This is the end of man : — far off to look, 
 Without approach, upon the glorious Power, 
 The Justice, and the Wisdom of his God, 
 And with the thought of these great things converse 
 In trembling silence, in the shadow sitting. 
 Self-stilled, of God's most awful Attributes 
 And His disclosed Perfections ; one there is 
 Which claims a different worship, nor can be 
 Inactively adored, but with strong cries 
 
VII.] THE LEPEOSr. 207 
 
 And tears ronst he pursued, His Sanctity, 
 Who bids our holiness reflect His Own, 
 And be His Own, and therefore sent His Son 
 That we might better compass with His Aid 
 That only imitable Attribute, 
 Least imitable, as it seems, of all. 
 
 O Lord ! upon the threshold do I staoid 
 Of that veiled interval of twice nine years. 
 Which hides Thy Sacred Manhood from our view^ 
 Till from the Jordan we behold Thee rise, 
 As from a second Nativity ;^-the seal 
 Of that forbidden treasure do I kiss 
 With humblest love j yet, most gracious Lord t 
 Let me be bold thereon to found a prayer 
 For our poor times and Thy neglected Church. 
 For when I think how every passing hour 
 In all those eighteen years Thou didst vouchsafe 
 To speak or act, to worship and obey, 
 That every motion of Thy manhood was 
 Humiliation, and was infinite 
 Because of Thy Divinity, — amazed 
 Within the sea of my own troubled thoughts 
 I sink, perceiving that each act of Thine, 
 Thus infinite, might haply have redeemed, 
 If God so willed, the sins of all the world. 
 Then Lord 1 most good, most holy ! if the world 
 Beyond all ancient precedents of ill 
 Hath visibly swerved, in order and in truth, 
 From Thy celestial pattern, and foregone 
 That catholic unity wherein consists 
 The vigour of its supernatural life, — 
 By all the merits of those silent years, 
 By all the deeds and sayings unrevealed 
 Of Thy mysterious Youth, vouchsafe to giTO 
 
208 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 A second Youth to this enfeebled world, 
 And reinfiise the sacrament of health 
 Thro' its unequal and distempered limbs, 
 And chiefly for that end, O multiply 
 Thy grace upon Thy chosen seat of Kome ! 
 
 Thus far, haply too far, my ardent song. 
 Coasting this marvellous shore, hath dared to say 
 How fair the land appeared ; and what it left 
 Of fancy unexpressed shall now be laid. 
 With all the guesses fertile wonder breeds, 
 A sacrifice of silence, on the shrine. 
 For there be thoughts, whose grateful hardiliood 
 May win acceptance there, for which the garb 
 Of words were all unmeet, and which might seem 
 Too venturesome if it were not that love 
 Is nourished on them. May they not displease 
 Him for whose love they have been entertained ! 
 
 Such was Sir Lancelot's study, and to him 
 Like some devotional picture it appeared, 
 Where on one field a mystery is set forth 
 In diverse acts, and hills rise all around 
 Capped with blue pine-trees set against the sky, 
 As the old Christian artists loved to paint. 
 And this similitude they will not deem 
 Beneath the heavenly subject, who are wont 
 To read that sweet theology involved 
 In the mute gestures of the sacred groups, 
 Which great Angelico of old pourtrayed, 
 Justly beatified, as claiming rank 
 Amid the doctors of the Church ; nor less, 
 With his devotional system, in his way 
 Of eloquent silence, comments on the faith. 
 Than Bonaventure or St. Thomas, freed 
 From many a formal strife and hard device 
 
VII.] THE LEPROSY. 209 
 
 To which their gentle minds were forced to bow, 
 Though in their lightest question there is hid 
 More food than in the strength of other minds. 
 
 Such was the Sacred Infancy of Christ 
 To that lone Sufferer in his silent cell. 
 Ah ! how consoling was this heavenly field, 
 This catholic pasture where his thoughts lay down 
 To feed and rest ! For when the intellect 
 Is weak and overstrained, there are some truths 
 The passive heart can better apprehend, 
 Than weary reason ; and her docile toil 
 Can recreate and tranquillize, not bend 
 The burdened faculties. Consoling too 
 Chiefly was this sweet subject now to him, 
 As being less intertwined with human sin 
 Than the great Passion, deepening penitence 
 More by its downcast bearing than the voice 
 Of open admonition ; not as though 
 It were not guilt which instigated love 
 To bear that lesser yoke, but that he felt 
 The visible presence of his sins was there 
 Far less with him, than underneath the Cross. 
 
 Weeks fled in this devotion, and the spring 
 Was passing into summer, when it chanced 
 There came on ardent mission to the House 
 Of Calder an Italian monk, a man 
 For holy life and supernatural gifts 
 Alike renowned, and, it was whispered there, 
 Favoured with revelations ; and impressed 
 Upon his bodily flesh it was believed 
 Was some tremendous cognizance, the sign 
 Of fearful strife with man's invisible foes. 
 A son he was of that mysterious land. 
 The barren Umbria, brother of a house, 
 14 
 
210 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 Whose airy bells, almost in faintness lost, 1 
 Hardly upon calm summer mornings shed 
 Sweet murmurs on the vale ; so high it stands 
 Amid the many-folded Apennines. 
 
 Beautiful Mountains ! who that hears your name 
 Is not in spite of nature and himself 
 Forthwith a poet ? Yea, the very sound 
 Plays with the mind, even as the forest wind 
 In summer with the multitudinous trees ; 
 So various are the chords which it doth press. 
 So strangely wild the symphony they make : — 
 Love, War, and Pleasure, memorable Crime, 
 The seeds of Freedom working through the soil 
 In a tempestuous spring of civil strife. 
 Antique memorials, Roman or Tyrrhene, 
 Legends and Towers of mediaeval fame, 
 The verse of Dante lingering still to add 
 Music unto a hundred sweet-named brooks. 
 Art, Faith, and numberless remembrances 
 Gleaned in our travels there, or localized 
 In study's more imaginative hours 
 In those fair spots where all the world hath been. 
 If not in presence, yet with heart and eye, 
 Genoa, and Naples, or the glistening towns 
 Which Arno laves ! O Range of Apennines ! 
 How clear athwart my vision dost thou come 
 Mid the elm -shadowed meads by Nenna's side, 
 Growing so real as oft to intercept 
 With purple line the tower of Fotheringay ! 
 Thee would I celebrate in grateful verse. 
 Mindful of that most pregnant hour when I 
 Sat in the heart of Pisa on the quay. 
 The loitering Arno at my feet, and mused 
 
Vir.] THE LEPROSY. 211 
 
 Upon the manifold story of thy hills, 
 Heathen or ^Christian. 
 
 Ah ! how went the hours 
 With noiseless lapse amid thy balmy skirts 
 Of orange blossom, and the odorous breaths 
 From the warm fig-leaves steaming up thy sides, 
 Or in the la,nes where on the Mayday morns 
 The gentle breeze brings down a snowy shower 
 Of flaky wool from off the poplar boughs, 
 Strewing their vernal fleeces on the ways ; 
 While in the pale green light of olive groves 
 The birds would sing unto the lisping sea 
 All through the drowsy noon, so like the eve 
 Is that soft foliaged twilight ; and for leagues 
 The eye enjoys with rapture unappeased 
 The constant presence of that Earthly Sky, 
 That Sea whose brightness has no adequate name ! 
 How pleasant too, more oft than need required, 
 The rests upon some castellated steep. 
 Where the red broken ground might almost 'seem 
 Wet with the blood of Guelph or Ghibelline, 
 And there to muse upon the stirring past, 
 While to the haply lifted eye there came 
 Strange emblem of the present, — slope and field 
 And woodland, diverse kinds, all chained in one 
 With shackles of green vine, a sunny green 
 Jocund and bright as Italy herself 
 Wearing her chains in helpless happiness ! 
 Sweetest, because most solemn, was the hour 
 When in the sanctuaries of the hills 
 The vesper bells from many a summit tolled 
 Or woody ledge, amid whose latticed leaves 
 The clambering stars went in and out, now lost. 
 Now launched upon the greenly glowing sky 
 
212 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 Of those strange twilights, while the freshening breeze 
 Woke in the place and wrinkled here and there, 
 The mantle of umbrageous chestnuts thrown 
 Across thy ruddy limbs ; and, touching sight ! 
 As by the Ave summoned up, the moon 
 Would oft surmount some darkling eminence, 
 And reign at once o'er all the silent glens ! 
 
 Beautiful Mountains ! not for these your gifts, 
 Nor for the pageantries, far off or near, 
 Of light and shade upon your tinted sides. 
 Not for the name of Dante, though revered, 
 Nor for the secular chronicles which ye 
 Illuminate, much less for works of art 
 Too oft subservient to voluptuous ends, — 
 Not for all these I fain would ornament 
 My verse with you, illustrious Apennines ! 
 
 Hills of the Saints ! though haply ye may mate 
 In gifts of natural beauty with the heights 
 Of the whole world, — in this, more beautiful 
 That ye Have been more sanctified ; and crowned 
 With a peculiar light and set apart, 
 A western Palestine, by mighty deeds 
 Of faith, and that your blue and shadowy dells 
 Are with miraculous presences endowed 
 In wild strange -featured places. In your caves 
 Marvellous legends have been localized 
 Of rescues, and of apparitions seen. 
 Our Lady or the Saints ; and mid your folds, 
 Where the scant chestnut screens not from the sun 
 The shining waste of stones, lies buried deep, 
 Untravelled still, the Preternatural Land, 
 The famous Umbria in eternal shades, 
 XJmbria, the refuge of pure Christian Art 
 When Florence served false gods, the theatre 
 
TIlJ THE LEPROSY. 213 
 
 Of those Franciscan wonders which have stirred 
 
 "With their seraphic tales the penitents 
 
 Of many an age, and cheered the godly poor. 
 
 Hills of a thousand sanctuaries ! to me 
 
 It is a consolation at this hour, 
 
 And on this unkept feast, exiled alas ! 
 
 Amid the silent Alps, to think of you 
 
 Trembling amid the uproar of the bells, 
 
 Which shoot, twixt heaven and earth, one jubilant 
 
 thrill 
 From white Savona to the modest cape, 
 Which at Ugento dips into the sea. 
 And westward to the bright Calabrian shore 
 That smiles on Etna ; and uncounted prayers 
 Mount with the sunrise from your steepled heights, 
 While, in her bays beneath, the Midland Sea 
 Shakes off the mists of night, and with her waves 
 Kisses your naked feet, in sign of love, 
 And worships Heaven with her elysian calm. 
 Fair Genoa hears, and answers from her strand, 
 And Florence hears, and Pisa, and the streets 
 Of old Bologna, and the Sienese 
 Join in the service, and the wild wind wafts 
 O'er the torn sides of Eadicofani 
 The growing echo, while the mystic Dome 
 Above the broad campagna's yellow waste 
 Shines like a beacon, to the keen-edged heights 
 Of far Abruzzo ; and Apulia learns 
 Her faith and worship from thy many arms 
 Which compass her about : and then, sweet Hills ! 
 Not now alone, but for long years to come, 
 If years be mine, one image shall enrich 
 My evening solitude, that peaceful scene 
 The monks on Mount Oarotta may behold 
 
214 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 Close in the shaded east, not hard to see 
 What time the sun hath sunk, for those who place 
 A rock between the glory and themselves — 
 Where from between two streams Loreto looks 
 O'er the smooth Adrian, and the swinging bell 
 Soothes many a sea-borne voyager, as once 
 That sacred promontory soothed myself, 
 Sailing beneath unto the ports of Greece 
 One starlit eve ! 
 
 From Umbria's spectral woods 
 Was that Itinerant Monk, who far and wide 
 Preached with a hardy zeal in many a tongue 
 To the rich abbeys that had now relaxed 
 Their Founder's obligations ; for he felt, 
 And as a rule acknowledged in his heart, 
 The pressure of the times in which he lived, 
 When men, both high and low, had such respect 
 Unto their fellows, that in every act. 
 Oft touchingly developed, we behold 
 Their sense of that lay-priesthood which compels 
 The Christian to communicate his good. 
 Yet, honouring not their impulse as a law, 
 Sought for the sanction of the Church to speak : 
 And Potentates and Peers rejoiced to die 
 Clad in Franciscan habits, not as though 
 The holy garb could stand them in the stead 
 Of holy hearts, nor with an ignorant hope 
 Of entering Heaven beneath a Church disguise, — 
 But by this protestation to declare 
 More notably unto the world, how death 
 Cancelled their former estimate of good. 
 
 In Calder's humid vale for many a week 
 That wandering Preacher rested, and he heard 
 Full oft at noon, when silence was relaxed, 
 
Vn.] THE LEPROSY. 215 
 
 (The slumber of hot climes not needed there, 
 
 But recreating converse in its stead) 
 
 Some novel surmise canvassed by the monks 
 
 About the nameless Leper, and, the day 
 
 Ere his departure, sued the abbot*s leave 
 
 To speak in secret with the unknown man, 
 
 Which he with much entreaty hardly gained. 
 
 Sir Lancelot lay that evening on his bed, 
 
 While the weak splendours of the setting sun 
 
 Fell on his wasted countenance, nor annoyed. 
 
 So impotent the beams, his half-closed eyes. 
 
 In prayer or prayer- like thought immersed, the 
 
 Knight 
 Perceived not when the gently opened door 
 Closed on the Preacher, till the silent Monk, 
 Crossing himself, stepped forward from the shade 
 And stood between the window and the couch. 
 So that his obscure features and his head. 
 Transfigured in the misty sunbeam, seemed 
 As some appearance not of common sort. 
 But with a glory circled, like the Saints 
 For works of love remanded to the earth. 
 The doubtful Knight, surprised, yet all composed. 
 Like a sick man when in his ear you tell 
 Some stirring news of earth, whose littleness 
 His soul in its long sufferings hath outgrown,— 
 Demanded of the speechless Figure, whence 
 He came, and for what end : and in a tone 
 Of tremulous sweetness, most unlike the voice 
 Before which Chapters quaked and Mitred Heads, 
 The holy Preacher thus addressed the Knight. . 
 
 Sir Lancelot ! the currents of our lives 
 Now for the third time cross, and for the last. 
 Ask not my name ; enough that I can show 
 
216 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 There have been passages betwixt us, such 
 
 As well may breed implicit trust in both. 
 
 And warrant open speech. Be it allowed 
 
 That I in brief resume your former years, 
 
 Not in their acts, but in the hidden course 
 
 Which they have run, and windings they have known. 
 
 There is a mercy in past sins which thou 
 
 Beyond most other men hast proved; — in this 
 
 The whole interpretation of the life 
 
 Of an Unstable Will is mostly found. 
 
 Thy one great mortal sin hath been thy shield. 
 
 By forcing lowliness upon thy soul. 
 
 Hatred of self, and penitential acts 
 
 Which in the shape of doctrine found no room, 
 
 No entrance gained in thy too happy heart. 
 
 The abundance of materials for good 
 
 Threaten perdition to a soul, unfixed 
 
 And unsustained by weight of outward griefs 
 
 Or bodily pain : a nature well may be 
 
 Too fertile in its tendencies to good. 
 
 And therein find its evil : conscience lives, 
 
 And rules in freedom, rather where the Will 
 
 Is single, and in steadiness of aim 
 
 And unity of inclination finds 
 
 The difficult balance on whose tremulous edge, 
 
 Safe as the hills, she sets her quiet throne. 
 
 And this thou wilt interpret to thyself 
 
 From out the mixed experience of the past. 
 
 In all thine acts, from boyhood to the strength 
 Of thy maturer years and solid strife, 
 This problem was thy trial — to admit 
 In those great matters that concern thy peace, 
 That to be Safe was better than to risk 
 Security and all thy Former Good 
 
VII.] THE LEPROSY. 217 
 
 To attain a Possible Height : that Good itself 
 
 Grows to be Best, but only comes thereto 
 
 Through Growth which is a natural sacrament, 
 
 And has the blessing by exclusive right ; 
 
 And, finally, that Change is such an ill. 
 
 That they who scorn the appointed path of Growth, 
 
 Put all the past away, and take by storm 
 
 The fortress of perfection, either find 
 
 An empty citadel of gilded clouds. 
 
 Or in the leap from earth to heaven, by Change 
 
 Are overweighed, as by a counterpoise, 
 
 And so are lost in sin, which as a sea 
 
 Flows between Good and Best. Have not thy falls 
 
 Been just so frequent as thy vain attempts. 
 
 Upon the pinions buoyed of weak self-will, 
 
 To cross that sea and miss the tottering bridge 
 
 Of slow Attainments and of daily Acts, 
 
 Whose ends are held by Angels, and whose chains 
 
 Vibrate amid the storms, but cannot fail ? 
 
 No more of this : thy days are numbered now. 
 But, to the last, keep close before thy thoughts 
 That opposite wisdom, in neglect of which 
 Thy former life was moulded and so failed — 
 That he, who, whether in the shape of sin 
 Or of attainment, cuts the past away, 
 And drifts before his time upon the sea 
 Of Heavenly Mercy, enters on a voyage 
 Unnamed, unknown amid the elder Saints. 
 God's Mercy is around thee, like a deep ; 
 Enough for thee the prospect of it now ; 
 That prospect is a promise : to the rash 
 There is no sea which hath so many storms ! 
 
 Sir Knight ! we have encountered twice before. 
 Twice when thy life was turning on the hinge 
 
218 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 Of Good or 111 ! Eememberest thou the day 
 
 When first we met ? — my face is haply changed, 
 
 But I have vouchers thou wilt recognize. 
 
 "Where two roads join, not far from mighty Rome, 
 
 We hailed each other, both in mutual need 
 
 Of some companion better than our thoughts 
 
 Then were ; thou from Viterbo cam'st, and I 
 
 From Bracciano, bearing in my arms 
 
 An image of our Lady : 'twas a day 
 
 Of most uncheerful kind ; Soracte stood 
 
 Half veiled, and o'er that mournful plain the clouds 
 
 Hung like a level pall, whose murky folds 
 
 There was no wind to ruffle. When we came 
 
 Unto the guard-house by the Milvian bridge 
 
 The soldiers jested on my habifc ; one 
 
 With impious wit refused to lift the chain, 
 
 Demanding toll for three, since though I bore 
 
 The Image in mine arms, it was a third, 
 
 And Rome was over-peopled in that way. 
 
 Stung by the cowardice that thus could vent 
 
 Its wanton insults on a helpless Monk, 
 
 Thou didst, albeit without thy gauntlets on, 
 
 Strike the rude Roman down, and his compeers 
 
 Stood silent by, with one safe act content. 
 
 Keeping the barrier latched to intercept 
 
 Our further progress ; and I noted well 
 
 Thy tranquil words in that exciting hour ; — 
 
 '* Brother !" thou saidst, " 'twere better to return ; 
 
 Some little increase of the way is not 
 
 Much hardship to a Soldier or a Monk ; 
 
 To me it matters not ; and in good sooth 
 
 It were a better omen to thyself, 
 
 Thus barred from entering by the People's Gate, 
 
 To choose the Gate of Angels." And forthwith. 
 
VII.] THE LEPROSY, 219 
 
 Under the shadow of the Marian Mount, 
 Skirting the Tyber, we addressed our steps 
 Unto the Saxon suburb of great Rome. 
 
 Slowly we walked, for we were weary ; thou, 
 By serious converse didst beguile the way, 
 Relating how that some few days ago 
 Thou wouldst not for a monk have interfered 
 With soldier's sport, believing that we were 
 A dissolute and indulgent race, whose time 
 Was shared 'twixt sluggish idleness and feast. 
 But at Viterbo, stopped outside the gate 
 Which looks towards Bolsena, because the hour 
 Of midnight then was passed, upon the turf 
 Pacing in self-defence against the cold, 
 Thou heardst the monks within the city walls 
 Chanting their midnight psalms, and it was sweet, 
 And soothed thy weariness, and thou didst vow 
 A vow 'gainst thine uncharitable thoughts, 
 If thou shouldst haply light upon a monk 
 In some distress to rescue hira, a vow 
 Which gave thee but brief credit : in reply 
 I told thee that in lieu of empty thanks 
 I rather would exhort thee to be strong 
 In all good purposes, for at that hour 
 Some mercy might be near thee, so assured 
 From my past life was I of this sweet truth ; — 
 A good deed is a prophecy of good 
 To him who does it, — little deeming then 
 That in an hour that prophecy should reap 
 So bounteous a fulfilment ! There are times 
 When with accumulated impulse life 
 Springs forward suddenly, and overshoots 
 The counted hours of time : and we were then 
 In one of those swift seasons. By such talk, 
 
220 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 And by the Tyber fretting on its shore, 
 "Which called to mind the lapping of thy lake 
 Of Kentmere mid its dry autumnal reeds, 
 Thy heart was softened, and in penitent mood 
 Thou sankest down abruptly on thy knees, 
 Confessing that to do a mortal sin 
 And not for prayer or pilgrimage, thou cam'st 
 Unto that Holy City. Twas an hour 
 Of joy that had no easier vent than tears, 
 When mid the rain, which then fell heavily, 
 Beneath the shelter of the ilex boughs 
 Thou mad'st a full confession of thy life 
 Humbly upon thy knees : the dripping rain 
 Which came on thy bare head and trickled down 
 Thy face, me thought it was the fluent drops 
 Of Baptism coming into thee once more 
 By penance fetched from Heaven ; and when we left 
 That ilex by the milestone, we beheld 
 The clouds dispart ; and Rome's innumerous towers, 
 Like a transfigured city, seemed to smile 
 Upon the penitent who now drew nigh 
 In martial guise, but with a pilgrim's heart. 
 And both, the Popular Entrance roughly barred, 
 Entered the City by the Angels' Gate 
 Beneath the very shadow of the Shrine ! 
 Sir Lancelot ! it boots not to describe 
 Our second meeting, when it was, or how ; 
 Enough that I was with thee once again 
 When thy good Angel overtook thee, (dothed 
 In his most favourite guise, some wandering form 
 Of thy lost childhood, in a trivial sign 
 Invested, when from o'er the low stone wall. 
 Which fenced the lawn, thou saw'st the bright blue 
 line 
 
VII.] THE LEPROSY. 221 
 
 Of noiseless wind move down the silver lake, 
 And with a slow encroachment steal away 
 The unruffled surface, till the drowsy trees 
 Flung off the weight of noon, the willow branch 
 Scattered the tinkling drops from off its sprays, 
 And the crisp foliage of the poplar boughs 
 Shook out its vocal leaves ; and in that wind 
 Came Memory and thine Angel. By his help. 
 And with some poor suggestions from myself, 
 Thou wert permitted to retrieve the good 
 Which from thy fickle purpose had escaped. 
 Thou wilt remember well the time and place, 
 When thou wert hid, in opportune retreat. 
 Deep in the woody shore where huge Mont Blanc 
 Looks o'er the slopes of Savoy, and the spears 
 Of his invisible guards, uplifted high. 
 Glance through the quivering mist as though they 
 
 were 
 In actual motion on the long white wall, 
 And vacillating with the lazy tread 
 Of weary sentinels : and that same eve 
 Kecovering from the sickness of thy thoughts, 
 Thou wilt remember with what fretful pace. 
 As though eye-stricken by the curious crowd. 
 In thy distempered fancy, thou didst thread. 
 The alleys of the purse-proud town that keeps 
 The outlets of the impatient Ehone, and sat'st 
 Upon the ramparts facing the Saleve, 
 Whose white-ribbed precipice the setting sun 
 Feebly ensanguined, while beneath thy feet 
 A lonely bell-frog from the reedy fosse 
 Kang his distinct and melancholy fall. 
 Not harshly, to thy travel- wearied mind 
 Most soothingly attuned. 
 
222 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 Thy days are now 
 Fast coming to a close, yet do not fear ; 
 By this disease shall death no access gain, 
 But in a calm and very silent hour 
 Thou shalt do battle with him, and prevail. 
 
 Long years ago it chanced that I was senfe, 
 A Novice in our Order, to attend 
 The sufferers in a lazar-house, then filled 
 With lepers like thyself ; and when I saw 
 The strange appearance and the loathsome marks 
 Of that disease, I turned my back and fled, 
 And in my haste a wooden Crucifix 
 Fell from my hands, and broke upon the ground. 
 For this fastidious weakness I imposed 
 Austerest penance on myself, and vowed 
 If I, by such a chance as well might wear 
 The aspect of Divine Intention, found 
 A leper near me, I would kiss his sores 
 In honour of the charity of Christ : 
 And whether for temptation of my pride, 
 Or as a guerdon for my vow, it so hath been 
 That ever from the hour of my embrace 
 The sickness hath begun to disappear. 
 And therefore. Brother ! I embrace thee now 
 As freely as I would a rosy child, 
 In expiation of my former sin, 
 And honour of the charity of Christ ! 
 
 The shaded face, the uncertain stream of words, 
 The quiet agitation of his voice. 
 The clasping arms, the glory-circled head — 
 Was all a bodiless vision ? Was that form 
 A creature of the sunbeam that had passed, 
 And which had faded with the fading light ? 
 So like a silent- footed shadow came 
 
VII.] THE LEPROSY. 223 
 
 The unlooked-for Apparition, so it went 
 As though it melted with the sinking ray. 
 And then the piping of the blackbirds grew 
 With such a gradual increase on his ear, 
 That, like a river whose far sound we lose, 
 Yet so recover that it does not seem 
 To suffer interruption, those sweet songs 
 So brought his former to his present thoughts, 
 That they o'erfiowed the interval between. 
 Then was it all the sick man's phantasy ? 
 O no ! the pressure of the Monk's embrace 
 Still glowed upon him ; still the fervid kiss 
 Felt like a seal upon his leprous brow. 
 
 Sir Lancelot slept, and in his sleep he dreamed; 
 Upon the darkness of the night he saw 
 Within an oval ring of cherubs' heads 
 The Blessed Mother with her Holy Child. 
 All mortal she appeared, and with a mien 
 Of very gracious woe, or wistful joy 
 Which rises from unconsummated hopes, 
 And is itself a suffering, such as might 
 Have been her aspect, when upon the Child 
 She gazed and gazed, as old Saint Simeon spake. 
 So to Sir Lancelot's eyes she was vouchsafed. 
 She, stooping from the luminous cincture, placed 
 Her radiant Burden in his osatstretched arms : 
 And all was dark that moment to his sight, 
 Dark as the darkness after lightning, when 
 No thunder occupies the other sense 
 To throw the vision off its rigid guard. 
 
 But from the time of that Embrace, each day 
 The vigour of his blood returned, and drove 
 The leprosy before it ; and each night 
 The Vision was vouchsafed unto his eyes ; 
 
224 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 And, as the Saviour's Infancy had been 
 
 An inward balm of slow distilling thoughts, 
 
 Which were a medicine to his failing heart, 
 
 So now the nightly visit of the Dream 
 
 Infused into his slumber such a peace. 
 
 That Night and Day seemed rivals in the work 
 
 Of restoration, and with emulous speed 
 
 Toiled for each other, till in nine short days, 
 
 Emancipated from his gloomy cell, 
 
 He was once more allowed the inspiring joy 
 
 Of outward sunshine and the earth's green face. 
 
 There is a cloister by the river side, 
 A cloister of thin pillared trees which stand 
 So close they hinder one another's growth ; 
 And up the branchless stems the sallow moss 
 Encroaches yearly, and across the stream 
 The dull red rocks with dripping cowls of weed 
 O'erhang that belt of wood : and O how fair 
 From out the covert seem the brilliant meads 
 And quiet abbey, when the setting sun, 
 Piercing the silent shades, comes unawares 
 
 Through the green leaves, and many a scattered 
 trunk 
 
 Is fluted with the transitory gold. 
 
 There many an hour Sir Lancelot enjoyed 
 
 The cautious happiness, as of a child 
 
 Forgiven, that timorous buoyancy which springs 
 
 In the tamed spirit of a man released 
 
 From the sick-room, who slowly gathering strength, 
 
 Lives in the partial liberty of hope. 
 
 With senses through his bodily weakness brought 
 
 In unconstrained subjection to his soul, 
 
 And mind sufficiently above the world 
 
 To be at peace therewith. The voices borne 
 
Vn.] THE LEPROSY. 225 
 
 From out the village hostelry hard by, 
 The sportive cries of children on the bridge, 
 The sounds of human labour faint and far, 
 The evening thrush, the dashing of the stream. 
 The almost silent gambols of the hares 
 In the tall grass, — these were his simple joys 
 Which called him not to lift his downcast eyes 
 From the brown path ; for in his feeble state — 
 Sick men full oft have proved it to themselves. 
 And old men too — sound was to him far more 
 Than sight, as being more passively received. 
 
 Along that sounding cloister once again 
 He passed unto his little hermitage. 
 There was the mystic vale, — the broken crest 
 Of that dull mountain, and the blended sounds 
 Of earth and sea, wild birds and bleating flocks, 
 The pale green grass, and tightly-rooted ferns ;— 
 All was the same, and were it not that he 
 Was conscious of a change, the past might seem 
 The sicknesses we sujQfer, or the deaths 
 We die, when in the tyrannous embrace 
 Of those mysterious panics of the night, 
 The penal dreams which follow careless days. 
 As if, alas ! we were already judged, 
 And that our doom was of eternal woe,— 
 Colossal fears, which come to cleanse the soul. 
 And scare it deeper down into itself. 
 
 15 
 
SIR LANCELOT. 
 
 BOOK VIII. 
 THE CONFESSION. 
 
BOOK VIIL 
 
 THE CONFESSION. 
 
 Yet once again the rudder of my song 
 I turn, and seek, not easily found out, 
 Our Lady's ancient shrine in Frudernesse. 
 No stag that hears the hunting-horn from far 
 Lies closer in his lair than did that pile 
 Shrink from the roving eye of hungry Scot. 
 Wave after wave of treeless slopes, all blithe 
 With yellow corn, stretched like a swelling sea 
 From gulf to gulf across that tongue of land 
 In billows of red soil that eastward dipped, 
 Flowing towards Morecambe Bay; and keen the 
 
 sight 
 That o'er those ridges looked nor overshot 
 That sunken trough, though by a tremulous vein 
 Of waving tree-tops partially betrayed. 
 There the Cistercian Abbey lies, embowered 
 In hanging groves, the view this way and that 
 Impeded by a folding screen of hills ; 
 Only, where prayer must go, the eye might range 
 A tract of clear uninterrupted sky. 
 
 Once was that hollow dell a censer sweet 
 From which the sacrifice of faith and hope 
 And love, expressed in ritual acts divine, 
 In one continuous column rose to Heaven. 
 But now, a vulgar desolation left, 
 The weedy and dismantled ruin stands 
 
230 SIB LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 A trophy, for there be who boast it so, 
 
 Round which the newly-fashioned faith may sing 
 
 Its proud idolatrous paeans, with such space 
 
 Of summer silence intervening there 
 
 As may suffice for sad and pensive hearts 
 
 To pray and weep within the broken choir, 
 
 And through devout regrets to learn the worth 
 
 Of ancient creeds, and so, by grace inspired 
 
 And with a blessing furthered, then assist 
 
 To overturn that worship which enthrones 
 
 The formal understanding in the room 
 
 Of faith profound and pure adoring love, 
 
 And with a well-contrived insertion slides 
 
 Between the sinner and the Cross a form 
 
 Of base will-worship ; while in these our times 
 
 The native wants of humankind, the thirst 
 
 Of pining souls, the joyless solitude 
 
 Of craving conscience, and the painful cry 
 
 Of reason now collapsing on itself, — 
 
 All, by the grace of God, this creed outgrow. 
 
 This miserable pageant of untruth, 
 
 Feeble with three poor centuries of age. 
 
 The Vale of Nightshade was that hollow named, 
 The Bekansgill, amid whose poison-plants 
 The name of Mary, like the silent breath 
 From off the lily beds, imported there 
 Took sweet possession of the woody glen. 
 And in the frosty starlight, and the dawn 
 Of vernal days, and summer's lingering eve, 
 And when the storms were launched from Furness 
 
 Fells 
 On the vast ocean, threatening as they went. 
 Or when the low depending sky wept tears. 
 Or clung in tearful mist upon the woods 
 
Viri.] THE CONFESSION. 231 
 
 Rank with the drowsy breath of hemlock flowers, 
 Still, in a tide of service mounting up 
 To Pentecost, and falling sweetly off, 
 Dispersed on unmeraorial weeks and days, 
 Till Advent heads the pilgrim year once more, 
 There rose the sedulous voice of holy prayer. 
 The silent praise of contemplative faith, 
 And — man's best offering to the Eye of Heaven, 
 Sole evidence of spiritual growth, — 
 The secret course of meek self-sacrifice. 
 
 How gently summer hath possessed herself 
 Of all the quiet being of the place ! 
 Here do I lie within the roofless nave, 
 "With no self-blame, while joining humbler thoughts 
 And lesser recollections with regrets 
 That from a higher and holier source proceed. 
 And momentary humours of despair, 
 "Which end by breathing more courageous hopes. 
 Inwardly felt, of better things to come. 
 And sweet retrievals won through perilous change, ' 
 The present hazarding in hope to find 
 Foundation for the future, and outdo, — 
 Faith brooks not fear — the whole magnificent Past ! 
 
 Yon pelletery, that in silken tufts 
 Innumerous, with glossy leaf and flower 
 Of sanguine purple, from the chink protrudes. 
 And sucks medicinal virtue from the stones. 
 May school the meditative heart to find 
 Meet nutriment of moral import here, 
 Where nature with her placid beauty clothes 
 The sin of man, and time, while he unveils 
 His melancholy features to the light 
 In spots like these, yet smooths his lineaments 
 To grace, lest thought that came to learu should steal 
 
232 SIR LANCELOT. [bOQK 
 
 Affrighted from the presence of the sage. 
 
 Mingled with such reflections, personal thoughts 
 From these memorial ruins spring, grave joys 
 Of friendship plighted here in dreamy youth, 
 Which is not surely changed nor passed away, 
 Though in affectionate sallies less delighting, 
 And in wild sport, by growing breadth of years 
 Discountenanced ! Those alders by the rill. 
 Which, brother-like, incline their mossy trunks 
 Upon each other, and that orchard plot 
 With crippled ranks of old and leaning trees. 
 With chaste and waxen apple bloom besprent, 
 The tall rank sward that grows beneath their boughs. 
 The subterraneous tinkling of the brook. 
 The dull dark tufts of flowerless daffodil 
 That with their green mosaic pave the door 
 Of the antique chapter-house,-— all seem to me 
 But images transplanted from a dream, 
 Themselves scarce real even where they stand; — 
 Yea, from that dream transferred, when the outer 
 
 world. 
 Its doing and its suffering, were as nought. 
 And our impassioned lives were proud to steer 
 A course apart, and friendship, like a fount 
 Cool-eyed and chaste, perennial sweetness gave 
 Without satiety ; and, happiness 
 Being, without some want, insensible. 
 There rose for its completion in the soul 
 A hunger to be more and more beloved, 
 A famine that resolved to be unfilled. 
 Lest the bright plenty among which it dwelt 
 {Should seem less bright, when satisfaction dulled 
 The sharpness of that exquisite desire. 
 
 There mid the peace and old familiar forms 
 
VIII.] THE CONFESSION. 233 
 
 Of that mute hollow, in whose weedy crypts 
 Time with a faltering purpose lingers now, 
 Enamoured of the beauty of his work, 
 Which more elaborate touch will only spoil, 
 Must I divert the channel of my song, 
 Even now too much arrested in its course, 
 While I have vmndered up and down to cull 
 These pleasant recollections of my youth, 
 And from my purpose innocently strayed, 
 
 'Twas noonday on Black Combe ; Sir Lancelot 
 Was praying on the summit of the hill : 
 And thither came a pious Bernardin 
 From out of Furness, by the Abbot sent 
 With message brief but full of peace and joy. 
 Within the glen, upon the mountain- top. 
 The Church with pleased solicitude had kept 
 Her eye upon the separated man ; 
 And now the Legate had transmitted powers 
 By which the Penitent might be received 
 Once more within the pale of Holy Church. 
 Such were the tidings, by Sir Lancelot heard 
 With wonder and submissive thankfulness. 
 
 Long time he prayed to God, long time he wept, 
 And kissed the earth of that lone mountain-top ; 
 While, with contagious impulse sinking down, 
 The Bernardin both wept and prayed with him ; 
 Till in that wild and solitary place, 
 Sweet foretaste of communion with his kind, 
 The Monk embraced the Penitent, and, love 
 Outrunning forms, bestowed the kiss of peace. 
 
 Within St. Mary's Chapter-house the Knight 
 Met with that famous Abbot, Hugh de Bron, 
 By him saluted with grave kindliness ; 
 And at the feet of that most holy man. 
 
284 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 Throughout the wide Cistercian world revered, 
 
 Kneeling in penitential guise, he told 
 
 "With many a pause, and most circuitous speech, 
 
 As is the wont of solitary men, 
 
 His sinful deeds, and his confession thus, 
 
 Half history and half confession, made. 
 
 Man of God ! I pray thee, hearken now j 
 My tale can tell in what unthought-of ways. 
 And with what travail, Christ's Almighty Love 
 Goes out into the Babel of the world 
 All day and night in quest of erring souls. 
 Father ! to me the cause of mortal sin 
 Was briefly this : I had been wronged in love, 
 A wrong which more than fathomed all the depths 
 Of natural forbearance, and might strain 
 The love, divinely tempered, of the Saints. 
 Bat what, in such a holy place as this. 
 Imports the mention of terrestrial love ? 
 The injury was another's sin, not mine ; 
 Therefore in my confession claims no place. 
 And, truth to say, so many years have past 
 Since from the depths of memory mortal love 
 Hath risen in tangible disguise of words 
 Upon my spirit, that I scarce could clothe 
 That early passion in a fitting style. 
 Or with accoutrement of current phrase. 
 Enough that I was wronged, that for that wrong, 
 Not for the love of Christ, I sought the. East, 
 And through the recklessness I had of life 
 Was eminent in fight above my peers. 
 
 The storm of sacred war then lulled awhile, 
 I went in search of venturous enterprise. 
 Martial or politic, as chanced to come. 
 Among the Latin principalities 
 
VIII.] THE CONFESSION. 235 
 
 Which were as islands in the troubled East. 
 And in my lonely travel oft I nursed 
 My wrong, and diligently kept awake 
 The thought of vengeance ; though in early years, 
 Earlier than youth, good Father ! I had been 
 Touched with the sweetness of celestial grace, 
 And would have sought a cloister, had not love 
 Caused me to swerve from that design. Yet soon, 
 In lonely hazard and long journeys tried, 
 I felt as if that earlier stream of grace 
 Was being unsealed far down within my heart, — 
 Hopes which a sudden chance, or rather plot 
 Of evil powers allowed, too soon dispersed, 
 Temptation coming ere my soul was winged 
 For flight, and so was caught within the nest 
 Unfledged : — with that temptation will I now 
 Commence. 
 
 From Tarsus round the lovely bay, 
 Up which the eastern horn of Cyprus points, 
 I journeyed slowly ; every week and month 
 Deepened the love of nature in my heart, 
 Which seemed, like some angelic pioneer, 
 Preparing the fresh path of grace divine. 
 Softening the flinty rocks with gentleness 
 That sapped all stubborn thoughts, all base desires. 
 And bridging those dark chasms, which former sin. 
 Like a wild earthquake, rent within the soul, 
 By rainbows o'er whose braided arch new hopes 
 Went on their way, as if on solid ground. 
 
 In truth there is a sad congruity 
 Between the landscape and the fate of those 
 Exhausted realms ; — a wild and touching waste 
 Of sweetness, and a languid colouring. 
 A pensive air of pastoral loneliness. 
 
2S6 SIR LANCELOT. [boOK 
 
 With a monotony of change, through sun 
 And moon or by the infrequent shower conferred. 
 The pale green plains lie stretched in radiant mist. 
 Diversified, one knows not how, and cheered 
 By softness, almost mournful, of the lights 
 And shades which chronicle the morn and eve, 
 The summer and the winter, of those lands ; — 
 Regions of dappled shadow far outspread, 
 Thrown from the mute procession of the clouds, 
 Or by the slanting sun from caps of hill 
 Projected, or historic barrows green, 
 Or our own horses, dimly magnified, 
 Keflected over many a rood of sward ! 
 And, if we lie upon the ground to sleep. 
 How strangely o'er the surface of the earth 
 There comes a floating sound, a homeless voice, 
 Low as the creaking of a sullen moss. 
 From the crisp browsing of the countless herds 
 For a wide circuit round, by thrilling breeze 
 Or happy sound of labour undispersed ! 
 
 And yet not unrelieved these pallid wastes 
 By gentler or more stirring prospect : oft 
 A range of olive-spotted slope is seen. 
 Like tented camp of Arabs, and as black 
 As the cold sea beneath a thundercloud, 
 But now and then by momentary winds 
 Quickened and driven in silver-twinkling waves ; — 
 Lone straggled palms with knotched and ruined stems 
 Leaning or straight, the poplars of the East, 
 So would I name them, giving to the view 
 Its salient points, and sky-ward shooting spires 
 Mosque-like, with slight o'erhanging cupolas. 
 Partitioning the landscape here and there. 
 Grateful relief unto the gazing eye, 
 
VIII.] THE CONFESSION. 2S7 
 
 Like our tall-foliaged pillars of the West, 
 
 Most beautiful but shadow-grudging trees :— 
 
 A floating dome of flat-topped pines far off, 
 
 An underwood of shrubs that drop sweet gums, 
 
 A pool obscure within a formal blind 
 
 Of lentisk, or with crimson eyelids closed 
 
 Of oleander, — each for lack of change. 
 
 Is noted as a feature in the scene, 
 
 And gives perchance a date unto the day. 
 
 And oft a fallen column freshens thought, 
 
 With flatings tightly clothed in yellow rust. 
 
 And tufts of thyme are sheltered by its bulk 
 
 And grow more tall than elsewhere, and the screen 
 
 Of its broad shaft the lazy tortoise loves. 
 
 And the green lizard with its throbbing pulse 
 
 Sleeps in the heated marble grooves all day. 
 
 Marvel not, holy father, that I speak 
 In this calm way of nature's tranquil scenes, 
 And local adjuncts on my memory worn 
 By lapse of years, though now the narrative 
 Is trembling on the threshold of my crime. 
 My faltering tongue, reluctant to advance. 
 Like urchins who forget their tasks, repeats 
 And lingers on its words, as loath to leave 
 That Asiatic landscape, where it quits 
 The innocent sunshine of my life for ever. 
 The horror and amazement of fresh guilt 
 Have passed long since, and in the quiet depths 
 Of my collected conscience I discern 
 My sin tenfold more hateful than before. 
 Yet, through the usage of my thoughts, that act 
 Disturbs not now the adjacent memories. 
 
 O father, terrible are those flerce hours, 
 When our whole lives into one damning sin, 
 
288 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 One palpable spot of blackness, are confused, 
 
 Overwhelmed with a monotonous wretchedness, 
 
 Where sorrow, tears, and prayers, aye even remorse, 
 
 Are suflfocated in the heart by blind 
 
 And general anguish ; and our mortal hopes, 
 
 Those vitals of the soul, are by despair 
 
 Held under water till they perish. Oh 
 
 How oft would I have wooed those hours once more 
 
 With hearty choice, so much less terrible 
 
 Than the self-recollection which ensued ! 
 
 Father ! the fast and vigil, midnight prayer 
 
 And hymn at sunrise, which make up thy life, 
 
 Are mysteries far too pure to teach thee how 
 
 To fathom that abyss of mortal sin. 
 
 Penance for slighted fast, or ill-said Hours, 
 
 For broken silence, contumacious word 
 
 Against the holy Abbot ere thyself 
 
 Wert raised to that high office, — these can give 
 
 No guage to measure penance such as mine. 
 
 Fearful, I say, as were those desperate hours 
 When blood was wet upon me — Oh my God ! 
 What infinite, insufferable curse 
 The purity of Thy dread Presence seemed, 
 When by degrees the vapours of my soul, 
 The exhalations of my conscience, grew, 
 Self-gathered, into one consistent orb, 
 One tangible and separate shade, from which 
 The speed of phrensied thought could never clear me, 
 Nor would it overshoot me if I laggedj 
 Behind. Ah ! then it was, and not till then 
 My sin became my persecutor. Monk I 
 My penance hath not been in loneliness. 
 In the abhorrence of my kind, in want 
 Of the best consolations of our faith,— 
 
VIII.] THE CONFESSION. 239 
 
 But in the singleness of all my thoughts, 
 
 The concentration of my harassed mind 
 
 Upon one frightful action, and the strain 
 
 Of an unshifting pressure so intense 
 
 It is a miracle, of purpose wrought 
 
 Perchance as penal, reason hath not cracked 
 
 Beneath the agonizing tension ; this, 
 
 Yea, this hath been the intolerable curse, 
 
 To be from my own nature thus outlawed 
 
 Into the solitude of one dark thought. 
 
 The excommunication of the Church, 
 
 If this world only measured its results. 
 
 But feebly shadows forth the length and breadth 
 
 Of that abiding and familiar hell. 
 
 Which for some years of sojourn in the East 
 
 Was nourished like a loathsome bird of prey 
 
 Upon my life of lacerated thought. 
 
 But pardon me — I wander from mj tale, 
 And it behoves that thou shouldst hear the end. 
 Amid such scenes and after such a day 
 As those of which I spoke — ah ! I remember — 
 A marble column prostrate, and encased 
 In pale discolouring of saffron rust. 
 And a green lizard sleeping in the grooves 
 With sensual enjoyment of the heat, 
 And with a little pulse that would outstrip 
 The notes of nightingales for speed— even that 
 Was the last image of serenity 
 Impressed upon my mind by earth and air, 
 Eesponded to by inward happiness. 
 
 I rode towards Antioch on that summer eve ; 
 Nigh to the column with a sudden swerve 
 The road bore to the left ; for half a league 
 Straight o'er an odorous level it was stretched 
 
240 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 Like a blue thread, a level carpeted 
 
 With pink-eyed thyme and with a pale green turf, 
 
 All blent and intermingled in their hues, 
 
 Each muffling each, as though with sweet design. 
 
 Then o'er a hill, with golden cytisus 
 
 And brittle cactus overgrown, I passed, 
 
 And thence I could discern a glistering light 
 
 Far o'er the plain, which might or might not be 
 
 The domes of Antioch : now with steep descent 
 
 The hill dropped down into a cedarn glade, 
 
 With murmurs from an unseen river filled. 
 
 Heaven is my witness not a single thought 
 Detached from that exciting prospect round 
 Eose in my heart, no bitterness of love, 
 No keen awakening of my ancient wrongs. 
 Amid the foliage, answering to the breeze 
 With dusky dipping fans, I watched with joy 
 Patches of sunset gold which wandered on 
 From stem to stem, like creatures made of light. 
 When, thus illuminated, I beheld, 
 Asleep, alone, among some knotted roots, 
 Ethilda's foster-brother, Athelstan, 
 The puny stripling whose efi'eminate grace 
 And most unknightly book-lore she preferred 
 To me whose brow was swart with martial toils, 
 And whose rough wisdom was acquired in camps, 
 ■ In travel, in the falsehood of a court, 
 And masculine encounter with the world. 
 
 To a snapped bough of cedar did I tie 
 My weary horse, and stole to where he slept. 
 I vow there was no thought of dark revenge 
 Inciting me — for he had wronged me not, 
 The wrong was hers ; — but curious impulse, joined 
 With fascination, as I now perceive, 
 
VIII.] . THE CONFESSION. 241 
 
 And a foul tempting motion, led me on. 
 
 And there he lay, a seeming boy in years, 
 
 With limbs by far too delicate to wear 
 
 Aught but a silken doublet and soft hose. 
 
 In lieu of steel accoutrements : his head 
 
 Was pillowed on the convex of his shield ; 
 
 His flaxen hair was ruffled by the wind. 
 
 He looked a child who now was sleeping off 
 
 The weariness of play ; and kindliness 
 
 Might move me rather to set forth to seek 
 
 His horse which strayed somewhere about the wood, 
 
 Lest I should see him weeping when he woke. 
 
 Then a chance sunbeam passed upon his face : 
 He stirred not, but he smiled as if the light 
 Wove itself in the texture of his dreams : 
 He must have had the conscience of a child ! 
 I took my fill of gazing on the youth ; 
 And then the forced confession which I made 
 Unto myself that he was beautiful, 
 And for his very beauty could have loved him 
 Even as a brother, goaded my hot heart 
 To bitterness and rage; it was a joy 
 Then to recall how I had hated him : 
 And memory, by some marvellous influence helped, 
 Some strange possession, did accumulate 
 The past so vehemently on that point 
 Of present time, so darkly magnified 
 The frightful opportunity, that I — 
 In sooth his beauty stirred me to it first — 
 Slew — murdered — butchered him, alone, asleep, 
 Unhelmed, and with his beauty pleading for him 
 O so eloquently ! — caitiff that I was. 
 No knight, I slew him as I would not slaj 
 A godless Saracen in open field. 
 
 i6 
 
242 SIR LANCELOT. [BOOE 
 
 Father ! his soul passed very easily,— 
 Like a young child's, who is hut born to pay 
 His debt of death within an hour : so well 
 He made surrender of his innocence 
 Unto his Maker, passing from his sleep 
 Into the sweet tranquillity of death. 
 I saw him die — O can my guilty soul 
 Be disencumbered peacefully as his?— 
 A marvellous gentle passage ! there I gazed ; 
 My deed had utterly disarmed my heart. 
 He rolled once round and buried his pale face 
 In the soft earth, moaned once, and strove to clasp 
 His nerveless hands in attitude of prayer ; 
 Then with an effort turned upon his back, 
 And crossed his hands upon his breast in sign 
 Of faith which persevered unto the last. 
 I watched him from behind a cedar trunk : 
 Whose hand it was that dealt the guilty blow 
 He never knew. 
 
 O father ! human words 
 Here sink beneath the burden of my tale. 
 That hour — the horror of that hour — but list I 
 I will relate it as I can. I gazed 
 Upon my victim, dead, quite stark and dead, 
 But, save some stains upon his cheek acquired 
 When he convulsively embraced the earth, 
 His whole appearance was of one who slept, 
 His beauty pale, a smile upon his face, 
 As though, in the most calm solemnity 
 Of that last passage, there had come to him 
 A sweet glimpse onwards, an unearthly smile, 
 The attractive welcome upon dead men's lips 
 Greeting perchance some fair angelic sight 
 Then drawing near, — so mystical the smile ! 
 
VIII.] THE CONFESSION. '243 
 
 Father ! what I shall say may seem too strange 
 By one of guileless ways to be believed. 
 There is a mental surge within the heart 
 Of one just fresh from some atrocious crime, 
 Inspiriting as sights of stormy sea, 
 And breeding in the hour of recent guilt, 
 If not a joy, yet a bewilderment 
 Not far from joy, wherewith the soul is flown 
 With sin, as men in search of reckless thought 
 Are flown with wine, and have some happiness 
 In mere oblivious stupor of the heart, 
 Or gaiety insane : and even the sound, 
 The strife, the passionate tumult of the mind 
 Can minister relief, and by the time 
 That the excitement of the sin cools down. 
 The fact hath grown familiar to our thoughts, 
 And therefore is less terrible by lialf. 
 
 But I had no such lot : my jealous hate, 
 Whose sudden impulse drove me to the crime, 
 Ebbed out from every harbour of my thoughts^ 
 From every secret fold within my heart, 
 With force as sudden as the influx was 
 When I was gazing at him in his sleep. 
 I had no refuge in excitement, no 
 Self- justifying passion, no remains 
 Of sin's original heat : my being was 
 With an amazing magic dispossessed 
 Before that beautiful dead face. Good Monk I 
 I doubt not thou hast known how oft tl)e world 
 Within tlie heart of man doth stand ifbuked 
 Before the stately presence of a corpse. 
 The spiritual magnificence of death : 
 How it casts out all worldliness, the lust 
 Of life and animal spirits, and can woo 
 
244 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 Unto the surface of our feelings, thoughts. 
 And acts, whate'er within us may be found 
 Of goodness ; such constraining sanctity 
 Flows from the tranquil vision of the dead. 
 
 I leaned against the cedar trunk, and gazed 
 On Athelstan : one little purple spot 
 Upon his bosom, where he had unbraced 
 His mail, was all the sign of violence. 
 And, as I gazed, my hatred was expelled 
 By love, yea, even by actual power of love 
 Exorcised, — love, not pity ; for I glowed 
 With all the fervour of a living love. 
 Bat oh the agony of soul ! the fire, 
 The scorching fire which that love was to me ! 
 The worst enhancing of my wretchedness, 
 The last extremity of punishment, — 
 I loved him whom I murdered, and methinks 
 Cain's very burden were less hard to bear. 
 
 wondrous transmutations of the soul, 
 Wondrous as sudden, incident to those, 
 And those alone, who with heroic deeds 
 Or crimes of giant stature Jiave conver^sed ! 
 How oft by you have Martyrs at the stake 
 Been visibly transfigured to the form 
 And look of Angels, while to me that night 
 The transformation of my rage to love 
 So operated as to be the flail 
 Of some new passion, fiercer than remorse. 
 Now to its awful function summoned up, 
 A demon without name, to make a scourge 
 Of my own damning thoughts, severer far 
 Than if 'twere braided of the fires of hell. 
 Wherein the bodily suffering might be — 
 So seemed it then to my most foolish thoughts-—^ 
 
Vni.] 5'HE CONFESSION. 245 
 
 Faint mitigation of the pangs of soul. 
 
 The niglit that followed — oh ! how placidly 
 The moon rose up above the wilderness, 
 The bold expanse of sylvan solitude, 
 While the dead features grew obscure, a spot 
 Of ghostly whiteness on the dull brown earth t 
 Upon a point projecting from the hill 
 Halfway in the descent^ I stood ; and thence 
 How beautiful the aspect of the night, 
 Looking towards Antioch, whose far- gleaming spires 
 Twinkled, like stars surmounting the pale line 
 Of the horizon, or about to sink 
 Beneath ! The cedars in steep terraced lines 
 One o'er the other into contact came. 
 With foliage shelving like a skilful roof 
 Of close continuous green all down the slope. 
 And in and out with dusky-flashing wings 
 The white owls sallied from the branching eaves. 
 And, disappointed with the clear midnight. 
 Screamed, and forthwith immured themselves again 
 Within the vaults of umbrage : far and wide 
 Thereon the silver darkness of the moon 
 With an ethereal paleness overspread 
 The silent sea of boughs, while at my feet, 
 W^hither with momentary impulse fell 
 My fascinated eyes, young Athelstan 
 Lay stiffening in the dew, o'ercanopied 
 By sable cedars, most funereal trees. 
 Whose fits of dirgelike music were evoked 
 By calls of breezy air throughout the night. 
 
 Whether by sleep overpowered or gradual swoon 
 I know not, but the chill of dawning day 
 Aroused me lying by the rigid side 
 Of the pale corpse; and, slowly gathering thought, 
 
246 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 I mustered one by one the horrid facta 
 
 Of the past night, till realizing all 
 
 I summed it up — I was a murderer, — 
 
 And the whole breadth of that tremendous word 
 
 Was then disclosed unto my dizzy sense, — 
 
 A dark blood-guilty spirit in the eye 
 
 Of the sweet sunrise, — on the odorous earth 
 
 Exiled from peace, another outcast Cain. 
 
 In the keen horror of my soul I shrieked, — 
 
 A long, loud, wailing scream of agony. 
 
 The unearthly sound, received into the wood, 
 
 Eeverberated in the dim ravines, 
 
 And echoed wildly from the sun-touched crags, 
 
 While o'er the cedar tops at once there rose 
 
 A miserable murmur of cold wind. 
 
 Responsive, as it seemed, to the despair 
 
 Within my heart : so awfully it preached 
 
 That mercy was not, and all hope forsworn. 
 
 I rose and fled ; the stricken antelope. 
 That from the arrow fixed within his side 
 Flies, as he deems, in blind direction urged 
 This way and that, scours not in worse dismay 
 The dewy woodland, or with wilder speed. 
 Than I now shot among the cedarn glades. 
 The sunny openings and the darksome groves, 
 With preternatural strength sustained, and spurred 
 By those intolerable thoughts which rung. 
 Like hunter's bugles in the affrighted ear 
 Of the poor beast, within my conscious soul, 
 A larum whose dread echo to this day. 
 By mercy somewhat muffled, vibrates still. 
 Yet was I destined never to outstrip 
 That vile intolerable self, from which 
 I ran : and yet the idle bodily act, 
 
VIII.] THE CONFESSION. 247 
 
 While it illustrated the inward mind, 
 No less relieved the agony ; I ran, 
 How long I know not, but until my foot 
 Was caught amid some snaky roots which rose 
 In treacherous moss, and to the earth I fell 
 Senseless ; my forehead dashed against a trunk 
 With scaly rind as hard as plates of mail, 
 And by my blood made ruddier than before. 
 
 When consciousness returned I found myself 
 Upon a pallet in an empty cave. 
 A screen of ancient cedars grew in front. 
 And pendulous before the entrance hung, — 
 A pleasant lattice, whose dusk umbrage threw 
 O'er all the spacious chambers of the rock 
 A tinted twilight of aerial green, 
 A gentle semi-lunar atmosphere ; 
 And then, although the sun had barely set, 
 Were visible in trimly ordered spires 
 The enwoven dances of the sparkling flies, 
 W^hich there, when day hath hardly died without, 
 Their nightly feast of lanterns celebrate. 
 And to the cave, with resonance subdued. 
 Vanquished with climbing up the woody height, 
 The muffled thunder of a double fall 
 Of foamy waters reached, an undersong 
 Slowly surmounting every other sound 
 As the night deepened, and the tingling earth 
 With all her voices into slumber sunk, 
 All save the jackal's cries, which overhead 
 Like plaining infants wearied the still air. 
 
 Parting the cedar boughs, which at my touch 
 Swung lightly on one side, I left the cave. 
 The paradise of Daphne lay around. 
 In front there was a cirque of emerald lawn, 
 
248 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 With cypress fringed, whose motionless black spires 
 
 Seemed molten in the scintillating gold 
 
 And throbbing saffron of the western skj; 
 
 And tortuous paths of ruddy gravel glowed 
 
 With a coarse gilding mid the luminous green 
 
 Of wide-spread myrtles and old towering bays ; 
 
 While down below, above the panting falls, 
 
 The oily waters glistened mid the boughs, 
 
 Like a marsh meteor creeping through the grove* 
 
 And on a lower shelf in laurel trees 
 
 Embowered, that might from Julian count their years^ 
 
 Stood the half-ruined shrine of Babylas, 
 
 The Decian Martyr who erewhile repelled, 
 
 Bold as the Saint of Milan, from the doors 
 
 Of Antioch Church, the master of the world f 
 
 Whose holy relics in Cremona now 
 
 Are honoured by the faithful of the West* 
 
 O marvellous it was that night to see 
 The trickling moonlight sweetly overflow 
 Those hoary laurels, down from leaf to leaf 
 Dripping like noiseless rain, ascents and falls 
 And running tremours of fair light that seemed 
 Like pictured music, as when we behold 
 For hours, and wonder what defrauds the ear. 
 How Saint Cecilia's taper fingers sweep 
 With flying pressure the white twinkling keys. 
 Chanting her everlasting, silent psalm ! 
 
 The loud clear voices of the singing birds 
 That trilled down every rock and cedar stem, 
 Before the sunrise, woke me in the cave : 
 And with a slow return upon my ear, 
 The water-fall resumed its soothing sound. 
 I stepped beyond the screen of fanlike boughs ; 
 And for a moment, how beautiful. 
 
Till.] THE CONFESSION". 249 
 
 And how divinely calm the place appeared, — 
 
 The smile of expectation dimpling there 
 
 On leaf and stone, as veins of pearly light, 
 
 The out-runners of the morning, blanched the skies. 
 
 But swift the recollection of my sin 
 
 Bushed like a torrent back upon my thoughts, 
 
 And dashed the gentle sense of joy away. 
 
 Ah sinful world, and I of sinners worst, 
 
 How have ye marred the primal bliss of earth,. 
 
 Since happiness a mournful-visaged power 
 
 Appears, when loveliest; and the winning charna 
 
 Of innocence and chastity consists 
 
 In unavenging weakness, while the thought 
 
 Of wrong, which in our mind accompanies 
 
 The vision of a pure and guileless man, 
 
 Invests with pitiful pathetic light 
 
 That innocence, acknowledged and beheld' 
 
 Strong as the sunrise in the world above. 
 
 As though wroBg were the inseparable shade* 
 
 Of virtue, helpless foreigner on earth ! 
 
 Now, from a cave hard by, an aged man> 
 Came forth, and greeted me with blunt address. 
 Stranger, said he, I saved thy life : thy steed. 
 Which from the cedar bough had broken loose. 
 By the west gate of Antioch foaming stood, 
 There recognized, and while debate was held 
 Among the guards, the jennet of the man 
 Thon slew'st came neighing to the self-same gate. 
 And riderless ; the Latin knights who went 
 Into the forest on a mournful quest, 
 For so they deemed it, found thy bloody sword, 
 And knew it thine by graving on the hilt. 
 Near the cold corpse, dishonourably pierced 
 Where the cuirass had been unbraced for sleep. 
 
250 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 And at this hour in Antioeh's dungeons dark 
 Wouldst thou have been, abiding axe or wheel, 
 Had I not promptly brought thee to this cave, 
 Where jealously immured thou must remain 
 Awhile, though free of this sequestered lawn ; 
 For a rich price is set upon thy head. 
 
 I stood before him silent and dismayed 
 By those scant words, that bloodless summing up, 
 That frozen unimpassioned narrative, 
 With no reproach, no bitterness or scorn 
 Commingled; such commingling would have been 
 Eelief, and fortified endurance more. 
 And by the aspect of the man was I 
 No less amazed, than by his frigid speech. 
 His long thin hair was all of silvery white. 
 His back was bent with age, his lean left hand 
 Trembled with palsy, like a shivering leaf. 
 His brow and face were wrinkled o'er and o'er. 
 Dinted with lines of pain ; his bloodless skin 
 With a strange olive whiteness was o'erspread. 
 Like leprosy ; but on his sunken eyes 
 The power and brilliance of exfcremest youth 
 Were throned, in sleepless glances darting forth, 
 And with a fearful beauty, from their caves, 
 Deep in the head, o'er-ruling all the age 
 Of his wan lineaments ; and from his mouth, 
 Toothless and fallen in, came forth a voice 
 Tuneful and clear, with intonation firm 
 Yet flexible, most like the tones of one 
 Out-growing fast the service of the choir. 
 And domineering in the boyish chant. 
 
 Dreadful it was to gaze upon his face 
 And hear that voice come forth, so young, so sweet ; 
 As though a second spirit liad possessed 
 
VIII.] THE CONFESSION. 251 
 
 That old and crippled frame, investing it 
 With double being, — a gaunt half-mined cell, 
 From out whose fissures songlike oracles 
 "With ringing clearness were for ever breathed. 
 And strange it was that those decrepid limbs. 
 That palsied hand, those numb and tottering feet, 
 Should have conveyed me thither in my swoon. 
 More like a dream-engendered shape he was 
 Than living man of mortal parentage ; 
 As though we had in some hot starting sleep, 
 Or stupor by the healing poisons wrought, 
 Beheld in feverish vision Youth and Age, 
 Two disembodied spirits, dimly fight 
 For some pale corpse which they would fain possess, 
 And each, alternately victorious, fill 
 The passive thing with cognizable life, 
 Now young, now old, or old and young at once. 
 I stood in awe and trembling, silence-bound, 
 While he, divining all my inward thought, 
 Answered my questioning eyes ; — I am the Jew, 
 The Wandering Ancient, through all centuries known. 
 Reluctant Pilgrim, tarrying on the earth ; 
 The startling shadow of whose life is cast 
 Across all generations of mankind ; 
 And this the witness of my destiny. 
 So saying, from out his vest of serge he drew 
 His strong right hand, with roseate flesh of youth 
 Well furnished, and full veins and agile nerves. 
 Which ill accorded with his shrunken wrist ; — 
 And for what cause, said he, my voice and eyes 
 And this bold hand with such immortal youth 
 And freshness bloom, I need not now recite ; 
 Methinks thy first conjecture scarce could fail 
 To unriddle that wide-blazoned mystery. 
 
252 SIR LANCELOT, [bOOK 
 
 I am a wandering planet that might seem. 
 Save to that all-discerning Eye above, 
 Without an orbit, free to roam the skiea 
 In desultory pilgrimage, self-willed, — 
 But that I feel a silent light wells out 
 For ever from my presence, so that mea 
 Instinctively retreat before me, abashed. 
 Making my road a transient solitude 
 In populous cities or the throng of camps. 
 And thus I know that some mysterious law 
 Is hung discernibly about my life. 
 And once in every age my lonesome thoughts 
 Are by the hateful presence scourged anew 
 Of Christian fallen into mortal sin, 
 "Who tortures me with Signs that rend my flesh, 
 Like the hot beaks of vultures, and by woe, 
 By self-abasement, and repenting tears, 
 One drop of which were cheaply bought by me 
 For all the world contains of gold or gems : 
 And while my sufferings are enhanced, Jiis soul 
 Beneath the infliction of my presence wins 
 A penance I reluctantly accord. 
 And through a broken spirit meets with grace, 
 Demas was first, and thou art doomed the twelfth. 
 
 Seven years I dwelt, seven years of length untold, 
 Unspeakable, of life precipitate. 
 Crowded experience, savage wanderings. 
 Successions of unnatural toils, compressed 
 In those few dismal moons, — seven mortal years 
 Of expiatory sojourn with the Jew. 
 Solemn it was to see the mystic lot 
 Of the dark homeless people galliered up 
 And hung upon that single living type. 
 Stirring or still, before his sleepless eyes, 
 
VIII.] THE CONFESSION. 253 
 
 Stood the most heavenly Vision of a Face, 
 Such as doth nightly haunt the troubled dreams, 
 Or desolate misgi vings in the day, 
 Of the poor Hebrew nation, which even now 
 Floats like a buoyant wreck that cannot sink 
 Upon the surface of the awe-struck world, 
 Paynim or Christian : a dread Vision too, 
 The Guiltless whom they nailed upon the Cross, 
 Which they who gaze on, in deep love or hate. 
 Endure the one affection in their souls 
 Deathless ; as on the Wanderer's eyes it forced 
 Constrained acceptance of a joyless youth. 
 And evermore the Personal Vision gained 
 Vivid similitude the more intense 
 As years were heaped upon him, till it grew 
 Like forms conglobed within the lurid heart 
 Of the black thunder-storm, the brazen orb 
 Of the red lightnings partly disengaged 
 From its restraining canopy of cloud. 
 
 And, woful curse less tolerable still I 
 The Monarch of the loathsome Powers of Air, 
 Darkness, and Evil, seemed unto his eyes 
 (As unto others it may be, immersed 
 In long habitual sin, or unto bards 
 Profanely dreaming over songs instinct 
 With hatred of the Very Son of God, 
 Unholy men and reprobate) not foul. 
 Grossly deformed and hideously grotesque, 
 Monstrous, mis-shapen, a contorted growth 
 Of the foul limbs of unclean animals. 
 From which the Benediction was removed 
 Through some mysterious trespass, for even thus 
 The faithful generations of the Saints 
 And their wise art have taught us — but the Foe, 
 
254 BTR LANCELOT. [BOOK 
 
 The Antagonist of Light, of perfect Good, 
 
 Of Wisdom, and Supreme Beneficence, 
 
 Seemed in the eyes of that accursed man 
 
 A starry Form, a Satan beautiful, 
 
 Of visage marred, yet glory beaming through, 
 
 Wondrous, if not delectable, — of grand 
 
 And regal intellect, and equipage 
 
 Of archangelic faculties, still soaring 
 
 Up to the fcunlight, still to be admired 
 
 Of mortal man, though haply recognized 
 
 Of lagging wing, celestial now no more : 
 
 Bidding the mind of sinners to discern 
 
 A majesty where God's own written curse 
 
 Hath vilified the Creature evermore. 
 
 And stooped to name him with His blessed Lips, 
 
 In love, for our behoof, the Sire of Lies. 
 
 O never may the leprosy of song 
 
 Like this beguile the sons of God to deem, 
 
 That aught of true sublimity consists, 
 
 Where truth is not, where hate hath wedded fear. 
 
 And ambush is the sole permitted power ; 
 
 As if there could be Greatness so divorced 
 
 From Goodness, Beauty where there was not Love, 
 
 Or Wisdom with a Disobedient Spirit I 
 
 Now for the first four years our travel ranged 
 In narrow compass, mid the icy spears 
 Of Taurus, or of Antilibanus 
 That looks on moonlit Balbec, or beyond 
 Amid the quiet and conventual glades, 
 The pastured slopes and green declivities 
 Of Carmel, by the soft sea-murmurs filled, 
 As if by voices of innumerous bees. 
 And backward to the cedar mountains, where 
 
Vin.] THE CONfESSlOH. 255 
 
 The sunlit beacon of the Saimin flames 
 Towards Cyprus, still returning to our cave 
 From time to time in Daphne's laurel groves. 
 But ere we entered our fifth spring the Jew 
 Related that in every seventh year 
 He had a penal mission to fulfil 
 Far off amid the Helvetian Alps, a toil 
 For which he must ordeal journey make 
 First mid the horrors of the Caucasus, 
 Which dreadful pilgrimage I now must share* 
 Good Abbot ! there are men alive on earth 
 With most overwhelming functions to perform, 
 And lives embraced by wizard destinies ; 
 And solitudes where awful things are wrought, 
 And voices uttered in the dead of night. 
 And old weird cities guarded by a curse. 
 And lakes and oceans, which the moon beholds, 
 Outside the confines of all natural laws, — 
 Marvels and apparitions, far and near, 
 Which men in quiet places reck not of, 
 Yet haply touch or see, all unawares. 
 Father I methinks our fears might worship earth. 
 And not unduly, for her regions have 
 Some fearful consecrations : and how small, 
 How poor a portion of her realms doth man 
 Inhabit ! Yet within his city walls, 
 No less than o'er the howling wilderness. 
 What haughty Powers of Evil domineer. 
 In separate spots, from age to age, allowed 
 To make their flashing sceptres visible, 
 A moment visible ; then in the gloom 
 Is their regalia folded up again. 
 Sparing the affrighted sense of mortal man. 
 
256 SIR LAN€ELOT. [bOOK 
 
 The earth of maps and charts, of signs and names, 
 Veils of imaginary curves and spots, 
 111 cover that uneasy earth below. 
 
 Such was the dread Ordeal of the Jew ; — 
 Wafted — if such an uncouth errantry 
 Can mate so soft a word — above his kind, 
 Above the world of men and visible life. 
 And in suspension held above all joys. 
 All loves, and that variety of fears 
 Which peril life's enjoyment, and through hope 
 Enhance it tenfold, — and yet diving oft, 
 By fate constrained, into that nether world. 
 Which agitates the surface of our own, 
 And with a viewless interference breaks 
 The equable procession of its laws. 
 Thither, as if the ground beneath his feet 
 At destined times gave way, the Hebrew sinks ; 
 And, thence emerging, floats above the earth 
 Once more, like some low-hanging cloud that clings 
 Above the tree-tops of a wooded plain. 
 As though it loved the earth, yet might not lie 
 Upon its household farms and fields, or like 
 The jealous waters of a virgin stream 
 Which with its crystal lance may pierce the lake, 
 And issue from it uncommingled, — so 
 The Jew, sinking and re-ascending, blends 
 With our sweet intervenient world no more. 
 
 Hear the strange legend which he told me : thou 
 Better than simple layman wilt discern, 
 If such a tale have warrant in the faith* 
 
 There is a lake upon a western Alp, 
 A field of fenny waters, not a mere 
 Of crystal delicately lit by flowers, 
 
VIII.] THE CONFESSION. 257 
 
 That gaze into its mirror, and dilute 
 Their rainbow shadows in its liquid depths, 
 Nor by a marge of lucent sward enclosed ; 
 But a broad swampy place, with toppling crags 
 Leaning across and barring the blue sky 
 From imaging itself upon the pool. 
 And there, imprisoned in the chilly ooze, 
 Lies the poor spirit of the faltering Judge, 
 The wicked wavering Pilate, who, consigned 
 By an itinerant exorcist there. 
 When he had troubled long the woods and cliffs 
 And shepherds' walks, doth issue once a year, 
 And he who meets him on the mountain side 
 Dies for a surety ere twelve moons have waned. 
 
 Goaded by keen remorse that Unjust Judge 
 Fled from his province to the capital, 
 But by a constant vision of the Cross 
 Pursued. If in the morning he would greet 
 The Caesar rising with the sun to wait 
 The adulation of his subjects, there 
 Pilate beheld a Cross. In di*eams by night, 
 In changing scenes of travel, in the clouds, 
 The scintillating centre of the sun. 
 The quiet freckled aspect of the moon, 
 The white phosphoric fields of summer sea 
 Heaving against the moles of Baise, still 
 In every time and place he saw the Cross, 
 The Cross on Calvary, and brooking not 
 This persecution of the sacred Sign, 
 He slew himself, as Judas did before. 
 
 But earth disdained and loathed his sepulture, 
 And with an effort panted forth his corpse. 
 Then, far into the yellow Tyber flung. 
 The stream waa troubled with incessant storm, 
 17 
 
258 ■ SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 Broke down the bridges, swamped the passage boats^ 
 
 Until there was no ferry left in Rome. 
 
 Thence was the body taken, by command 
 
 Of Caesar and the Senate, to a hill 
 
 Which overlooks the Rhone hard by Vienna. 
 
 There did they dig a monstrous uncouth pit 
 
 Upon the peak, and tumbled massive rocks 
 
 Upon the turbulent corpse ; forthwith the storm 
 
 Burst on the mountain-top with fiery bolts. 
 
 And fulmined over Dauphiny, and far 
 
 To Languedoc, and summits of Auvergne ; 
 
 Behind, the poor Savoyards heard or saw 
 
 The maddened echoes of their native hills 
 
 Shake the wild eagles from their thrilling nests. 
 
 And with the pulses of fierce beating sound 
 
 Unrivet there the rock-bound avalanche. 
 
 The body, disinterred once more, now gained 
 
 A sepulchre within the fretting Rhone : 
 
 Forthwith the waters rose into the streets. 
 
 Stood cubits high within the temples, sucked 
 
 The statue of old Jove within their waves. 
 
 Tore up the mulberry groves, and, foaming, went, 
 
 A solid wall of crested waters, down 
 
 To Valence, and the swampy flat of Aries, 
 
 Spreading a sudden lake from thence to Nismes. 
 
 Thus did the river tyrannize from year 
 
 To year, until the days of Charlemagne, — 
 
 The greatest man of all the modern world, 
 
 Who in his day encountered marvellous things. 
 
 And, more than mortal, bore the Cross as none 
 
 Had borne it yet ; he bade them drag the Judge 
 
 From out the noble river, and once more 
 
 Inter the body on a gloomy Alp 
 
 That overlooks a lake, a lucid Cross 
 
VIII.] THE CONFESSION. 259 
 
 (The Apparition constant to its post) 
 
 Of sunny waters glittering in the eye 
 
 Of that dark mountain, whose wild woods and cliffs, 
 
 As I have said, he troubled with his cries, 
 
 Until a holy monk, who chanced to pass 
 
 Among the wailing people of Lucerne, 
 
 Laid him beneath that dull and ruffled mere, 
 
 There visited and horribly evoked 
 
 In every seventh year by that lone Jew, 
 
 Who for the dread encounter doth anneal 
 
 His spirit mid the warring elements. 
 
 The furnace of mysterious sights and sounds 
 
 Within the Caucasus of Astracan. 
 
SIR LANCELOT. 
 
 BOOK IX. 
 THE ABSOLUTION. 
 
BOOK IX. 
 
 THE ABSOLUTION. j 
 
 Three years we wandered, pilgrims, now on foot '] 
 And now on horseback, and sometimes we joined 
 
 A caravan of traders, but more ofb \ 
 
 Were by ourselves, and with infrequent speech J 
 
 Beguiled the way ; companions, not from choice,— I 
 
 From loathsome fascination on my side, j 
 
 On his from a desire, as it appeared, 1 
 
 (Much as he said which sounded otherwise,) I 
 
 To inflict his presence on me, and a joy * 
 
 At my repugnance, manifested oft i 
 
 By look and word and gesture of disdain, ■ 
 
 Or of impatience rather, for was I j 
 
 A man who could find aught so far below him ] 
 
 As might appear an object of disdain ? I 
 
 We left our cavern in the cedar grove — 1 
 
 Methinks I see the firefly columns now | 
 
 Build and unbuild their wizard temples there ; 
 
 On the soft verdant gloom : — we left our cave -j 
 
 Ere spring had breathed upon the sward, or swelled j 
 
 The bulb of wild flowers, or had studded yet \ 
 
 The cedar boughs with emerald points minute, \ 
 
 The promise of the year, a scanty growth 1 
 
 Of paler green, that looks like powdered dust, i 
 
 Upon those long-lived trees. A sinuous course 1 
 
 We took, a Cainlike penance which the Jew l 
 
264 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 With an intolerable waywardness 
 Determined, unopposed ; for I was fain 
 Alway to recognize the Hand of Heaven 
 Guiding my punishment, in that self-will 
 Wherewith the fearful man to right or left 
 Swerved ever from his purpose oft declared. 
 
 First o'er the hills we reached Samosata, 
 Where old Euphrates elbows to the west, 
 And thence to Orfa and Mosul ; northward 
 Across the Tigris to that lake immense 
 Of Van, and Urmia in the hills enclosed 
 Of green Aderbijan, till from the shore 
 Of gloomy Astara we saw outspread 
 The misty Caspian. After sojourn here, 
 Unto the Steppe of Urgantz we took sail, 
 And mid the ruined towns and swampy lakes 
 Of the rude Usbecks wandered wearily. 
 Sick of the loathsome diet and wild ways 
 Of that gaunt region. Thence, the Oxus past, 
 Unto the dreary desolate Karak 
 By Sihon's triple streams we journeyed on. 
 Coasting the sea of Aral in and out 
 By indentations choked with islands lone. 
 Which the foul seabirds tenant ; and once more 
 Turned westward o'er the fenny wilderness. 
 Bounding the head of Caspian o'er the sands 
 Of Oural unto Astracan, who sits 
 In her barbarian splendour on the mouths 
 Of the dark- watered Volga. Thence we roamed 
 O'er populous Circassia to the steeps 
 Of dreadful Caucasus, and tarried there 
 Mid sights and sounds terrific, day and night. 
 
 Father ! were it well, I could reveal 
 This day appalling mysteries endured 
 
IX.] THE ABSOLUTION. 265 
 
 "Within the hollow Caucasus, where reign 
 
 The elements chaotic as at first, 
 
 And shapeless solitudes, and brutes of eld. 
 
 And shades deformed, and voices all uncouth ! 
 
 There day and night keep not nor recognize 
 
 Divine partitions, while the storms and beasts, 
 
 Outbellowing each other, overwhelm 
 
 The heart of man with horror and dismay. 
 
 And yet less dreadful than the oppressive calms, 
 
 Which with a pregnant silence most enhance 
 
 The unearthly character of that wild chain, 
 
 By wondering humanity of old 
 
 Selected as the theatre whereon 
 
 The man, unrighteously benevolent. 
 
 His curse, magnificently fabled, bore. 
 
 By the contagious voice of poets sung. 
 
 Enough that in the cold and heat, both fierce 
 
 And direful, of that jagged Caucasus, 
 
 And its sepulchral glens of cloud- bleached rock, 
 
 I passed with but indifi"erent success 
 
 A hard ordeal ; yet should I have been 
 
 More calm but for the presence of the Jew, 
 
 Which heightened every horror of the place. 
 
 As though it did impersonate the fiend. 
 
 Outcast seducer of poor sinning men. 
 
 Spirit of Earth ! that, like an empress, keep'st 
 Thy court amid the labyrinthine dells. 
 The caverned cloisters and old beetling pines 
 Of Caucasus ! how didst thou entertain 
 Us two with savage hospitality. 
 Terrific splendours, and portentous shows 
 Of jousting elements ! What wondrous scenes 
 And wild processions ever meet and mix 
 Within that spacious hall, where dwell the kings 
 
2QQ SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 Of nature, and the bodied elements, 
 And phantom-flashes of unbodied powers, 
 Such as the spirit of the cloudless calmsj— 
 All unpartitioned^ as loud chaos was» 
 Unsorted by the musical constraint 
 Of that old spoken Law, the primal Voice ! 
 
 Ah ! woe is me for that unresting Jew, 
 With body wrenched and broken ou the wheel 
 Of endless travel, with unbroken pride, 
 Unbroken hatred of the Blessed Christ I] 
 I see him, yea, I see him at this hour. 
 Within the confines of this chapter-house : 
 In my far-kenning spirit I behold 
 The Hebrew pacing onward, mid the spasms 
 Of earthquake, in whose volumes of white dust 
 The low-hung moon looks red, while scarce on high 
 The comet shakes its long pale crackling hairs 
 In terrible proximity to earth. 
 Eound him the whirlwinds bark among the glens, 
 And cry like bloodhounds on a human track, 
 Through Dalestan : and in the sullen dawn 
 Of those Caucasian depths I see him still. 
 The dizzy lightnings glare, above, beneath, 
 Grazing the rocks with horrible rebound, 
 And flashing in the bright sun's lidless eyes, 
 While the hot bolts from out the hissing lakes 
 With momentary plunge heave up on high 
 Columns of angry foam : I see the veins 
 Of the old earth beneath the torture start 
 Of stern volcanoes, in their chambers sunk, 
 Questioning the greedy hills till they confess 
 Their riches, and the gold and silver runs 
 Among the subterranean floors, whose roots 
 Of livid marble crack with grasping fire, 
 
IX.] THE ABSOLUTION. 267 
 
 From the hill tops to those enduring bars 
 
 Which Jonas saw beneath the clear green sea. 
 
 I see his shadow on the tawny plains, 
 
 Freckled with frost-rime of perennial salt, 
 
 Of desert Khiva, on the horizon marked 
 
 Colossal, half on earth and half in air, 
 
 Against the flaming chambers of the west, 
 
 "Where the wild sky unloads its wains of clouds 
 
 Into the setting sun, as one who feeds 
 
 A greedy fire, which, blazing up, out-throws, 
 
 As the new fuel falls upon the old. 
 
 Thick swarms of ruddy sparks, far and wide, 
 
 Splashes of flame, as from a fountain, flings, 
 
 That reach in falling streaks the backward east : 
 
 I see him there, as if about to step 
 
 From off earth's rim into the setting sun, 
 
 I see him in the strange ethereal calms, 
 
 Those intermissions of discordant wind, 
 
 When the white-shafted frost goes forth to shoot 
 
 The lamp-like globes of the descending dew ; 
 
 And thin blue meteors sail along the rims 
 
 Of rosy avalanches, shrinking now, 
 
 Now touching with a crisp and gentle sound 
 
 The icy fringe ; while ever and anon 
 
 An old snow-laden cedar softly shakes 
 
 Its stiff black hair, and countless whirling stars, 
 
 A whispering shower of stealthy parachutes, 
 
 Sink to the earth ; and still, and still, far on 
 
 Where mist-wreaths, like a crimson-wrinkled sea 
 
 At sunset, steal along the quiet glens, 
 
 I see the Figure, dimly magnified 
 
 By roseate vapours, of the steadfast Jew. 
 
 For even thus I wandered with him once 
 Through Dalest^n, and over Caucasus. 
 
268 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 And thence descending, by Telav, we came 
 
 To Erivan, and in another week 
 
 Beheld the sun set over Ararat. 
 
 And there with impious foot the Hebrew strove 
 
 To climb the sacred mountain's double cone, 
 
 And reach the undeeaying Ark which lies, 
 
 By Angels guarded, on the dazzling peak. 
 
 Once with a bold yet not presumptuous faith, 
 
 And an exceeding reverence for the Ship, 
 
 The inland Ship which was unto our race 
 
 A second Eden — how unlike the first ! — 
 
 Whence as from out a well the tribes of men 
 
 Flowed forth afresh, — once with such venturous faith 
 
 A monk essayed to climb the mystic hill 
 
 In honour of that Sign, most worshipful 
 
 And wondrous of all relics on the earth. 
 
 Except the Gracious Wood by Helena 
 
 Found, and self-multiplied, and so dispersed 
 
 Throughout the compass of the East and West, 
 
 Like broken bread, to hearts that hungered for it. 
 
 But ever while the monk lay down to sleep, 
 
 Wearied by his long toil, with noiseless arms 
 
 Angels convey'd him to the mountain foot ; 
 
 And he full oft renewed his patient course. 
 
 At length in pity for the footsore man 
 
 A Spirit monished him to lay aside 
 
 His rude emprise, while for his simple heart 
 
 Rich guerdon he received, a piece of wood 
 
 From off the unreached Ark, a holy prize 
 
 At Etschmiadsin by the Primate kept. 
 
 Honoured with incense and liturgic song. 
 
 I need not tell how that mysterious cone 
 Baffled the Hebrew with its steep ascent 
 Seven times repeated. While the convent bells 
 
IX.] THE ABSOLUTION. 269 
 
 Summoned Arguri's monks to early Mass, 
 
 We left the glittering Ararat behind ; 
 
 And thence across the variable charms 
 
 Of hill and dale through all the Armenian coasts, 
 
 Until by Malazkerd and Erzeroum 
 
 We came at length unto the shrubby shores 
 
 Of Trebizond, the lover of the joust, 
 
 By paynim champions from the soldan's court, 
 
 The chivalry of rich Iconium, 
 
 Frequented now, with ducal splendour gay 
 
 By the Comnenian dynasty adorned. 
 
 From Trebizond across the Euxine Sea 
 We sailed to Feodosia, whence we climbed 
 The hills to Arabat mid groves of date 
 And old pomegranate trees, and wound our way 
 Among the net-work of innumerous lakes 
 Which pierce that sweet peninsula from east 
 Almost to Perekop upon the west 
 Of Taurida ; and through the mulberry plains 
 Of Dnieper, with mysterious barrows sown. 
 We journeyed to the cataracts that sound 
 O'er vacant leagues of sombre treeless steppe. 
 The chamber of the whirlwind, and descending 
 We crossed the Cherson pastures, where the grass, 
 Tall as a waving coppice, in the burst 
 Of springtide suffocates the wandering flocks 
 Caught unawares, and in its matted depths. 
 Muffling the cry of torture, oft entombs 
 The vainly struggling ram. Then taking ship 
 In the salt inlets, a tempestuous voyage 
 Brought our poor bark into the Bosphorus, 
 And to the quays of Pera. Brief delay 
 Detained us in the eastern capital. 
 And thence by Adrianopoli we rode 
 
270 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 Unto Belgrade, the junction of the Save 
 And yellow Danube, and far onward still, 
 Over the fatal fields and oozy shores 
 Where the wild Picard, all undaunted, led 
 His hosts to perish by Hungarian swords. 
 Unto imperial Passau came at last. 
 
 And, thence abruptly turning to the north, 
 We left the rolling Danube, and passed on 
 Across Bohemia's dim and singular wolds, 
 Wave after wave of huge and bulky swells. 
 Uplands forlorn whose troubled silence moans 
 With sounds as if of subterraneous winds, 
 Whose hard- won island spots of yellow corn 
 Upon the surface of the chilly soil. 
 And long blue lines of ever-wailing fir. 
 Enhance the bleak appearance of the land. 
 Making the scene weigh heavy on the heart. 
 Ah me ! it is a melancholy sight 
 To see the glory of the setting sun 
 Squandered upon that bare disconsolate realm. 
 Crowning with golden light the unwilling hills, 
 While a wan smile, a momentary thought 
 Of joy, by force illumes the dismal firs. 
 And fades, while they redouble their sad sighs ! 
 
 The man, whose feet the purposes of life 
 May chance to lead o'er those Bohemian downs. 
 Should travel when the silent witching moon 
 Floats up above the gloomy moors, and then 
 Ruffles with argent light the mournful earth, 
 Builds castles in the vacant fallow fields, 
 Or from a miserable ruined grange, — 
 Disperses to a minster's lordly breadth 
 The village tower, and wildly magnifies 
 Each single tree to an umbrageous grove, 
 
IX.] THE ABSOLUTION. 271 
 
 Peopling the midnight air behind the firs 
 With hanging back-groimd of voluptuous wood. 
 
 Northward we went till, on a nodding rock 
 Where the cold Moldau makes a lucid curve, 
 We saw a glistering city perched on high. 
 And covering half the crescent plain below. 
 It looked no strong creation of the west, 
 But in the sunshine fluttering like a dream 
 Winged from some Asian lake or fairy shore 
 Of Bosphorus, with sheeny spires o'ertopped, 
 Turrets and gables, fretted balconies 
 And grimly figured eaves, thin cupolas, 
 A glorious bridge with its twin church-like towers, 
 And palaces with blazing copper roofs. 
 Where the proud Czeckian nobles keep their courts, 
 And mid the moving sentries, silent ranks 
 Of sculptured knights and pontiffs strangely blent, 
 And starry vanes, a multitudinous show, — 
 A mirage in the sunset, on those hills 
 And barren uplands a reflection cast, 
 So it appeared, by that all-seeing orb 
 From oriental city viewed far off, 
 Bagdad, or Tripoli, or Ispahan, 
 O'er which his slanting beams had lately looked. 
 The bells rang out, the sun with placid rim 
 Behind the many-steepled Hradschin sunk. 
 As we passed through the clanging gates of Prague. 
 
 Thence to tlie right through many a sombre street 
 We walked until we reached a place of graves, 
 The Jewish burying ground with elders dank, 
 Thick as the eastern cypress rows, o'ergrown. 
 There were the pilgrim-people's sordid tombs. 
 With native characters engraved ; and bands 
 Of Hebrew children played about the grove, 
 
272 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 That melancholy grove which might inspire 
 
 Such sadness as befits a Jewish heart. 
 
 There lay the sons of Aaron, symbolized 
 
 By open palms whose rudely carven thumbs 
 
 Eested upon each other; and alone, 
 
 Beneath an old fantastic elder-trunk, 
 
 A famous doctor slept, and all who passed 
 
 Laid a small stone upon his shady tomb, 
 
 Or copper coin, if haply they were rich. 
 
 With mute obeisance, my companion placed 
 
 A stone thereon, and when I followed close, 
 
 Like reverence not according, a young boy, 
 
 Of swarthy fairness and smooth oval brow. 
 
 Stepped forth and with rude gesture seized my hand. 
 
 While his black eyes with beautiful anger glowed, 
 
 But a word, uttered in their native tongue 
 
 By the old Jew, reproved the forward act. 
 
 Thence, by a postern half engulfed in earth, 
 We passed into a gloomy Synagogue, 
 A domelike vault with nobly sculptured roof, 
 Which in the uncertain twilight of the place 
 Seemed on its centre to repose and swing 
 With artful poise upon the pillared shafts. 
 It was an ancient pile, and local faith 
 Throws back its building into those far times. 
 When on the Laurenzburg, where now the fires 
 Of that true Martyr are by godly monks 
 Extolled in rite and song, the idolaters 
 Worshipped the fierce devouring element. 
 With such kind wisdom on all dark beliefs 
 The Church a better honour doth engraft, 
 And wins the erring to a sweeter faith. 
 Nay, mounting higher still, traditions tell 
 Of Jewish worship on the Moldau bank 
 
IX.] THE ABSOLUTION. 273 
 
 Before the Almighty by the ensanguined hand 
 
 Of Roman Titus tore the temple down 
 
 From its tall rock, and marred the chosen Mount. 
 
 In each embrasure and around the base 
 Of the two pillars, lay unsightly heaps 
 Of dust, which the laborious tide of time 
 Had drifted there, and now were sacred held. 
 Nine times the Jewish workmen had essayed 
 To cleanse the building, and nine times had death 
 Smitten the foremost of them to the ground. 
 A gorgeous drapery, damp-stained, hung low 
 Behind a dull red cresset, which had burned 
 A hundred years, by wavering breath of air 
 Still unextinguished, or by act of man. 
 
 In this old Synagogue the Wandering Jew 
 A vigil alway keeps, before he goes 
 To that encounter by the ghastly lake 
 On the dark out-post of the cloudy Alps. 
 All night he knelt before the dusky veil, 
 Which now and then the cold air gently shook ; 
 And all night long two Jews kept up a chant 
 In under- tones, monotonous and sad, 
 From side to side responsive in the dark. 
 But when the sunrise stole with dismal grey 
 Through the dim panes, they rose and bowing low 
 Took from behind the veil a yellow scroll, 
 An ancient writing of the Decalogue, 
 And put it to the Wanderer's trembling lips. 
 
 That selfsame morn once more across the downs 
 We passed, and in six days of toilsome march 
 Hailed the bright Inn at Passau once again, 
 The glistening Inn, a lucid avenue 
 With its impetuous waters mountain-born 
 Meeting the Danube by St. Mary's Church 
 
 l8 
 
274 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOE 
 
 And thence between the river's wooded shores 
 
 In a frail barge of uncompacted planks 
 
 We stemmed the current up to llatisbon. 
 
 By this time, fathei*, had a mighty change 
 
 Come o'er my spirit: grief had been so long 
 
 My fellow, and repentant thought my food, 
 
 It pleased our Saviour to ungird the bands 
 
 Of deep remorse which had so strangled hope. 
 
 And not without some influence too had been 
 
 The external world, with whose most rugged sights, 
 
 And desperate adventures, I had closed 
 
 In necessary combat, nor repined. 
 
 And from the surface of the earth went up, 
 
 Methought with somewhat of a healing force, 
 
 A mist like that which in true Eden once 
 
 Silently fertilized the flowery ground. 
 
 Nor without virtue had that penance been,— 
 
 The torture of the Jew's unresting eye. 
 
 Among the cedars hard by Antioch borne. 
 
 And by the lakes and Asiatic steppes. 
 
 At sunrise on the hills, and at midnight. 
 
 Least tolerable then, upon the sea. 
 
 Whether it was indeed that heaven relaxed 
 
 My penance at this season, or that change 
 
 Diverted me with customary power, 
 
 Or that the vision of the Christian West 
 
 Wrought old associations to a balm. 
 
 Fragrant and healing to a wounded heart, — 
 
 Whatever lurking causes might concur. 
 
 From that day forward did I feel convinced, — 
 
 And O with what a sweet constraint it came 
 
 And took possession of my willing faith ! — 
 
 That a new epoch had begun with me, 
 
 A glimmering ray which might dawn into hope, 
 
 But was not hope as yet. 
 
IX.] TBE ABSOLUTIGSNT. 27'^ 
 
 I can recall 
 "With pleased fidelity that evening scene^ 
 When with slow sail we came near E-atisbon. 
 The banks were flat, and smiling fields outstretched 
 Sparkling on either side with silvery green 
 From recent showers, which fled as we advanced^ 
 Before us lay that old historic town 
 Upon a back-ground of dark thunder-eloud, 
 Pencilled with streaky spires of thin blue smoke, 
 Which rose unsteady and dispersed. The towers 
 Of the low-roofed cathedral in the heart 
 Of the black cloud stood forth, each with a gleam 
 Of whitest sunshine gloriously crowned. 
 And o'er the antique bridge which nobly spans 
 The hurrying river was a vision seen;, 
 A heavenly sign, a bridge above a bridge ,^ 
 A vaulted rainbow roof which overhung 
 That old stone bridge, an arch of braided hues, 
 Which from the centre of the city rose, 
 And dropped its bright foundations on the bank 
 Exactly where the stern portcullis kept 
 The northern access of the town. Ah me ! 
 Fair, very fair, seemed Eatisbon that night : 
 The very walls wave-worn, and battlements 
 Lofty and grim, an air of welcome had, 
 And on the casements of the Eathaus glanced 
 The many-twinkling sunshine ; all was sweet, 
 And grateful to a heartsick wanderer, 
 And to this hour I think of Eatisbon 
 As though it were in some true sense my home. 
 But for the presence of the hateful Jew, 
 And the cold light of his indifferent gaze. 
 That evening by the Danube would have been 
 Even to a wretched sinner like myself 
 
276 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK' 
 
 A simple joy, a beauty iindefiled. 
 
 And not less gratefully does Ratisbon 
 Rest with a cherished pressure of sweet thought 
 On my remembrance, for that in its streets 
 Unconsciously I parted from the Jew, 
 And saw his face no more. Perchance it wag 
 His work with me was done, and in my heart 
 Further collision now with sucli an one 
 Might have unmanned my penitence. But oft 
 My thoughts will wander to his awful lot. 
 The world is evil : yet the worst of men 
 Disclose unthought-of goodness to the hearts 
 That know them best and converse with them most. 
 Even in our enmities we may full soon 
 Discern the growing truth, — that knowledge feeds. 
 Not lessens, our respect unto our kind : 
 But it was not so with that blighted Jew. 
 
 Father, it may be he is beating now 
 Forlorn and footsore on the sleety steppe 
 Of desolate Urojantz, or clinojinof fast. 
 Till the blood oozes from beneath his nails, 
 Unto a precipice in Caucasus, 
 "While the fierce whirlwind howls along the pass. 
 O wretched mortal of unnumbered years. 
 Blown by the breath of fate through heat and cold. 
 And storm and calm, and by the fourfold curse 
 Of seasons wrongly alternating scourged, 
 How horrible thy path, how desolate 
 The obscurity of ignominious scorn 
 Which is thy portion, while upon the rack 
 Of thine unearthly travel thou art whirled 
 For ever o'er the heads of all thy kind. 
 In fearful exaltation punished most ! 
 wretched one, who dwellest in a sphere 
 
IX.] THE ABSOLUTION. 277 
 
 Where thou art all alone, who art not man. 
 Angel, or devil, but art thus enclosed, 
 In misery a species by thyself, 
 Without a mate, without a kindred life. 
 With a dead heart, but with a living soul, 
 Living through wild excess of blind despair. 
 If such a thing there could be as excess 
 In that which neither end nor m.easure bound t 
 O silent phantom, that in ghostly youth 
 And bright-eyed age art borne about the earthy 
 A momentary preacher, here or there 
 Beheld and not fargotten, how dost thou 
 Darken with some half palpable eclipse 
 The traveller's way, a transitory gloom 
 Strange as the figured shadows on the plain 
 Cast in the starlight when no hills or trees 
 Are nigh, a dusky dappled umbrage thrown 
 From intermediate veils of grosser air I 
 O sleepless Hebrew ! journeying evermore. 
 Who once or twice in every age appea/st, 
 A spectral admonition of our faith. 
 Before the quailing eye of Christendom, 
 Exhausting naw, but as an antepast 
 Of woes severer fir and hotter pains, 
 A temporal eternity of grief. 
 The agony of weary sleeplessness, 
 The aching of unrespited fatigue,— 
 How fearful is thy lot, when I who owe 
 My life unto thy succour, dare not pray 
 That thou mightst be unburdened now at length 
 Of this most lone, most singular destiny ! 
 Then upon his depd-rture there ensued 
 A season of more tranquil thought, a calm 
 Of recollection rather than of peace. 
 
278 8IE LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 The battling tumult of disordered hopes, 
 
 The passionate collision of my fears, 
 
 Slowly subsided, like the running sea 
 
 When the wild storm hath ridden by ; and then 
 
 From out the turbulent confusion came, 
 
 Sinking and reascending turn by turn. 
 
 An undistinguishable form that rose 
 
 And fell, and on the surface of my thoughts. 
 
 Like a wrecked purpose, dimly weltering lay 
 
 Far off, yet ever as it floated grew 
 
 More palpable, until with formal pomp 
 
 The apparition laboured into sight, 
 
 Confronting me, a cognizable shape. 
 
 Which in the listening silence of my heart 
 
 Proclaimed itself a duty, whose beliests 
 
 Conscience uneasily discerned, for law. 
 
 It bade me seek the punishment ordained 
 
 Of God for him by whom the blood of man 
 
 Is shed, and whose exaction hath been laid 
 
 A solemn burden, reverently endured. 
 
 On human Law, the echo of God's Voice 
 
 And Vicar of His Justice. 
 
 Dark as seemed 
 The mated solitude where I had dwelt. 
 It was a respite from that awful doom, 
 Which seals the strivings of the penitent. 
 Not in the wildness of abandoned hope. 
 Nor goaded by intolerable thoughts. 
 Nor yet detected by my hideous crime 
 Loathing the prison of self-consciousness, 
 And peering through the surface of my speech, — 
 Nor passively allured, as happens oft. 
 By those regards, through conscience multiplied. 
 Wherewith the eye of justice fascinates 
 
IX.] THE ABSOLUTION. 279 
 
 The guilty, and with incantation mute 
 Attracts them to herself, — but in the strength 
 Of a submissive will and sacred fear, 
 I journeyed onward to the English shore, 
 Unshaken, nay, with terrors half appeased, 
 And in the rectitude of my resolve 
 Finding even somewhat of a trembling cheer. 
 
 There is an awe, a most unsettling awe, 
 Which yet unnerves not, in a bold resolve, 
 Kaising the animal spirits while it fills 
 The soul with dim forebodings, half afraid 
 Of such disclosure of its innate powers 
 As gleams through one determinate deed of will, 
 The solemn freedom of a Human Act ! 
 O when we bear in mind both what we are. 
 And with whose Presence we are all enclosed, 
 The freedom of the Human Will seems less 
 A marvel than that we should dare to use 
 That almost penal gift. A Human Act, 
 Tied often to unending consequence. 
 Seemingly self-attached to His decrees 
 Who is immutable, and with a power 
 Of making unborn ages mournful heirs 
 Of its bequests, which may not be declined, — 
 A Human Act, such as each solar day 
 Begets in countless numbers, — what a force 
 "Resides therein, which superstitious fear 
 Might well-nigh worship with its darkest rites ! 
 
 How strange is that deliberate cheerfulness 
 Wherewith men act, who yet endure the sense 
 That they are creatures, vilest property 
 Of Him so far above them, and their lives 
 No more their own than any outward thing ! 
 If there is baseness in self-will, no less 
 
280 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 Bepugnant to self-sacrifice and faith 
 
 Is an obedient sullenness, that mood 
 
 Of discontented acquiescence bred 
 
 In sterile natures by the uneasy thouglit, 
 
 That we may not be masters to ourselves : 
 
 And miserably guilty those bad hearts, 
 
 Who, in the shade of their bedarkened wills 
 
 Sitting their whole lives long, pretend to be 
 
 Beneath the umbrage of Divine Decrees, 
 
 The only humble of the sons of men ! 
 
 Father ! such substance hath a Human Act 
 
 That I have dreamed the Saints might haply see 
 
 The sin of Adam in a bodily shape, 
 
 A person, not a mere contagious thing ; 
 
 Yet pardon me ! I must not dream to-day. 
 
 How blest are they who, through baptismal doors 
 Entering the Holy Church, can to the yoke 
 And duty of the Creature superadd 
 The self-forgetting heart of the Redeemed, 
 And quiet courage of the Sanctified ! 
 And well may they, who see God can be touched 
 With spiritual contact in His priests. 
 Anticipate the Judgment, and rehearse 
 For that solemnity, and so confess 
 (Kneeling before the priest who disappears 
 In faith's keen vision of her Priest on high) 
 Their Human Acts, retaining undivulged 
 Such deeds of good as not being wrought alone 
 Are scarcely human ; by this humbling pain, 
 As by a holy ritual solemnized. 
 Deposing all their actions in the light 
 Of Omnipresence ; seeking, not being sought. 
 And so reversing that first guilty change 
 In Adam's fall, his flight before the Voice 
 
IX.] THE ABSOLUTION. 281 
 
 Amid lost Eden's unavailing shades ! 
 
 Shame was the first fruits of the fall, and shame 
 
 The matter of the Atonement, and to-day, 
 
 To sweet Confession, as a vase, consigned, 
 
 Shame is medicinal to us who sin, 
 
 A natural reparation, yet divine, 
 
 And in itself contains the healing Cross, 
 
 Infecting it with supernatural power. 
 
 O happy, happy they whom grace hath helped 
 
 Unto an honest will, and who have nerved 
 
 Themselves to this most salutary shame, 
 
 By whom the Judgment hath already been 
 
 In part enacted, and who thus have made 
 
 The very details of their common lives 
 
 A solemn chain of linked sacraments ! 
 
 O can the shame of whispering our disgrace 
 In the sole audience of a gifted priest 
 Be other than a sweetest right, far off 
 Copying that chastest sorrow, the deep shame 
 Wreaked on the Lord by vile unwashen hands, 
 When with ineffable shrinking were laid bare 
 His Virginal Limbs unto the soldiers' gaze ? 
 And if in such unclothing of our hearts 
 As monsters we may seem, disgrace hath grown 
 A cherished thing since Jesus stooped thereto. 
 Is there no faith, no joy in self-revenge ? 
 When for the healing of themselves men court 
 The cleansing discipline at others' hands. 
 Or to put out the light of haughty eyes, 
 And from the good opinion of themselves 
 To be by instantaneous act outlawed. 
 Prompted by half reluctant lowliness 
 Call one beneath them, and insist to have 
 Their face by shameful spittings vilified, 
 
282 SIE LANCELOT. [bOO| 
 
 Their looks dishonourably marred, there is 
 
 A thrilling sweetness in the indignity 
 
 That quickens love of Christ almost to tears ! 
 
 If each temptation baffled is an act 
 Above our nature, each desire restrained 
 A heavenly thing, each bending of the knee 
 In lowly praise or self-abhorring prayer 
 A supernatural motion, think, think 
 All day and night what supernatural acts 
 Are being performed upon the face of earth ! 
 O think when darkness deepens solitude. 
 And when the night-air vibrates with the wings 
 Of the lost angels, multiplying sin, — ■ 
 "When the wild weather brings a silentness 
 Of human toils, and thought, thus respited 
 From the salubrious action of fatigue, 
 Feeds upon thought, and so engenders crime — 
 Ponder, O ponder till thou art consoled 
 The acts, which evil in its strife with good 
 Is raising above mortal stature then. 
 And canonizing with reluctant skill I 
 
 So did I venture then to estimate 
 My purpose of surrender, to endure 
 The death I owed, but from which I had fled ; 
 And in the presence of my own resolve, 
 Which was but partially my own, I stood 
 Most gravely cheered, and with a lightened heart. 
 And yet, methinks, when first I saw the beams 
 Of the calm sunset on the hauberks glance 
 Of those who kept their watch upon the walls 
 Of Pevensey, whose unillumined front 
 Faced the grey sea, my purpose somewhat shrunk. 
 So fair appeared my native land, so sweet 
 Even the poor residues of outlawed life, 
 
IX.] THE ABSOLUTION. ^ 283 
 
 So like a dream the guilty past, as though 
 An effort of the mind could shake it off, 
 And leave me pure and happy as a child I 
 The fishers on the beach, tlie castle guards. 
 The traders in the town, — all life appeared 
 Bound on a wheel of order and content 
 So peaceably revolving, could it be 
 The pains of one forgotten criminal 
 Might yet enhance the welfare of the State ? 
 
 Koused from this passing dream, that self-samt 
 night 
 Beheld me in the forest,' with the stars 
 Spangling the summer skies above my head, 
 Journeying to Winton, in whose ancient shades 
 The court then lay : and there at Henry's feet 
 I made confession of ray guilt, and sued 
 For punishment. My fiefs already gone, — 
 For services performed in Palestine 
 My life was rendered me, a wofiil term, 
 Yet mercifully granted, to be passed 
 In penance, from the favour of the Church, 
 For an uncertain term, and from her keys, 
 And her appliances of grace, cast forth. 
 
 Within the abbey of St. Cross I stood, 
 Divested of my chains, to hear that doom 
 With direful ceremonial then pronounced. 
 And while the ritual darkness o'er my soul 
 Projected miserable fears, and shades 
 Of dreadful expectation, I went forth, 
 Stricken, and set at large. A sudden storm 
 Fell with thin misty sheets of whirling rain 
 Upon the breadth of sealike mead outstretched 
 Between the walls of Winton and St. Cross ; 
 And now and then white sunbeams pierced the cloud, 
 
284 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 And raced each other on the green chalk hills, 
 Or for a moment blanched the minster tower, 
 Which scarce o'ertopped the grove of ancient trees. 
 And the sweet pastoral Itchin, whose full stream 
 Twinkled with beaded rain-drops, slowly rose, 
 Fretting the loose earth from its sedgy bank, 
 And gm-gling through the long grass in the fields. 
 
 Beneath the gable of the abbey mill 
 I screened myself within an elder clump, 
 Kather by habit prompted than annoyed 
 By the rude beating storm, so calm compared 
 "With that blind wretchedness which ruled within. 
 So penal seemed that gift of lengthened life, 
 The life which I had once so longed to keep! 
 My soul, concentering all its thoughts on death. 
 Grew calm, because its end was near, and now, 
 That end put further off, lost all the power. 
 Which steadfast concentration had conferred. 
 Ah! with what mild encounter did I meet 
 The placid offices of nature there. 
 Cradling my heart to peace, to trust, to love ! 
 For even in those unlikely shades she lurked 
 To minister to all who lingered near. 
 With love as universal as the grace, 
 Which wanders through the byeways of the world 
 Compelling humble souls. There was I soothed 
 Beyond all hope, and soberly beguiled. 
 By the calm concourse of familiar sounds. 
 Which alternated with the cheerless wind 
 That sighed and sobbed upon the mossy roof : — 
 The momentary beating of the wheel. 
 The panting of the stream which, leaping down, 
 Was dissipated in its breathless fall, 
 The singing drops upon the black mill-pool. 
 
IX.] THE ABSOLUTION. ^ 285 
 
 The winnowing of the elder boughs that caught 
 The troubled current, or with nodding leaves 
 Quaked in the ceaseless whirlwind of the wheel. 
 
 Beneath the rustling elders there, whose eayes 
 Of sombre and unsunny foliage hung 
 Dipping their half-ripe berries in the grass, 
 And whence the raindrops glanced as from a shield. 
 My weary spirit, slowly gathering strength 
 Of self-possession, ventured to look forth 
 Upon that desert world, that lonely range 
 Of life now left her ; but her wandering thoughts 
 Sent out, like Noe's raven, came no more 
 Either to kindle hope, or certify \ 
 
 Fears, best endured when all the worst is known. 
 The earth, whose gloom was tremulously lit 
 By flashes from the dread cherubic swords. 
 To Adam's eye less comfortless might seem 
 Than to an excommunicated soul 
 The blissful aspect of wide Christendom, 
 Peopled with benedictions, rife with grace, 
 So that its very kingdoms sing for joy ! 
 But woe unto the lost and outcast heart. 
 For whom the verdict of the mighty Church 
 Transmutes it all into a foreign land, 
 A foreign tongue whose accents musical 
 He cannot catch, a silent wilderness 
 Coiled like a fatal ring around his feet. 
 Which he overlooks but may not overstep, 
 Unpopulous, void, vacant, terrible ! 
 
 Fearful it was in that dread hour to think 
 Of man, of mortal happiness and hope. 
 Of cheerful duties and affectionate bonds, 
 Such as were common as the dust of earth 
 "Within that white-walled city. I was stung 
 
286 BIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 By such sweet thoughts, and since my penance was 
 
 So righteously awarded, I was left 
 
 Without the bulwark of imagined wrong 
 
 To fortify my pride. Upon tlie grass 
 
 And oozy herbs that grew m that dank s-hade, 
 
 I flung myself in bitterness of heart. 
 
 And wept with fiery tears ; and there the eye 
 
 Of all mankind in pitiless regard 
 
 And with intelligent dislike appeared 
 
 To gaze upon me ; and more fearful far, 
 
 The dead looked forth from out the dewy earth 
 
 With eyes that beamed intolerable love, 
 
 Disquieted with grief; and from her peace 
 
 Methought my mother fixed on me her glance, 
 
 As I had seen it oft in hours of sin, 
 
 An apparition haunting me for good ; — 
 
 Ah ! had it beamed with anger or with scorn 
 
 It would have been less terrible, — but no, 
 
 It wore the old approving smile, the look 
 
 Of radiant pleasure and maternal love, 
 
 Which seemed to thrust me lower than before 
 
 In vileness and degrading shame. I lay 
 
 Bowed to the earth beneath my awful curse, 
 
 As though my sin was fresh that very hour, 
 
 And the intervening years, with what they brought, 
 
 Cancelled, annulled as though they had not been. 
 
 But never did I less desire to die 
 Than in that hour ; though like a frightened child 
 Cowering beneath some dull nocturnal fear, 
 I deemed that death was nigh, and with faint voice 
 Prayed broken prayers for respite to repent. 
 And felt my heart to see if it still beat, 
 And prayed again. O holy monk ! it seems 
 An awful thing, a very awful thing, 
 
IX.] THE ABSOLUTION. 287 
 
 To lay our hands upon our hearts, and feel 
 How slight the separation is of life 
 From death, a feeble beating motion there, 
 Scarce audible but in the dead of night, 
 Or when the causeless fear of death surrounds 
 And keeps the thoughts at bay, a quivering pulse 
 Which ever seems upon the point to stop, 
 Twixt each pulsation halting as in doubt. 
 And yet no less a bulwark doth dispart 
 Our living and our dying than the Mind 
 Of God Most High, nor can that beating stop 
 Without a solemn act of Will Divine. 
 Yet when at times Eternity doth sound 
 With audible faint knocking at our hearts, 
 Asking its frightened welcome, that our fears 
 May haply so rehearse the act of death — 
 As the sea-water gurgles at our ears 
 When we lie down with but a plank between 
 Our helpless selves and a most horrible end — 
 'Tis hard to smile, and say in childlike peace, 
 That the weak plank is an Almighty Will ! 
 Between two moods thus swayed, now self-pos- 
 sessed 
 And calm, now into puerile dismay 
 And trembling fancies broken, and conceits 
 Of panic mastering all the nerves of will, 
 I lay for hours within that elder shade. 
 Musing in trance- like thought upon the world 
 Of happiness, and grief with others borne. 
 For others suffered, therefore no such curse 
 As that which preyed on me. Thus did I muse, 
 When suddenly before my spirit's eye 
 There was as if a breaking down of bars, 
 A swift disparking of obstructed hopes, 
 
288 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 Till the whole unimpeded future lay 
 Open, endurable ; and far within 
 I heard the thunder which a rapturous thought 
 Makes in the mind when it reveals itself, 
 And passes on : the peopled world was lost, 
 Swept from my vision as the breeze at sea 
 Breaks up the fading outline of the shore, 
 And clears the boundless ocean to the eye. 
 Then rose serene in glorious light profound, 
 Fairest of images, calm Solitude, 
 Unpeopled Silentness, where Cain himself, 
 If humbled he had brooked the godlike Eye 
 Of Solitude, and bowed before the Voice 
 Of solemn Silence, might have won repose, 
 Seeking for mercy through self-chastisement, 
 That borrows only from the Cross its power, — 
 The simplest and divinest of all trusts. 
 And most complete abandonment of self. 
 
 Thus, when to me the thought of humankind 
 Had grown unbearable through that access 
 Of love, which came upon me in the hour 
 When I was put forth from them as unclean, 
 The nakedness of Solitude appeared 
 A port and shelter, an oasis sunk 
 Below the horizon of the misty sands, 
 Where yet sweet grace, which like the desert rains, 
 From its own plenitude o'erflows the earth 
 In seeming waste, might fertilize the ground. 
 And I, so reached, like some poor withered palm, 
 Might drink the moisture and perchance revive 
 In the lone air thus bountifully cooled, 
 Thus mercifully tempered to my needs. 
 
 Nay, father, is not that transcending life 
 Which the Saints live, laid up with Christ in God 
 
IX.] THE ABSOLUTION. 289 
 
 is it not perpetual Solitude, 
 
 Exile from base delights and soiling cares, 
 
 With hopes and fears and sympathetic ties 
 
 Unearthly, with a Wedlock of its own. 
 
 Which through chastised virginity of soul 
 
 Is like a fruitful womb unto the Lord 
 
 With evangelic travail bearing sons, 
 
 And with a civil Conversation which transcends 
 
 The offices of human polity, 
 
 And, veiled behind the water of a rite, 
 
 A most miraculous Sonship, and a Food 
 
 In the world's presence eaten, yet unknown, 
 
 Unseen by it, but such a wondrous Food 
 
 That it were well with all the Angelic Hosts 
 
 If unto them that Flesh might be vouchsafed ? 
 
 Is not that life one endless Solitude 
 
 From earthly things, a Kingdom all within. 
 
 Yet with a mystic Furniture without. 
 
 Where Faith is Kegent, and the simplest Laws 
 
 Are mysteries and supernatural words, — 
 
 A Kealm inscrutably concealed, though nigh 
 
 To all, with Visitations from above, 
 
 Outward Alliances spread far and wide 
 
 Into the world of spirit, Succours coming 
 
 And Messengers departing every hour. 
 
 Burdened wiih secret liturgies, and tears 
 
 Despatched to moisten Incense up in Heaven, 
 
 And an Indwelling King, engrossed all day, 
 
 Entire in each, yet present in all hearts, 
 
 With preparation as of one who calls 
 
 His army round him in a hostile land, — 
 
 A very holy, peopled Solitude ? 
 
 Once landed then on that free shore, my chains 
 Methought would drop from off me by the law 
 19 
 
290 SIE LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 Of nature ; for the very shore it seemed 
 
 Of that eternal world where all are bound, 
 
 The space of desert littoral, which all 
 
 Must penetrate and traverse here or there. 
 
 All must be mates of Solitude for once, 
 
 In the wide-spreading silence of old age, 
 
 Or in the loneliness of dying thought, 
 
 Or in that summing up, distinct and strong, 
 
 That inward life condensed into a point 
 
 Of time, a momentary act, when death 
 
 Bears us like lightning o'er the trackless sands. 
 
 Where all must pass why should we fear to dwell ? 
 
 There are who through exceeding love of God 
 
 Have tenanted that region all their lives. 
 
 And their chaste anthems murmur on it still ; 
 
 Where love hath dwelt is surely fear's best home 
 
 I will away then, said I, to that shore 
 Where our eternal havens are : though void 
 Of all those shelters for our nameless fears. 
 That constant harbourage of thought in hours 
 Of inward sinking, which the grateful sense 
 Of nearness to our kind affords, even then 
 When for some cause we shun their company ; 
 Though void of these, it is a sacred shore 
 With boundless prospects that enlarge the heart. 
 And with a freshness better far than mirth, 
 Than beauty more, magnificent, a face 
 Of bold eternal freshness, like the sea 
 Rolling its unchained length of silvery green. 
 Shaking its white- maned breakers in the sun, 
 And thundering, like a cloud in summer noons, 
 While winter's slavery binds the household earth, 
 And wavy tracts of snow and leafless trees, 
 Black buried farms and cold untrodden ways, 
 
IX.] THE ABSOLUTION. 291 
 
 Wither our very liberty of thought, 
 While we confess the elements our lords. 
 I will away then, said I, to that shore 
 And feed upon that freshness, until fear 
 Begets compunction, and compunction love, 
 And love her beacon trims by that seaside, 
 Diffusing there a silent power of light 
 Whose fanning wings move slowly through the air, 
 Parting the raven darkness, till they touch 
 Upon the opposing shore ; and he who kneels 
 In act of prayer may through his hollowed hands, 
 As through a telescope, discern that bourne, 
 Which all may reach who set their shattered helms, 
 
 And point them truly by that beckoning orb. 
 
 The starry signal of the Magdalen. 
 
 Then I bethought me of my native hills 
 
 And meres profound by winter unenslaved, 
 
 True types of solitude, as I have seen 
 
 The lakes and mountains on a winter's day, 
 
 Pacing the beautiful and silent shores 
 
 Of Windermere, unharassed by the sound 
 
 Even of my feet upon the snowy beach. 
 
 A glossy calm is bound upon the lake 
 
 With a dull glistening, like a lucid coat 
 
 Of flaky snow, while overhead the sky 
 
 Sways like a tottering dome of purple grey. 
 
 Above the horizon, all around, a rim 
 
 Is left between the sombre clouds and earth, 
 
 A hazy tract of thick and turbid white, 
 
 Which like a blinded lattice doth emit. 
 
 Weakly suffused, a light of troubled red. 
 
 As if from flaming furnaces behind, — 
 
 The sunset's ineffectual witness there. 
 
 And like a visionary region float 
 
292 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 The woods, scarce lower than the stooping clouds, 
 
 And all untied by aught of visible chain 
 
 To the calm earth, with tree-tops, half of black 
 
 Silently weeping, and half silvered o'er 
 
 Where they have met the greeting of the wind ; 
 
 And all the twigs in beautiful array — 
 
 Fabrics of summer foliage are less fair — 
 
 Glisten like some ingenious work composed 
 
 Of ebony and silver, to the west 
 
 Bearded with rime, and in a hundred styles 
 
 And mutable devices crystallized 
 
 With noiseless art, while morning's feeble sun, 
 
 Felt though unseen, hath blackened all the boughs 
 
 Upon the east ; and groups of spiked pine 
 
 Are set with pearls opaque : and how still 
 
 Appear the swelling mountains in the mist. 
 
 While all the impoverished cataracts are heard 
 
 Roaring like creatures tamed ; and at my feet, 
 
 Half on the wing, half on the water, coots. 
 
 Or wild ducks, with their oarlike pinions cleave 
 
 Their black cold-gushing wakes upon the mere ; 
 
 And from the womb of some cloud-curtained vale 
 
 The bellowing of the miner's blast is heard. 
 
 Making the air to tingle for awhile. 
 
 Waving the ponderous skirts of lowering mist. 
 
 And thrilling on the silent snowy shore. 
 
 Such and so quiet seemed that land to me. 
 As is the solitary winter lake, 
 An unimpeded calm, and restful haven. 
 
 Therefore to my hereditary hills 
 I went, and mid their woods and treeless wolds. 
 And purple moorlands veined with argent brooks, 
 With solitude have long consorted now. 
 Become inured to her strange discipline, 
 
IX.] THE ABSOLUTION. 393 
 
 In love with her wild nurture, and have learned 
 
 Her written cypher, to the eye or ear 
 
 A changeful revelation, and whose lore 
 
 Voluminous, profoundly varied, still 
 
 Goes on in mazy sweetness year by year 
 
 Expounding and illustrating itself 
 
 In deep instructive sequence. My wild voyage 
 
 Amid the horrors of the Caucasus, 
 
 And central lakes of Asia, and grey steppes 
 
 O'er which the wind in its tired passage faints, 
 
 Was the harsh pupillage wherein I learned 
 
 The wisdom of the jealous-featured earth. 
 
 The language of her shows, the direful powers, 
 
 Which in the tempest and the calm reside 
 
 And sounding elements, that terrify 
 
 With their collision mortal wanderers cast 
 
 Mid those fierce angels in the dreadful seats 
 
 Of that mysterious continent, whereon 
 
 Alone the Feet of the Most High have stood. 
 
 For there the powers of nature have been wont 
 
 To bow before no delegated voice, 
 
 But suit their goings out and comings in 
 
 To His immediate Word, while good and ill 
 
 Stirring like pomps of shadow o'er the earth, 
 
 Are but the troubled umbrage of the fight. 
 
 The actual fight, delivered on those shores. 
 
 In those primeval haunts where man first dwelt, 
 
 And where the voices of elected seers 
 
 Have sung the measures of his destinies. 
 
 Which the Creator, clothed in Human Flesh, 
 
 Hath sealed in Person on the Blessed Kood ! 
 
 Asia, first-born of history wert thou ! 
 O sacred land! through Blood and Tears of God 
 Instinct with thrills of consecrated life, 
 
294 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 "Within whose mountainous bosom lies the dust 
 
 Of venerable Adam, and the grave 
 
 Delved by the Lord for him who led the Church 
 
 From the dark Nile-banks, and the odorous earth 
 
 Which was the bed of that most sorrowing Maid, 
 
 The Virgin-Mother, and whose ancient tombs 
 
 Have had one resurrection, by the streets 
 
 Of Salem witnessed! Through the ponderous shades, 
 
 Which the old empires cast upon thy breast, 
 
 Still redly gleams the cloven path of fire, 
 
 "Whereby the unburied Prophet, caught from earth, 
 
 Into the hidden Eden was conveyed. 
 
 And those intolerably radiant Steps 
 
 Of Him who scaled the ethereal ridges back 
 
 With His new nature. His victorious spoils, 
 
 To His eternal glory with His Sire ! 
 
 Methinks the man to whom it hath been given 
 To set his foot upon that awful soil, 
 To see the sun on pebbly Jordan glance, 
 To hear the wind among the cedars sigh 
 Of terraced Lebanon, or watch the stars 
 From seaside Carmel, or from Olivet 
 Bear off the hoary dust upon his shoes, 
 Nay, walk one hour upon the furthest coast, 
 And feel that Asia is beneath his feet, — 
 Methinks the man, to whom it was vouchsafed. 
 Were sphered some little higher than his kind. 
 And, with such priesthood vested, might attract 
 The eye of us far Westerns as he passed 
 Along our streets, — if Jesus had not said. 
 The deepest and most wondrous truth that e'er 
 Fell on the ear of our astonished world. 
 That he who did His Father's Will in faith. 
 Though faith there never was which mated hers, 
 
IX.] THE ABSOLUTION. 295 
 
 Stood equal with that wondrous Maid of grace, 
 The Mortal Woman, Mother of our God I — 
 A written truth, yet haply raised above 
 Lawful rehearsal by a sinner's lips, 
 For whom it were sweet privilege enough 
 To think with far less daring thoughts of her 
 Who sits above all creatures now assumed. 
 
 In that probation of wild travel then 
 I learned the mystic language of the earth 
 From her oracular lineaments, composed 
 In the calm semblance of midnight and noon, 
 Her scenic writing blazoned evermore 
 In shifting scrolls, with difficulty learned 
 And piece by piece, as one who toils and toilg 
 Some foreign tongue to master, a strange task 
 Which all unlike our other knowledge seems 
 Eather the work of time than intellect. 
 
 The rest thou know'st : within this hilly tract 
 Nature hath been to me the supplement 
 Of what the Church withdrew ; a partial aid 
 Indeed it was, and I but hungered more 
 For what I lost, and yet a real aid, 
 By her not disavowed, as I believe. 
 The shape of sin, which in this solitude 
 Hath haunted me, a word will briefly tell. 
 It was the loss of balance in my mind : 
 Either inclining to a hope too high. 
 Too vigorously winged, for one who fell 
 As I had fallen, or depending low 
 To a despondency and flagging faith, 
 Which did dishonour by its craven doubts 
 To the sweet love which drew our Lord from Heaven. 
 
 Father ! the hour draws on when I must die ; 
 My ear is all unmuffled, and I catch 
 
296 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 The footfall of that solemn messenger. 
 Father! I kneel before thee, to the Church 
 Who speaks in thee, and to my only Lord 
 Whom she doth represent ! blessed Church! 
 Most awful, most affectionate Mother ! here 
 I call the hills to witness, and the sea 
 And the dark forests and the flooded brooks, 
 The caves high up, and countless tops of pine 
 Above whose level I have made my prayers, 
 If I have uttered one proud word, or paid 
 Thee aught but benediction for the curse 
 For my salvation mercifully bound 
 Upon thine erring child. O Mother Church ! 
 Whom as the Presence of my God I fear. 
 Forego thy healing wrath ; once ere my death 
 
 let my famished spirit feast on song. 
 And manifold thanksgiving, and the Host 
 Upon unbloody Altars sacrificed ; 
 
 That in thy visible bosom here received 
 
 1 may in hopeful type discern my lot 
 Hereafter, and may find the peaceful Fires, 
 Our first safe resting-place beyond the grave, 
 Fore-opened by thy golden Keys on earth. 
 Mother of Saints ! receive thy sinful son : 
 
 I crave thine Absolution ere I die ! 
 
 Thus spake the Knight; and down the Abbot's 
 cheeks 
 The tears flowed fast : the merciful old man 
 Was moved, and blessing Jesus for the powers 
 To frailest vessels of poor earth consigned, 
 He laid his hands upon the Penitent, 
 And with the Cross untied the icy curse. 
 It was not age that made them tremulous. 
 But the sweet Spirit who fulfilled his soul 
 
IX.] THE ABSOLUTION. 297 
 
 And shed Himself with every ritual word. 
 The golden evening gathered gently round, 
 Throwing the coloured shadows from the panes 
 With Saints and Martyrs duskily annealed ; 
 When vespers chimed Sir Lancelot was shrived. 
 
 Service is o'er ; with swift and noiseless steps, 
 And graceful modesty of outward mien. 
 Which of itself might win a worldling's heart, 
 The monks have glided from the twilight church, 
 Save a few kneeling forms that here and there 
 The raorrow's meditation choose, or make 
 Their scrutiny of conscience, or adore 
 The Hidden Presence on the shrine reserved, 
 That Sanctuary, that most Domestic Home 
 Of gentle nuns and self- renouncing monks. 
 There too Sir Lancelot knelt : the mountain wind 
 And the wide ocean could not half so much 
 Dilate his soul, as those long solemn aisles, 
 Dim glittering Altars, incense-burdened air, 
 The recent benediction of the Host, 
 And mutely preaching symbols of the Faith. 
 The sudden peace that haply may confront 
 The unbodied soul, which but a moment since 
 Was struggling on the death- bed, may afford 
 No unjust image of the rapturous calm. 
 Which fell from heaven upon that joyous man 
 Once more within a Christian church enclosed. 
 And far off kneeling in the misty nave 
 Which sunset still imperfectly illumined. 
 His gladness found an utterance, not in prayer, 
 But objectless recital to himself 
 Of what was all around him, growing now 
 Familiar as it used to be of old. 
 But with a childish wonder pondered still. 
 
298 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 Thus in spontaneous rhythm his words broke forth, 
 No formal prayer, but happy prayer-like hymn, 
 As if to reassure his doubting mind 
 That what he saw was no delusive dream. 
 
 THE HTMlf. 
 
 See, see how eyening's sloping shadows grow 
 Upon the massy nave, and all the stone 
 Is flecked with little clouds of colour, thrown 
 
 From the west window ; on the ground they go, 
 
 Silently creeping eastward, while the air 
 Thickens within the choir, and so conceals 
 
 The Altar, whose benignant presence there 
 The slowly rocking lamp alone reveals. 
 
 Ah me, how still ! Our Lady's Vesper song 
 
 Hath died away amid the choral throng ; 
 
 But the pure-visaged moon, that climbs elate 
 
 The throne of day, now strikes with trembling light 
 The painted lattice, where the livelong night 
 
 Saint Mary chants her lone Magnificat. 
 
 Hail, Mary, hail ! O Maiden-Mother, hail 1 
 In thankfulness I lean upon the thought 
 Of thy mysterious chastities ; unsought 
 Comes the sweet faith thy prayers can never fail 
 In that high Heaven where thou hast been assumed; 
 And with this hope my spirit newly plumed 
 Strives upward, like a weary dove in sight 
 Of her lost refuge, steering by the light 
 Wherewith thy name hath silently illumed 
 The Church below, cheering the gradual night 
 The world hath forced upon the primal day 
 
IX.] THE ABSOLUTION. 299 
 
 Of our sweet faith ; and I, on penance cast 
 Till patient yearning should retrieve the past, 
 
 May bless thee for the succour of thy ray ! 
 
 The light is vocal, wavering on the glass; — 
 The jewel midway in the braided hair. 
 The eyes, the lifted hand, are speaking there, 
 
 And o'er the lips the argent quiverings pass. 
 She sings! she sings! but thirsty silence, drinks 
 The heavenly sound before its burden sinks 
 
 Into my listening ear. Hail, Mary, hail ! 
 Hail thou that art the haven of the heart 
 
 Accessible in all our moods, a veil 
 Obscuring not, but gifted to impart 
 
 New aspects of the Cross : though sin erase 
 
 That Sign from Heaven, before our downcast eyes, 
 "Which fall on thee, its sweet reflection lies 
 
 Like a soft shadow in a moonlit place. 
 
 Hail, Mary, hail ! O Wondrous Mother ! pray 
 
 To thy dear Son who takes our sins away ! 
 
SIR LANCELOT. 
 
 BOOK X. 
 THE COMMUNION. 
 
BOOK X. 
 
 THE COMMUNIOK 
 
 On the round summit of Black Combe I stand, 
 
 While yet the rosy lips of eveniDg seem 
 
 To drink the level sea, and Mona's peaks, 
 
 Their brief illumination past, retire 
 
 Into the invisible distance one by one. 
 
 On either side a very realm is spread 
 
 Of old conventual lands and Church domain. 
 
 Southward the cape of Furness by the hills 
 
 And sister gulfs from England seems cut off, 
 
 A kingdom for the Abbot, royalties 
 
 Of blythest tillage and uncounted wealth 
 
 Of ore that stains the brooks and narrow ways, 
 
 As though some recent battlefield were nigh. 
 
 Northward to Calder Cell and wild St. Bees, 
 
 And to the dusky verge of Copeland Chase, 
 
 The Church, out-balancing the knightly fiefs 
 
 By unity much more than breadth of glebe, 
 
 Upon that exquisite sea-border dwelt. 
 
 Another face is breathed upon the land, 
 A mighty change, which on this summit lone 
 Invokes the past before me, and persuades 
 My verse to wander from its end awhile 
 The better to attain that end at last 
 
304 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 With more intelligent solemnity ; 
 
 And let it be permitted to the bard, 
 
 Through the strong habit of monition formed 
 
 By pastoral office pleading with the poor 
 
 And the hardhearted rich, to buy the right 
 
 Of pleading from this sombre mountain-top 
 
 With the cold reason of the worjdly wise, 
 
 And let the earnest will atonement make 
 
 For this poetic fault, while I forget 
 
 The trespass of suspended action now 
 
 Through hope to achieve a practical design : — 
 
 Lofty the old tribunal where I stand 
 
 A self-called preacher, haply then too high 
 
 A strain for me, yet let me be forgiven 
 
 If I offend through pure though ill-tanght love ! 
 
 While yet I muse, in pale ethereal folds 
 The twilight deepens at my feet, and earth 
 And ocean scarce distinguishable were, 
 But that a wavy belt of sand emits 
 A dull uncertain glimmer, to the eye 
 Less obvious every moment ; while above 
 The stars encumber with their multitude 
 The heavenly dome, each sparkling, as it seems, 
 Through a pure liquid teardrop on its orb. 
 O desolate, most desolate ! The man 
 Who in the Thirteenth Age might haply climb 
 This mountain watch-tower could behold a scene 
 Which spoke of Christian verities, and love 
 And homage paid to them by humankind, 
 A scene which like a monument set forth 
 The truth, and in an obvious type displayed 
 Even to gross eyes the splendour of the Faith. 
 But now — weep for that transfigured Now — 
 Let the full heart in thoughtful silence weep ! 
 
X.] THE COMMUNION. 30^ 
 
 Yet, great the consolation to be found 
 In what the Past bequeaths of heavenly ways 
 And of the style^ if such presumptuous words 
 Be lawful here, of Providential Acts 
 And Dealings with the fallen race of man. 
 For such the picture of the Church — the eye 
 Trembles in gazing — through all time displayed ; 
 The earth hath been the death-bed of the Church 
 For ever and for ever ; not an age 
 Hath come and gone when it was not believed 
 By those, who through the Present's darkling glass 
 Beheld but fragments of her fortunes then, 
 She was outworn and at the point to fail. 
 Unequal to her calling, to her strife, 
 Her many-sided combat with the world, 
 And as infallibly, in that her hour 
 Of weakness, found unto another youth 
 Even then most near when seeming most to fail. 
 
 But hast thou from a mountain-girdled plain. 
 Or through the vista of a lake-lit dell, 
 Watched the magnificent gathering of a storm, 
 The silent muster of the fiery clouds 
 With such determinate slowness wheeling up, 
 The swiftness of loose vapours and torn mists 
 With a wan sunshine on tliem, and the rents 
 Opening and closing like huge furnace-doors, 
 Contrasting so with that immoveable 
 And pausing centre, till the unwieldy host, 
 The mighty fabric all complete, begins 
 Its solid march across the hushed blue sky ? 
 With what a steadfast course it sweeps along. 
 And overbears the ineffectual winds. 
 Which scarce can ruffle its advancing edge ! 
 Then in that preparation, in that pause, 
 
306 BIR LANCELOT. [BOOt 
 
 In that on-rolling, in that vocal fire, 
 
 In the portentous swervings here and there, 
 
 In the disparting, reimiling cloud, 
 
 In the deep ever-growing shade it casts, 
 
 And in that strong attraction which the storm 
 
 Exerts upon thyself — thou hast well read, 
 
 In all their various uniformity, 
 
 The solemn chronicles of Holy Church ! 
 
 And doth the storm in its mutations grow 
 
 To be less cognizably one ? the calms 
 
 Which follow its wild speaking, are they less 
 
 Terrific than its voice ? and is there not 
 
 An order, nay, a most undoubted grace. 
 
 In its confusions ? Such an awful storm — 
 
 How often self-transfigured, disarrayed, 
 
 Growing, aggressive, gathered, and dispersed, 
 
 Yet palpably divine ! — is Holy Church, 
 
 So utterly the same that she can be 
 
 Exceeding mutable ; and this last power 
 
 May breathe some life into our flagging hopes, 
 
 Baffling the craven love of ancient times. 
 
 And gloriously repelling, as a shield. 
 
 Foul accusations of decay. For she 
 
 With sweet spontaneous effort can give forth 
 
 New forms of ancient doctrine, fit to mate 
 
 New changes and new wants in Christendom, — 
 
 Whether in primitive germs long since implied, 
 
 And by ascetic men elicited ; 
 
 Or, on evasive error to lay hold. 
 
 Through subtle process distantly inferred ; 
 
 Nay, sometimes with majestic increment. 
 
 Awful enlivening of her hidden strength 
 
 To exhilarate her children's drooping hearts, 
 
 Varying her ancient catholic harmonies, 
 
X.] THE COMMUNION. 307 
 
 Fresh salient truths our Mother superadds, 
 
 And with accumulated youth moves on, — 
 
 A Living Storm, O how much to be feared 
 
 And how much to be loved ! no Written Thing, 
 
 No Literary Puzzle of the past, 
 
 No difficult, discoverable Lore, 
 
 The churlish scholar's sole exclusive prize,-— 
 
 But never lost, and therefore needing not 
 
 To be recovered, — open, tangible. 
 
 Belonging to the multitudinous Poor, 
 
 Christ's Presence with the Simple Ones of earth ! 
 
 Such is the steadfast look, and scenery 
 Sublime as an eternal mountain chain. 
 In storm involved or transient sunshine keen, 
 Of that primeval beauty of the Church, 
 Beheld far off by us who can embrace 
 Enough of God's broad counsels to discern 
 The general aspect of the Christian Past. 
 Yet to the warriors mingling in the strife 
 With rolling garments, fire, and dust, and blood, 
 All seemed confusion o'er the battling earth, 
 And nothing clear but Heaven's blue tract above ; 
 And unto them the End was ever nigh. 
 Not seemingly — but with mysterious truth 
 Brought near, as we are touching on it now. 
 
 Hereon we build our faith and hope to-day ; 
 Not without tokens of an outward sort 
 In silent gratitude received, as signs 
 Of Love which every morning sees renewed 
 And of Compassion lasting as the hills. 
 
 There is a time which goes not to the account 
 Of past or present, and which cannot be 
 Part of the days unborn, — the future's yerge, 
 A stirring antepast of change to come. 
 
308 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 That little space when men can ascertain, 
 
 Even in the crowded turmoil of their age, 
 
 A pushing root which has not flowered as yet. 
 
 Nor had green leaves, but, succoured by their acts, 
 
 Protrudes into the surface of their times. 
 
 Then earnestness keeps vigil, wrapped in such 
 
 Quiescent expectation as mine eye, 
 
 Not wholly fancy-free, hath deemed it saw 
 
 Upon the bright cliurch steeples on the night 
 
 "When the last workday of the weary week 
 
 Comes with sweet sunlit evenings, so to pay 
 
 Preluding homage to the lonely feast 
 
 Grudged, if accorded, to the English poor. 
 
 The silent faces of those buildings seem 
 
 To speak from out the radiant foliage drawn 
 
 Around the grassy chamber cf the dead, 
 
 Even as the future will appear to throw 
 
 Discordant meaning and expression strange 
 
 Into the countenance of the present days. 
 
 Such is the true account of every time ; — 
 
 No time to us is future, present, past, 
 
 But such commingling of the three as gives 
 
 To men a light and guarantee to act. 
 
 With cheering motive summoned from the past, 
 
 And urgent call by present needs expressed. 
 
 And that forecasting purpose which alone 
 
 Can stamp a value on a Human Act, 
 
 And wed it to God's Will, — and such an aim 
 
 The future is commissioned to supply. 
 
 There is no actual Present in the world. 
 
 No such free time, to a believing man. 
 
 Summon the Past ; and let it be that Age 
 Through which the wayward channel of my song 
 Wanders, and ask an oracle of it. 
 
X.] THE COMMUNION. 809 
 
 Learn from its lips how history may become 
 A travelling voice of prophecy, that rings 
 With cumulative echoes, and expounds 
 The solemn shadows of the Past to be 
 Forestallings of the Judgment, images, 
 Successively presented, of the growth. 
 The strife, the victory, and the doom of sin. 
 Learn from its lips how then the Church was laid 
 Beneath the shadow of the Empire dying. 
 And how before the awe-struck West she lit, 
 Like a fresh Angel, on the Hills of Rome ! 
 
 Long, yet most grateful, hath the study been, 
 And with no vague design by me pursued, 
 To trace the under-currents of that age. 
 The secret bearings, which might haply give 
 A bias to its temper, and might serve 
 To mould the forms of intellectual life 
 In such peculiar greatness. Hard it is, 
 Even for imagination, to beget 
 The thought of what the life of Christians was 
 In those past ages, and most hard to shift 
 The inward habit of our modern thoughts 
 In such adjustment as to arbitrate 
 Fairly between the Present and the Past, 
 Neither too much extolling, nor too much 
 Condemning, through impatience of research : 
 For Christ is alway present with His Spouse, 
 Both when she sits on thrones, and when she weeps 
 In ashes vile : and where that Presence is. 
 Dwells truest Greatness, never so much veiled 
 But that meek faith may see where she must kneel. 
 
 Not in the pride of study let us come, 
 Nor in idolatrous regard of Past 
 Or Present, nor with an ignoble lust 
 
310 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 Of fame, by curious lore to be enhanced ; 
 But rather with a meditative love 
 Of these our times, where our sole duties lie, 
 With meek misgivings anxious to discern 
 On every cape a lighthouse, by the Past 
 Beneficently raised to guide and warn : 
 Or in more hopeful posture still, with prayer 
 And study locked in mutual embrace, 
 Disciples, round the opening of a tomb, 
 Where the dear relics of a Saint repose 
 Which we to our own Altars would translate, 
 Upon our knees expectant, so to catch 
 The perfume of devout Antiquity. 
 
 There is a German faith, which may be seen 
 Grimly depicted on the cottage walls 
 Of that too hopeful people : in a cave 
 Within an ancient forest's silent gloom, 
 Amid a grassless labyrinth of tall pines 
 Which scarce the song-birds tenant, sleej)s a man 
 With his dropped sword unbroken at his feet. 
 His huge bowed head, and hands with gauntlets off. 
 And his long ruddy beard in coils around : 
 A very fearful warrior, by the serfs 
 Discovered once, but in his cavern left, 
 Most awful even in his helpless sleep. 
 Whose dreams are of a world long past away 
 And with slow circuit coming back again ! 
 Who hath not heard of that most mighty king 
 Hight Barbarossa, who once scourged the West, 
 And how he lost his politic renown 
 Amid those isolated points of life. 
 The crowd of old Transalpine commonwealths. 
 And how he battled with our lord the Pope, 
 And bruised, as others have before and since, 
 
X.] THE COMMUNION. 3H 
 
 His crowned brow against St. Peter's Chair ? 
 Deem him not wholly evil : he was one 
 Of those perverted grandeurs of the past 
 Marred and misshaped by Satan, to stand forth 
 As laughing-stocks for ages ; but the world, 
 Envying the blissful Church who loseth not 
 The living intercession of her Saints, 
 And can approach their far-off rest by prayers, 
 Fables that her past glories too survive, 
 Simply withdrawn, until their time returns. 
 So covetous are men of what is great. 
 So rightly covetous, that faiths, grotesque 
 As this, have hearts that put their trust therein. 
 And verily such wholesome legends stand 
 In front of deep and most inspiring truths. 
 Bearing the quaint device, whereby the minds 
 Of untaught men may plainly comprehend 
 The whole philosophy of that wise awe 
 And loving reverence due unto the past. 
 So Barbarossa slumbers in his cave 
 Where wailing pines make endless lullaby ; 
 So Arthur sleeps in Avalon to-day. 
 Whose grassy cone all Somerset beholds ; 
 verily those sleepers will return ! 
 
 How fearful is the onward flight of Time, 
 A luminous avenue which guides our eyes 
 And leaves them fixed upon the Judgment-seat ! 
 And to the scholar, in his lowly search 
 Amid the shipwrecked pageants of the Past, 
 It is a grave and yet affectionate thought. 
 Which many an ancient liturgy supplies, 
 That Ages are not cold and abstract names, 
 But spiritual Powers instinct with life 
 And gifts, and Witnesses intelligent 
 Of human conduct, Angels deemed of old; 
 
812 SIR LANCELOT. [boOK 
 
 As if each Age, though squaring not perchance 
 
 With our material measures, subject were 
 
 To its own Guardian Angel thus allowed 
 
 His season to administer the Church, 
 
 Thereon to impress the signet of his will, 
 
 And fashion it in his peculiar grace. 
 
 Bending its virtues while he thus constrains 
 
 Eecoiling ills to take a special course, — 
 
 If to those blessed Hosts there be a will 
 
 Beyond the Mind of God. And, so it is. 
 
 Each Age with after-baptism is surnamed 
 
 By the kind Church from its chief mode of good, 
 
 While by the worldly from the gross recoil 
 
 Of evil on the surface is it called. 
 
 And deeper than a pleasant thought may be 
 
 The strong imagination, that we hold 
 
 Sublime and yet endearing intercourse 
 
 With some one of the radiant Host of Heaven, 
 
 Cherubic Mind or deep Seraphic Heart, 
 
 Or steadfastness of some paternal Throne, 
 
 Whene'er we ponder in confiding love 
 
 The function of an Age, some special Age 
 
 Singled with thoughtful choice. 
 
 O then how sweet. 
 And yet how infinitely solemn, seems 
 The chamber of the student, oft in prayer 
 With his mute books around him, while he calls, 
 With such meek invocation as he may, 
 The Angels of the Ages to supply 
 The keys of those old written chronicles ; 
 And purchases his knowledge with a vow, 
 Morning and eve renewed, abjuring fame, 
 That he will dedicate to Holy Church 
 The scanty produce of his patient toils. 
 
X.] THE COMMUNION. 813 
 
 So let US study with those Angels round, 
 The Spirits of the Ages, while we trace 
 In frequent signature the blessed Cross 
 Upon our bosoms, making all our lore 
 Unworldly, as we gain it, and our thoughts 
 Dissevering from the taint of self-conceit. 
 
 O when we lift the veil from off those days, 
 With what a sacred beauty is the heart 
 O'erwhelmed, and by how strange a scene surprised! 
 We live on earth, and Pleaven is far away, 
 Another world, and by itself insphered 
 In jealous separation from the spot 
 Whereon our blindfold spirits feel and act. 
 This is the instinct of our present age. 
 But, then, with bold magnificence of thought, 
 Which nothing but a pure simplicity 
 Of faith and holy living could inspire. 
 Heaven was invoked to fill the vacant earth, 
 So that the teeming solitudes ran over 
 With its bright presence, and material forms 
 Were clothed with spirit, yea, full oft absorbed 
 In heavenly splendour, to forgetfulness 
 Translated of their own original use. 
 For through its several kingdoms earth to them 
 With Heaven was all inlaid : its awful touch 
 On private life, aijd on the social state 
 And the grave forms of law, had power to shed 
 A gracious beauty and imposing mien. 
 With no reluctant homage then confessed, 
 When with such sanctions sealed as overbore 
 By their dread import idle questioning. 
 
 In the prerogative of kings men saw 
 Somewhat of God*s Authority transfused, 
 A show of regency which barely veiled 
 
314 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 The gesture of His Attributes behind. 
 And in the ceremonials of the law 
 Vengeance with healing discipline was joined. 
 Which men of darkened conscience at this day- 
 Would fain put from them as a power that bears 
 Uneasy witness to the unseen world ; 
 And mercy with mysterious vagueness flowed 
 From the pure impulse of the sovereign will. 
 Not seldom by divine suggestion ruled. 
 And utterly unknown was that vile thought 
 And base division, which would now degrade 
 The secular power, and with unblest divorce 
 Confine it in a barren sphere, apart 
 From spiritual regards and rights divine 
 Of Holy Church, the radiant element 
 Whose exile, happily yet unconfirmed 
 By the discordant nations, would have left 
 The sphere of politics a formless world 
 Without a sun, and daily working back 
 Into that moral chaos whence it sprung, 
 When Rome's great Spirit o'er the gloom went out, 
 And stirred the darkness of that uncouth Past, 
 And with creative harmony called up, 
 Like some enchantress verily inspired. 
 From out the strife of battling principles, 
 That birth of beauty. Western Christendom. 
 
 Nor were the thoughts of men in those great daya 
 Less sensibly uplifted, or their hearts 
 With an inspiring wisdom less sustained. 
 To them the world was sweetly populous 
 With old ancestral truths and touching faiths 
 And beautiful surmises, imaging 
 Upon the face of nature heavenly forms 
 With something more than bare similitudes. 
 
X.] THE COMMUNION. 315 
 
 The qualities of precious stones, the ways 
 Of the wild tenants of the sylvan chase, 
 The hidden will which in the growing plant 
 Fashioned the leaves and coloured the gay flower,— 
 All were to them as ritual books that taught 
 A Christian science, and laid bare the veins 
 Of spiritual Presence that enriched 
 Their world, and would so aptly reinforce 
 The languid pulse of our impoverished lives : 
 A science not yet utterly withdrawn 
 From us, but in the realm of herbs and flowers 
 Among our native peasants living still 
 In moving legends, expositions wild, 
 And meek acknowledgment of powers unseen. 
 Which at the roots of our salubrious plants 
 Give battle to the spirits of misrule 
 With varying success. And yet methinks, 
 W^ith some vibrations in the popular heart 
 Still ascertainable, traditions live 
 Descended from antiquity, and are 
 The poetry of shepherds and poor men, 
 Not without influence on their Christian lives, 
 Sometimes by local usage canonized. 
 More oft by lips of hoary ancients taught. 
 And handed on in shrines of prose or verse. 
 Beautiful Past ! And yet thou art to me 
 But a true gage wherewith to take the height 
 And measure of the Present : or, at most. 
 The testament of an afl'ectionate sire. 
 Which, when the wealth bequeathed is through 
 
 neglect 
 Dispersed, or irretrievable mischance, 
 Hath still a value to the pious heart 
 For each expression of his wish, and trains 
 
316 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 Of monitory thought that flow therefrom. 
 
 For surely there is more than weak self-love, 
 
 A nobler and more feeling wisdom, couched 
 
 In that habitual attitude of mind, 
 
 Which would regard the Present as brought near 
 
 In such relation to ourselves, our acts 
 
 And aspirations, that it should present 
 
 A scene of more sublime magnificence, 
 
 More stirring interests, more expressive grace, 
 
 Than the most gorgeous section of the Past. 
 
 Here lie our duties, loves and hopes and fears ; 
 Here have we tenderest intercourse with those 
 Our fellow-workers, with the lately dead 
 Most intimate affections ; here we pray, 
 And tremble at the plain responses sent 
 Unto our prayers ; here we retard or aid 
 The solemn progress of the mighty change, 
 Which in the bosom of its swift advance 
 Bears us along, unconscious yet how far 
 Or on what road we travel, but most wise 
 When least reluctant, tranquil in our faith. 
 Our masculine belief as Christian men, 
 Yea, more than tranquil, with abounding joy. 
 So long as Conscience ascertain each step, 
 Chanting a spousal anthem as we go, 
 As blind but happy minstrels on the prow 
 Of gallant change upon discovery bound. 
 
 Time hath no havens : in the stress of storm 
 The world perforce remains upon the sea. 
 O desolate, O weary-wandering world ! 
 For where can sfie put in, or where refit 
 Her shattered rigging, or where hope to cast 
 An anchor, save before the Judgment-seat, 
 Whose rocky base flings back the languid tide 
 
X.] THE COMMUNION. 317 
 
 And the spent waves of time, lest they should quicken 
 
 The deep calm pulses of eternity ? 
 
 O were it well to breathe so bold a prayer, 
 
 Or seek an office which so far transcends 
 
 My faculties, it were that I might sing 
 
 Through a long course of meditative years 
 
 In rapturous flights and loud impassioned verse 
 
 The grandeur of the Present Times, the change 
 
 Which, like a vast on-coming cloud, bids fair 
 
 To eclipse the mighty forms of ancient days 
 
 With forms more mighty still; and not as now. 
 
 With querulous sweetness to frequent the woods, 
 
 And mate the running streams with lisping song ! 
 
 The earth is all awake ; from her long sleep. 
 Her stagnant slumber when the glory passed 
 Even from her dreams, she started and awoke. 
 And battled blindly with her hands as one 
 Whose brain the mists of slumber still oppress. 
 But now with troubled dignity she fronts 
 The dawn of her new duties like a queen. 
 On every side the aspect of the world 
 Shifts visibly : gigantic figures rise. 
 Like clouds at sea, upon the horizon line 
 Of the close future, and together draw 
 In heavy preparation, yearly clothed 
 With more distinct array, and looking out, 
 A bland and noble destiny, on earth. 
 Who with a tremour of impatience waits 
 Such blissful usurpation of her realms. 
 
 For keen expectancy doth now project 
 Into the souls of men an earnestness 
 And a courageous hope, for long unlmown ; 
 And daring dreamers scattered here and there. 
 Like prophets, fling the ancient idols down, 
 And tune the solemn voice of humankind 
 
318 BIB LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 To a new music, borrowing it may be 
 
 Some sweetness from the Past, but most enriched 
 
 With wild and novel keys, whereon the hands 
 
 Of Time and Chance have never pressed before. 
 
 And who so blind that he misreads the signs 
 
 Which thicken round him, or mistakes the sound 
 
 Of barriers falling in the East and West, 
 
 And national distinctions waxing faint, 
 
 Worn by the pressure of more ample thoughts, 
 
 More ample sympathies, and by the powers 
 
 Newly conferred for his new wants on man, — 
 
 Congenial energies which hope may hail 
 
 As opportune allies,--while all earth's sons 
 
 Seem now about to be together thrown 
 
 And blended in one single brotherhood ? 
 
 Who would not too with exultation point 
 At that large-hearted wisdom which eludes 
 The measure of all party names, and rends 
 With a high-souled disdain the vulgar shapes 
 Of faction, and with wise constructive love, 
 Goodness accounting man's sole greatness, truth 
 The world's sole beauty, learns to sympathize, 
 And with discerning jealousy to walk. 
 With these in whatsoever places found. 
 With whatsoever hateful powers allied. 
 Saving the honour of the blessed Faith ? 
 For thus, if sin mar not the goodly work, 
 The unconscious world through these capacious hearts 
 Is edging forward into unity. 
 And, for that invocation of high Heaven 
 To come into the bosom of our age, 
 A psalm for such long centuries unsung, — 
 Is it not even now begun on earth ? 
 Is it not heard far off and near at once, 
 
X.] THE COMMUNION. 319 
 
 Rising from separate hearts, like fragrant curls 
 Of odour from a hundred censers swung 
 With even modulation ? Doth not earth 
 Already glow with somewhat of a light 
 Above her own, beatified in part 
 As Heaven pervades her kingdoms more and more ? 
 What if the Right Divine hath been withdrawn 
 From kings and from the mystery of birth, 
 Bevoked for long misuse, and we in them 
 Now recognize a power on civil law 
 Dependent, for the sake of God, and not 
 As God, by us acknowledged and obeyed — 
 Hath not the heavenly Eight been lodged anew 
 Deep in the bosom of the Christian State, 
 Buried within the Popular Will, and thus 
 Magnificently perilled, that the world 
 A third time with fresh auspices may strive 
 That holy Right and Presence to retain ? 
 O solemn venture ! who would not be cheered 
 By danger thus sublime ? Who would not pray, 
 Ah with what difiidence of sinful man ! 
 That holy lamp, once stifled in the air 
 Of ancient Monarchies, may be relumed 
 Within the shrine of Christian common- wealths ; 
 And thence dispelling that unhappy cloud 
 Of misbelief, which hath three ages clogged 
 The better destinies of humankind, 
 A new and glorious vision may be seen, 
 A Christendom, more vast than that of old, 
 In catholic faith and ritual sweetly joined, 
 Embracing with its beautiful restraints 
 The Spirit of Democracy, made wise 
 Through many sufferings, solemn and serene 
 As earth would fain desire, about to meet 
 
320^ SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 The dawn and day-break of Eternity ! 
 
 Ah me ! and have I ventured to aspire 
 Upon the prow of this majestic change 
 To sit, and watch the vessel of the world 
 Dipping uneasily into the deep, 
 And tune my trustful anthems as it heaves, 
 Embodying these my burning hopes in song ? 
 Peace ! peace ! ambitious heart ! for all unmeet 
 For thy poor strivings were such glorious task : 
 And peace, ye clamorous hopes! which, like a 
 
 brood 
 Of callow hawks impatient to essay 
 The limpid ether round yon hanging cliff, ^ 
 Project themselves too far beyond the bound 
 Of heaven- taught sadness. But if we would gaze 
 In studious prayer, as on a crystal lake 
 Whose clearness makes its depths more palpable, 
 All day upon the Fourfold Countenance 
 Of the deep Gospels, we should learn perforce 
 This sobering lesson, that the men most nigh 
 Unto the Person of the Son of God 
 Withheld their yearning lips from hopeful strain 
 Of trust in human conduct : zealous James 
 Be witness, and the trumpet tongue of Jude, 
 Or ready Levi's loud judicial tone, 
 Or that vindictive jealousy of him 
 Who leaned upon the Saviour's very Heart. 
 Let these confront the kind permitted truths, 
 Broad hope, and credulous belief of good, 
 In ardent Paul, or Luke whose anxious pen, 
 Blandest physician of repenting souls. 
 In his affectionate Gospel would amass 
 All hopeful traits of those who might approach 
 Our Lord, all merciful regards by Him 
 
X.] THE COMMUNION. 321 
 
 To their weak trust in times of need vouchsafed. 
 England ! dear England ! Island of the Saints ! 
 Thy broad blythe champaign, and sheep-spotted 
 
 wolds, 
 Thy ferny forest-lands, and hawthorn glades, 
 Thy park-like fields, and water-meadows green, 
 And rushy brooks, lie deep within my heart. 
 Ah ! how I compass with affectionate thought 
 A thousand sweet localities, whereon 
 The light of our religious past is blent 
 With the dark presence of our modern sin ! 
 My boyliood was a year-long pilgrimage 
 Amassing pleasant sights, which now are turned 
 To deeper things than wells of poetry. 
 And at this tearful hour I summon up, 
 With individual features all distinct, 
 Thy lifeless abbeys, and monastic homes. 
 Quickened with but the semblance of a life, 
 Thy broken crosses, convent- peopled fens, 
 Disfigured minsters, fountains, woods and hills 
 With saintly surnames ; and I now behold 
 In accurate vision, thoughtfully composed. 
 Thy lovely Frame, thy seven and thirty Shires, 
 Three goodly Palatines, and Islands five, 
 With Ely's Royal Franchise for a sixth. 
 And Town that keeps the sea-gates of the Tweed : 
 And a bright shade upon the vision falls. 
 Stooping thereon with palpable embrace. 
 As, when the staff by delegated hands 
 (How justly figuring England's futile past !) 
 Laid on his face no sign of life evoked. 
 Forthwith the Hebrew prophet stretched himself 
 Upon the Sunamite's sun-stricken child, 
 Hand touching hand, eye firmly pressing eye, 
 
322 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 And living lips upon the dead lips closed, — 
 Even so methinks her Guardian Angel lies 
 Incumbent on my native country's breadth, 
 Limb upon limb at once, and working there 
 No partial restoration ; and the warmth 
 So secretly is thrilling through her flesh, 
 So equally pervading all her veins 
 With tremulous augmentation ascertained, 
 The earth is barely conscious of a change. 
 Though with some half-incredulous fear annoyed. 
 But there lie England and her Angel, shut 
 From the world's notice, as the prophet was. 
 Left, with closed doors, upon the lifeless child. 
 The living Church beyond the seas may pray, 
 The Saxon Saints will intercede above, 
 And we, in happy expectation, wait. 
 Not idle in our measure and degree. 
 To cry, God speed the silent miracle ! 
 
 It is St. Peter's Day, the sacred Feast 
 Which, not from holy Paul's great name disjoined, 
 Bequeaths a blessing on departing June. 
 Sweetly the spirit of the morning fills 
 The abbey yard and hollow meads around. 
 Those golden beams ! how silently they range 
 Upon the foliage of the hanging woods ! 
 And nature's joy, which is the love of God, 
 Winds up the brook between the alder-trunks, 
 Brightening the waters with a breeze-like motion, 
 Wanders among the meadow flowers, revealed 
 By silent wakes that crisp the nodding herbs 
 Parted and fanned aside as if by wings. 
 And, o'er the elastic mosses hovering up. 
 Stealing the savoury damp that saturates 
 The tesselated herbage of the woods, 
 
X.] THE COMMUNION. 323 
 
 Freights the warm dew as it returns to heaven 
 With breaths of incense and the songs of birds. 
 
 And in the heart of that sweet sunken dell 
 The Abbey, like a sentient creature, lies 
 Couched on the dewy sward: and from the towers, 
 Gateways and buttresses of ruddy stone, 
 It breathes a voice into the listening woods. 
 The upper air is all alive with bells, 
 While on the undulating waves of sound 
 Float the dark clamorous fleets of happy daws ; 
 And, down below, the very stones respire 
 Celestial music from their viewless pores. 
 While the loud choirs with pealing organs vie, 
 Chanting the Blessed Mass ; all down the nave 
 The thrilling torrent of the music rolls, 
 Like an imprisoned tide, now seems to heave 
 The mighty roof, and now with refluent stream 
 Pours its sweet trouble eastward, and escapes. 
 But for awhile, beneath the transept arch, 
 Till the dumb stones and lucid windows yield 
 An outlet to that throbbing sea of sound. 
 It is the Preface ; ah how meet and right 
 With Angels and Archangels, and the band 
 Of Apostolic Vicars gathered now 
 Unto their rest and glory, to adore 
 The Holy One with ceaseless solemn songs ! 
 That Mixolydian strain ! how sweetly sad. 
 Tutoring dejected hearts in cheerfulness. 
 Expressive of man's twofold state below 
 As lost in Adam and redeemed in Christ ! 
 Ah ! thus is all the music of the world 
 Confined within the Cross, whose vocal swells. 
 Inaudible except to reverent ears. 
 With glorious surges of heart-music fill 
 
324 SIB LANCELOT. [boOK 
 
 The fertile breast of Christ's most Holy Church ; — 
 Yet not without a faint alluring sound 
 Breathed on the outer world, to win the souk 
 That not in power but weakness linger near, 
 While in triumphant elegies the Bride 
 Sings, sweetly sings, her Lord's unmated griefs ! 
 
 Who is yon Kneeler that like one entranced 
 Bends o'er the marble step, with both hands crossed 
 Upon his bosom, raining holy tears 
 From un-uplifted eyes ? O is it grief. 
 Or the enlarged abundance of his heart. 
 Thus weeping from him like a summer shower ? 
 And is it prayer which parts his quivering lips, 
 Or viewless rapture, winged with more than words. 
 Escaping from the worn Ascetic's frame. 
 Like trembling odours by the solar beam 
 Wrung with extatic pain from silent flowers ? 
 It is Sir Lancelot, the Hermit-Knight, 
 The son received into his Mother's arms, 
 The Crown of Penance, Triumph of the Cross 
 And Victory of Christ's Almighty Love ! 
 
 Press the loud organs, roll the living psalm 
 In jubilant thunders o'er the prostrate crowd; 
 Once more — a loftier strain! — swell, swell the 
 
 hymns, — 
 Ye choirs, let loose the burning bolts of song ; 
 See how they flash and lighten from the roof! 
 Hark ! how divinely doth the storm of sound 
 Gather in folded harmonies, far off 
 And near ; — fill the loud anthems higher still. 
 Fill the deep womb of music to the brim, 
 Until the soul of every kneeler there. 
 Won from the body, mount upon the stream, 
 The cloudy stream of music, and ascend 
 
X.] THE COMMUNION. 325 
 
 Far above sin and earth, within the sight 
 And audience of seraphic liturgies ! 
 
 Down, like descending Angels, see the clouds 
 Of music, how they fold their quivering wings 
 Above the Altar, mute and self-absorbed ! 
 Silence ! the potent Canon hath begun. 
 See how it glasses in symbolic acts 
 And holy gestures, that exalted scene, 
 Which fell in Patmos on the mind of him, 
 The Virgin Seer ! Behold how it reflects, 
 Nay, by a dread Illapse brings down to earth. 
 The heavenly Worship of the Immaculate Lamb, 
 The Liturgy which never ends above, 
 Answered by earth's ineflable response 
 From out the Wonder of the Blessed Mass ! 
 
 What thoughts, or rather, in the silent room 
 Of thought deposed, what blissful Presence filled 
 Sir Lancelot, when the Altar's Burning Coal, 
 As with the rapt Isaias, touched his lips. 
 Not song of minstrel, but the hearts of Sainta 
 With voiceless thrill must utter to themselves. 
 
 On Hawcoat Brow in days of old there stood 
 A deep alcove, a semicirque of stone, 
 With canopy of sculptured palm-leaves roofed, 
 From which the mountains of three famous realms. 
 Laved by the western seas, far off appeared. 
 Thither the gentle monks of Furness came, 
 Lonely or paired, what time the setting sun 
 Flamed o'er the golden sea and purple hills. 
 Duly each summer evening there they went 
 To feed the love of nature, whose prime seat 
 Is aptly fixed upon those modest thrones, — 
 The hearts of men of meditative ways 
 And frequent prayer. And to their chastened 
 thoughts 
 
326 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 Haply that landscape witnessed not so much 
 To God's creative love, as woke the thought 
 Of all that dread magnificent scene of wealth 
 By Satan shown from Quaratana's top, 
 Tempting the rightful Heir, and claiming then — 
 Ah, how the lordly minsters and sweet rites 
 Of Holy Church have falsified the claim! — 
 The beauty of the world to be his own, 
 Of old conceded to him, and abjured 
 By angry Heaven. 
 
 Such stations, for repose 
 And contemplation mixed, may yet be seen 
 By him who from Arezzo climbs the hill. 
 Whose other side, like some Cyclopean wall, 
 Rises a hoary rampart from the vale 
 Of Maldoli, so pleasantly outstretched 
 With sward and trees beneath the pilgrim's eye : 
 Or who essays — not without a thought 
 Deeper and chaster than the curious mood 
 Of restless voyager! — to scale the steep, 
 The pine-clad mountain of the Hermitage, 
 Whose threshold by the monitory name 
 Of Antony from mundane thoughts is barred. 
 There mid the rocks and whispering forests dwell 
 Saint Romuald's sons, begotten in the faith, 
 The noble of Kavenna whose high heart 
 Burned, like a seraph's, with extatic love, 
 Whose transports glistened through unceasing tears. 
 Ah ! he who by the seven clear water-springs 
 Shall sit, and overlook the solemn waste 
 And labyrinth of wild Apennines all round. 
 And white-stoled figures gliding through the pines, 
 Noiseless as sunbeams, and shall haply hear 
 
X.] THE COMMUNION. 827 
 
 The famous clock which lifts its mighty voice 
 In admonition of the coming End, 
 Throughout the savage desert audible, — 
 He, though his faith were cold as Alpine stone, 
 Shall feel how deep the simple love of earth 
 Was fixed in those ascetic brotherhoods. 
 Who seemed with such a single, aim to love 
 God, that they left no room for love of man ; 
 And in his heart shall carry to his home 
 This common wisdom, haply new to him, — 
 He, who would love the world to tears, must first 
 Renounce for God the love the world returns. 
 
 Yet those monastic wilds may not compare 
 With the broad prospect seen from Hawcoat Brow. 
 But rather apt resemblance may we find. 
 By some inferior deemed, in that Monk's Seat 
 Perched on the old Lactarian hills that rise 
 By Arola above Sorrento's steep, 
 A younger-born Camaldoli ; for there 
 The enchanted eye may wander from the cliffs 
 Of Capri northward to Miseno's horn, 
 While far above its giant beeches towers 
 The snowy summit of the Angel's Mount, 
 And old Vesuvio, querulously calm. 
 Sighs forth his azure smoke incessantly ; 
 Till the tired sight, enraptured, seeks repose 
 Upon the nodding clouds of umbrage sunk 
 Beneath it, on the silent chestnut groves 
 Of Arola, or sees, (and while it sees 
 Sleeps, cradled on the beautiful expanse,) 
 The murmuring crescent of Parthenope ! 
 
 From Hawcoat Hill an unfrequented road 
 Leads to the beach, and by the tower there stands, 
 Upon a weedy plot of wayside turf, 
 
328 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 A little hut, wherein the kindly monks, 
 
 When Mass was said, installed the grateful Knight, 
 
 In blissful peace, absolved and reconciled. 
 
 Not vain to him was that most wondrous view, — 
 
 Sea-girdled Mona, the advancing hills 
 
 Beyond the misty Solway caught and lost 
 
 In the blue haze, th^ scattered peaks of Wales 
 
 On the south shore like castles in the sea. 
 
 The convex of the Furness mountains, pierced 
 
 By the bright snaky Duddon, and Black Combe 
 
 Unveiling there his shadow-dappled face 
 
 With mute expression, to Sir Lancelot known ; 
 
 While, like a soft suffusion of fair light. 
 
 Calmly pervading many an inlet round, 
 
 The summer sea with luminous heaving spread. 
 
 And now to him adopted once again 
 Into the depths of Christian privilege. 
 His soul was free to wander unrebuked 
 Through the broad pastures of the ancient Truth 
 And Faith of catholic ages. To his mind 
 Two special fields of thought were now disclosed, 
 Not new, but in surpassing freshness clad. 
 Transcending far the light of novelty: 
 Even as the vales behind the mask of spring. 
 The glory of its verdure, hide themselves. 
 And while, entangled in the dream, our eyes 
 The open views of leafless winter seek, 
 From bush afid brake familiar features peer. 
 Scarce recognized for well-known household forma. 
 Two Powers lay open to his reverent love. 
 Waiting the homage of a soul at peace. 
 In full communion with the Holy Church ; 
 For such and such alone, (unless it be 
 The thoughts of children travel in those lands, 
 
X.] THE COMMUNION, 329 
 
 And sinning souls are vexed by glimpses sent 
 
 Reversed in broken dreams) shall find unbarred 
 
 The royal roads of secret intercourse, 
 
 Which cross the confines of the Invisible World. 
 
 Free was he now in meditative awe 
 
 To commune with the Angels and the Dead. 
 
 There have been holy men whose spirit's eye, 
 By outward rite to inward love sublimed, 
 Hath been so couched, that at the Blessed Mass 
 Angelic bands in manifest array 
 Have in the celebration borne their part, 
 Aiding the mortal priest : such extasy, 
 So legends tell, was anciently vouchsafed 
 To him of Tolentino, seraphlike, 
 Who from ascetic infancy grew up, 
 A lovely marvel mid his childish peers, 
 Unto the giant stature of a Saint. 
 So by angelic hands upon the side 
 Of Juliana, who in Florence wore 
 The Servite Mantle first, a visible seal, 
 The Sacred Host was once impressed, withdrawn 
 From out the hand of the astonished priest 
 Who held it to her bosom ; for so wrought 
 The extatic hunger of the heavenly Food, 
 What time her feebleness could ill sustain 
 Common reception : and ascetic love. 
 Outgrowing, not supplanting, ritual acts, 
 Might consummate an inward Eucharist. 
 
 O Mother Church ! who taught thine eye to see 
 The jealous veil of separation worn 
 Almost to nothing twixt the world of sight 
 And brighter world of faith, by those deep thrills 
 Of joy expecting her mysterious Food? 
 Who taught thy voice at that sweet point of time, 
 
330 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 When feasting souls, all eagle-like, ascend, 
 And in no self-sustaining rapture burst 
 On high into the quivering beams of song — 
 Who taught thy voice in that transcendent hour 
 Boldly to claim the Angels for thy peers, 
 And call Archangels fellow- worshippers, 
 While the expectation of thy kneeling sons 
 Outstrips the ritual, soars above the earth, 
 And, hidden among the Angels, finds its home ? 
 
 Sweet and tear-moving thoughts now calmly rose 
 Within Sir Lancelot's mind ; he seemed to dwell 
 Rather with Angels than his fellow men. 
 Their everlasting order and deep peace 
 Such grateful contemplation did afford, 
 As to the feeble but far-kenning sight 
 Of saintly men who bow themselves to die, 
 By thankless labours and rude days outworn. 
 O beautiful Kestraints in early years 
 From secret sins and negligence in prayer. 
 That make the darkness reverend, and disclose 
 The sparkling eye of solitude by day, 
 How blessed are your offices to man ! 
 Your presence is an endless ritual, 
 Whereby the soul makes real to herself 
 The Omnipresence of the Holy Three, 
 A truth so high, so infinitely raised 
 Above the baser moods of our terrestrial life, 
 We need the Patriarch's Ladder thus to scale 
 That height of doctrine most ineffable. 
 
 And hourly doth the soft constraining sense 
 Of your companionship and grave regards 
 Enhance our private acts, and solemnize 
 What else in our retired modesties 
 Might fail in dignity, until it grows 
 
X.] THE COMMUNION. 331 
 
 A ceremonial, by the humbled pride 
 And sober fancy not disdained as help 
 To loftier contemplation, breeding still, — 
 When we lie down to sleep and when we rise 
 And for our public life prepare ourselves 
 With all such comely types of inward things 
 As God hath made to wait on those vile acts,-— 
 Meekness of corporal attitude and grace 
 Of outward lowliness, which shall not fail 
 In time to win a beautiful response 
 From out the shrines of our interior life. 
 
 Such meditation on the thrice three rings 
 Of blest adoring spirits, which surround 
 The Enthroned Presence in the courts above, 
 In ceaseless Energy, or Servitude 
 Of an unutterably loving fear. 
 Contemplating the Attributes Divine,— 
 Precluded not a special homage paid 
 To his own Guardian Angel. Woe is me 
 That any blissful Sprite should be detained 
 From his more intimate happiness in Heaven, 
 To be the staff of my irregular steps. 
 My wayward treading and poor floundering feet, 
 Along the miry paths of human sin. 
 O I could pity thee. Angelic Guide ! 
 For thy base office, when I loathe myself 
 For hourly sins and pusillanimous ways, 
 Though at such seasons dearest far to thee ! 
 So now the Knight his Guardian Angel sought 
 With that subordinate worship, which the Church 
 To all her children studiously suggests, 
 An aid, if not a need, to sinning souls. 
 His deep affections did he oft project 
 Into the invisible world, a local worlds 
 
332 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 Not cast far off, but with its confines stretched 
 
 Hard by, yea truly touching on himself. 
 
 Oft did he lean upon his unseen Friend 
 
 With realized embrace of kindly thoughts 
 
 And answered invocation, craving still 
 
 To lose that friendship in the holier love 
 
 Of God and dearer neighbourhood of Christ, 
 
 And therefore supplicating for the hour, 
 
 When in the calm and orderly delight 
 
 Of resurrection we shall bid farewell, 
 
 Farewell unto his office, not his love, 
 
 To that sweet Guardian, whose commissioned help 
 
 Penance and Grace have prospered, and that day 
 
 (O be it so) have brought us satisfied 
 
 Unto the wakening likeness of our Lord, 
 
 The restful haven where we fain would be! 
 
 But greater still — if in such sacred things 
 Comparison befit our words or thoughts — 
 Was the sweet ravishment of tranquil joy, 
 Felt by the Knight in intercourse renewed 
 With those at rest, the holy suffering Souls 
 Twixt earth and heaven, to earthly hearts a bond 
 More sensibly imposed upon our hopes 
 And pure affections, than the wandering love 
 Which meets the Angels on its heavenward road. 
 The peaceful intercession of the Dead, 
 The privilege of prayer for them, in faith 
 That knows not what or where their spirits are, 
 Yet less they miss of aught they might obtain, 
 Progress or increment or deepened peace, 
 In that their present state still dares to pray, 
 And loves her daring ; — such his blameless joys, 
 Part of the deep Communion of the Saints, 
 Part, not the Crown ; a higher Union still 
 
X.] THE COMMUNION. 333 
 
 Eemains which my weak song may not essay, 
 Nor vileness contemplate except far off. 
 These were the blameless joys Sir Lancelot felt, 
 Blameless by man, but far more than that. 
 Far more than unblamed sacrifice to Him, 
 In whose pure Eye the Universal Church, 
 The myriad Saints already throned in heaven, 
 The pilgrim Dead still somewhere on their road 
 Bedewed with peaceful fires, the scattered few 
 Who live and fight, one only Body are ! 
 
 But further heights there were for him to climb, 
 Which common Christians in their low estate 
 Gaze on from far ; and speak with puzzled words, 
 A cloudy nomenclature, of the stairs 
 Which lead unto the temple of the Saints, 
 By science not unmeasured, and to us 
 A profitable knowledge, if it put 
 More emulous life into our trivial acts. 
 
 Those mystical Ascents Sir Lancelot now 
 Essayed to climb upon his bended knees, 
 As pilgrims climb the tear-dropped Stairs at Home. 
 And first from Meditation was he led 
 To Kecollection, where his mental powers 
 Acted less fretfully, the vestibule 
 Of mystic Contemplation, in whose depths 
 The passive souls of Saints abide and breathe. 
 More wonderful that Spiritual Calm 
 Which follows Kecollection, when the heart. 
 With holy Presences dilated, hangs 
 In tranquil balance fixed upon one thought, 
 One special and engrossing Act of Christ, 
 Or with collected vagueness all diffused. 
 And lost within a breathless extasy 
 Of rapturous homage to the Triune God, 
 
834 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 And wherein even the body takes its part. 
 
 By mortifying practices sublimed, 
 
 Not seldom lifted gently from the ground 
 
 With slow ascension, and with upraised arms 
 
 And garments floating on the radiant air ; — 
 
 Unearthly favours, yet accompanied 
 
 With perfect recognition of the Will 
 
 To make all fitting Acts of Faith and Love, 
 
 Of Self-oblation and heroic Vows. 
 
 A further truth Sir Lancelot had to learn : 
 That God is jealous of His Own good gifts, 
 W^hen they are loved in place of God Himself. 
 And as erewhile within the gloomy Ark 
 He shut great Noe when the floods were out, 
 So in a prison, painful, dim, and straight, 
 Doth He confine the Saints to be prepared. 
 By keen ablution of the inward man. 
 For contemplation of His Blessed Self. 
 Dryness of Sense there comes to tempt the soul 
 No more to persevere in bootless prayer ; 
 Dryness of Spirit next, when loving Fast 
 And cheering Vigil, nay, the Mass itself 
 Doth but augment the sadness of the heart. 
 And prompts it kneeling at the Altar-step, 
 To hate the God who gives His Flesh to us: — 
 A Penal Light, so theologians call 
 Tliis piercing grief, as giving to the Saints 
 Knowledge of previous darkness to enhance 
 The beauty of the sunrise yet to come. 
 Such was the Penal Light the Florentine, 
 Of Pazzi's noble stock, five years endured ; 
 But days were years unto Sir Lancelot's soul 
 Now that his pilgrimage drew near its close. 
 
 For soon to him the half-enlightened dawn 
 
X.] THE COMMUNION. 335 
 
 Of Contemplation broke, wherein his eye 
 
 Compassed Aifirmative Truths, which lay distinct, 
 
 In several orders lucidly combined, 
 
 And tangible by thought if not by words. 
 
 Then finally his soul was introduced 
 
 To that Clear Darkness, which the Saints so name 
 
 Because the abounding light of Heaven obscures 
 
 Our helpless reason, blinds our keenest thoughts, 
 
 Buries our faith, and overlays the will, 
 
 And through its dim confusing splendour gives 
 
 Some joyous cognizance of Things Divine, 
 
 Places and Persons, Names and Vocal Sounds,— 
 
 Till in her Passive Union with her Lord 
 
 The soul, long waiting, years ago betrothed, 
 
 Keeping her plighted troth by strictest acts 
 
 Of diligent penance and ascetic love. 
 
 Finds her sweet Bridal Hour come unawares, 
 
 And Heaven begun ere Earth is passed away ! 
 
 Such were the joys that now engrossed the months 
 Which followed his forgiveness by the Church, 
 Joys, which in that forgiveness only found 
 Their lawful root ; and every passing week 
 Beheld a change come o'er his bodily frame. 
 We might believe it was the will of Heaven 
 By its immediate and upholding Hand, 
 Foregoing usual customs, to confine 
 The life within his frame, where health and strength 
 Their strongholds had forsaken and betrayed, 
 Until the work of grace was now complete. 
 The penance done, the sinner reconciled. 
 The individual soul, with travail long 
 And dark and dubious, born unto the Church 
 A second time with new baptismal life 
 From out that cloudy Font, by love reserved 
 
336 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 For such as forfeited by mortal sin 
 
 The sweet adoption of the Watery Birth, 
 
 And facile grace so freely there consigned. 
 
 For now without apparent cause of age 
 Or sickness, as if that sustaining Hand 
 Had been withdrawn, by some invisible vents 
 His life ebbed from him gently like a stream. 
 Prayer and the feeble breathings of his praise, 
 The weariness of rapture in his heart 
 Immured, the speechless fervour of his joy, 
 The very murmurs of the placid sea, 
 The very tolling of the abbey bells. 
 The very pulses of the summer day, 
 The very tingling of the starry nights. 
 Preyed on his life, and seemed with silent shocks 
 To disembarrass his impatient soul 
 Of its half ruined tenement of flesh. 
 Some portion of his perishable life 
 Now daily grew eternal : no one hour 
 Straitened or held the solemn act of death : 
 But immortality in vases caught 
 His life as it was spilled, a silent scene 
 Of mystery : the ocean never ebbed 
 So silently as did that vital stream. 
 
 Towards the close of an October day, 
 St. Denys' Eve, which seemed for warmth to be 
 An afterthought of summer, from that Seat 
 Within the stone alcove Sir Lancelot watched 
 The bright and early sunset : all around 
 A soft pathetic brilliance overspread 
 The autumnal scene, such splendour as befits 
 The days which through the immediate gates of night 
 Withdraw, and earth her welcome hour no more 
 Within the roseate antechamber waits 
 
X.] THE COMMUNION. 337 
 
 Of painted twilight. Not a sound was heard, 
 Which intercepted from the listening ear 
 The deep tranquillity of earth, and sky, 
 And the bright plain of sea ; a drowsy hum 
 From the faint ivy-flowers that fringed the wall,— 
 The autumnal banquet of the languid bees, — 
 A quickening in the murmur of the waves 
 From Walney Meetings where the clashing tides 
 Are locked in mutual eddies, — these were sounds 
 With no intrusive power to dispossess 
 The patient sense of that celestial calm. 
 
 The wooded hill sloped seaward from the brow 
 Where the Monk's Chair was placed: a broad 
 
 expanse 
 Of tinted foliage lay upon the right ; 
 A wilderness of yellow birch it was 
 With vivid scarlet delicately veined 
 Or spotted, as the birds had dropped the seed 
 Of the wild cherry whose ensanguined leaves 
 Flamed in the sunset, while the fir-tree domes 
 Of everlasting green came floating up, 
 Like clouds, from out the depths of underwood. 
 Westward, but with a radiant strait between. 
 The Isle of Walney to the sandy skirts 
 Of the low mainland clung, a counterscarp 
 By nature reared against the leaning sea 
 To guard the monks' peninsula, and then. 
 Though treeless now, it was a wail of wood 
 That from the water rose, and ever fell 
 Eastward, or in the act of falling seemed. 
 With such continuous pressure was the hand 
 Of the wild-blowing west detained thereon. 
 And down the glittering channel was an eye 
 Of golden sand, a smooth and wave-girt ring, 
 
 2« 
 
338 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 SuriBounted by a coronet of rock. 
 
 The shoal of Fouldrey, where the flocking gulls 
 
 With mournful cries their nightly councils held, 
 
 For human habitation then unclaimed. 
 
 There now, its age of pride and glory past, 
 
 In slow decay the abbot's mouldering pile 
 
 Fights with the winds and waves, the rude allies 
 
 Of time, and still their joint assaults resists. 
 
 A touching solitude it is, beheld 
 
 Through the grey sea-fogs looming, like the wreck 
 
 Of some huge ship to those who roam far off 
 
 In Furness by the Druid's hoary ring 
 
 On Birkrigg, or the groves of Aldingham, 
 
 Or heights that guard fair Urswick's reedy pool. 
 
 The quiet haunt of silky-feathered coots. 
 
 Or those who try the perilous ascent 
 
 Of Gleaston's crazy towers ; — more mournful still 
 
 That isolated ruin will appear, 
 
 When in the cold illumination lost 
 
 Of sunset, on the line of sandhills poured 
 
 And dreary leagues of wet and furrowed beach, 
 
 With some poor fishing vessels laid aslant 
 
 Among the slimy stones beneath the pile : 
 
 Or at full sea more melancholy still, 
 
 At dead of night, when on the waves below 
 
 The moonbeams through the vacant crennels play 
 
 In tremulous agitation, while for hours 
 
 Doth ocean, like Penelope of old. 
 
 Weave and unweave those threads of silver light, 
 
 And at pale dawn upon the watery loom 
 
 Where be the signs of that nocturnal toil? 
 
 All things around their usual aspect wore, 
 An exquisite, and yet most common, peace. 
 But there was something in that evening sky, 
 
X.] THE COMMUNION. 389 
 
 A trouble of red light, that would arrest 
 And overawe the heart whose varying moods 
 By natural signs through sinaple love were steered. 
 Somewhat of pathos was there, intermixed 
 In that solemnity with which the sun 
 Went to his setting, something I would call 
 Portentous, that might tranquillize the mind 
 Through timorous expectation. 
 
 From his chair 
 Sir Lancelot looked out upon the sea. 
 The sun was veiled behind a heavy cloud, 
 "Which hung above the water with a space 
 Of light between the ocean and itself, 
 That seemed to burn with tongues of shooting flame, 
 An endless, endless distance to the west; 
 And sable bars of dusky vapour shot 
 Athwart the abyss of gold, while up the vale, 
 The hollow vale of Duddon, in a gloom 
 Of misty purple shadow far withdrawn, 
 There ran a single line of sullen light 
 Where the cold sea an entrance found, and there 
 Behind the frowning portals of the gorge 
 Was lost to view ; even as the closing grave 
 Screens from all eyes, save only those of faith, 
 The track where passing souls prolong their flight: 
 A melancholy type, not unobserved 
 By him whose mind for many a month had been 
 Tinged with the solemn thoughts of death. And yet 
 There wanted not a truer image far 
 Of that dread passage, in the glory stretched 
 Across the infinite illumined sea. 
 And in the golden mountain-tops that formed 
 The radiant distance where old Mona lay 
 Eight in the bosom of the setting sun. 
 
340 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 He looked until his eyes were dimmed with tears. 
 Such thoughts that glory stirred; and bodily 
 
 strength 
 Appeared to go forth from him as he gazed, 
 Drained from his eyes by that surpassing light 
 Whose sweet compulsion had drawn up those tears. 
 It seemed as if that natural pomp had been 
 A silent incantation which had power 
 To evoke the spirit from its earthly frame, 
 Worn and decayed by too much fellowship 
 With the outward elements, and wet and cold 
 And blinding mists that on high summits dwell : 
 Though he had stood amongst them like the rock 
 That fronts the innocuous fury of the waves, 
 And, to appearance, flung the damps and storms 
 From off his temperate health as from a shield. 
 Now with the radiant vision overpowered. 
 Sir Lancelot leaned, half swooning, on his staff. 
 Which was an ill-shaped Cross of ruddy yew 
 By nature framed, through chance or through design, 
 As men may deem material forms endowed 
 With spirit, and capricious growths o'er-ruled 
 To be suggestive to the feeling heart ; 
 And on the staff the knight from Holy Writ, 
 A Latin legend carved, whose import was — 
 
 * We justly bear the Cross because therein 
 
 * We bear the harvest of our deeds, but nought 
 
 * Was done amiss by Him who bore it first.' 
 
 From the sea-shore there wandered at that hour 
 A poor half-witted boy, with long white hair 
 And eyes with wild unmeaning lustre bright, 
 Well known in Furness as the Lucky Guy. 
 His days, as ever seems to be the wont 
 Of those in his sad plight, in open air 
 
X.] THE COMMUNION, 341 
 
 Among the woods and flowery lanes were passed. 
 
 Nor wanted he an office that might yield 
 
 To his poor parents some return of gain, 
 
 Beyond the dole which at the abbey dooT 
 
 On Fridays he reeeived, when Father Hugh 
 
 Gave him his blessing, and with kindly thought, 
 
 Long baffled, showed him how to sign the Cross. 
 
 Oft in the fields near Ilawcoat was he seen 
 
 In the close centre of a hollow bush. 
 
 With head and hands apparent, and a ring 
 
 Of eager sheep that gathered round the spot, 
 
 While he flung down the juicy shoots, and peered 
 
 From out his nest to watch the greedy strife, 
 
 And clapped his hands, and with a shrill delight 
 
 Chuckled to see the passions that displaced 
 
 Tlie quiet nature of the patient flock. 
 
 And many a time did his pleased mother hear 
 
 I'he neighbours round good-naturedly complain 
 
 That Guy with covetous diligence was first 
 
 To rifle all the summer's tender growth 
 
 Upon the trees, and at the halls and towers 
 
 From Morecambe Bay to Ulpha, and the Grange 
 
 By Waberthwaite, where dwelt St. Michael's clerk, 
 
 While flesh of sheep on sprigs of holly fed 
 
 More than the fatted buck was prized, the flock 
 
 Of Guy's own tending was the most in quest. 
 
 And when the vexed Atlantic after storms 
 
 Subsided to its heavy swell, a toil 
 
 Of different sort was his, upon the shore 
 
 To cull the fans of rosy carrageen. 
 
 Which from the Irish rocks the fretting tide 
 
 Had chafed, and, with a single handful rich, 
 
 The booty of a long day's search he then 
 
 To Father Jocelyn at the Abbey sold, 
 
342 SIE LANCELOT. [bOOK \ 
 
 Who by his ghostly blessing turned it white, ] 
 
 So Guy believed, and in the holy hands 
 
 Of that pure-hearted lover of the herbs i 
 
 And the cool simples, that poor ocean weed \ 
 
 An angel held and gained a wondrous power, ] 
 
 As Paul of Elliscales could well attest, ^ 
 
 Or Cicely of the farm on Goldmire Green, 
 
 To banish pining weakness from the limbs I 
 
 And prop the body up as on a staff. i 
 
 Next to his mother there was none on earth j 
 
 Save Father Hugh perchance, whom Guy had loved i 
 
 More than Sir Lancelot, in the three short months ] 
 
 Of their acquaintance ; for the boy discerned j 
 
 Between the greeting of the rustics pitched j 
 
 Somewhere 'twixt mirth and kindness, and the voice ■ 
 And gentle bearing of the well-born Knight ; 
 
 Who offc would aid him when upon the sand | 
 
 With painful stoop he gleaned the precious weed, ] 
 
 While to the wonder-stricken youth he spoke ; 
 
 Of the Great God upon that blank sea-side ' 
 In ways that bred a pleasurable awe 
 
 And inward stirring of his thoughts, which was \ 
 Akin to reason, and enough for prayer. 
 
 When Guy beheld Sir Lancelot on his staff 
 
 In attitude of pain or awkward sleep, ] 
 
 He dropped his bunch of carrageen, and raised \ 
 
 The feeble man against the stone alcove. ? 
 
 Sir Lancelot spoke not, but he smiled his thanks, | 
 
 And gazed once more upon the setting sun, j 
 The orb now rested on the burnished waves 
 
 Alone and disencumbered, not a mote i 
 
 Of fleecy cloud in transit o*er its face. 1 
 And from the sunken vale behind there rose 
 
 i 
 
 In bland pulsations on the quiet air j 
 
X.] THE COMMUNION. 343 
 
 Saint Mary's vesper bell ; toll after toll 
 
 In modulated melancholy came, 
 
 Borne seaward on the breeze : and simple Gay 
 
 Who saw the sinking sun, the dying man, 
 
 And heard the plaining bell, not wrongly deemed 
 
 AU meant alike, all were harmonious parts 
 
 Of some most touching pageant, for the love 
 
 Of God and Jesus celebrated there. 
 
 Still the Knight gazed upon the setting sun : 
 
 It seemed as if from out that radiant fount 
 
 He quaffed the golden light with thirsty sense, 
 
 So earnestly he gazed, till like a tide. 
 
 An influx of eternity, it rose 
 
 Upon his mortal nature more and more 
 
 With placid might, until from every depth 
 
 Of his terrestrial being it dislodged 
 
 The feeble remnants of his strength, and thence 
 
 With bodily thrills of deep adoring love 
 
 The spirit from its trammels disengaged: 
 
 And while he sank in that poor stripling's arms. 
 
 His hands devoutly on his bosom crossed, 
 
 'Twas rather immortality than death 
 
 Which was the first to win his life. He passed, 
 
 A passage painless as the gates of sleep, 
 
 A wafture like an Angelas even wing. 
 
 What time the vesper summons ceased to toll 
 
 And with its last vibration o'er the sea 
 
 Ran till it touched the silent thrilling orb, — 
 
 Whereat the latest rim of setting sun 
 
 Paused — and went down beneath the line of waves, — 
 
 And with an after-flash that shot on high 
 
 Seemed like an Arm of Light that beckoned him, — 
 
 No soul was e'er more gently dispossessed I 
 
344 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 How tranquilly the mild sea-murmur comes ; 
 
 This balmy day to try the echoing tones - 
 
 Of great Black Combe ! A tender voice it is, "^ 
 And with sweet feeling doth accompany 
 
 The wind, that wild and wayward organist 1 
 
 Who o'er the huge sonorous hill presides, ] 
 
 And ever plays to yon responsive sea I 
 
 Low dirgelike music; or with troubled keys \ 
 
 Loud voluntaries, passionately struck, j 
 
 Ruffle the mane of ocean as the storm \ 
 
 Rolls upward, winding his terrific blast j 
 
 Which frets the purple plain with snowy spray. ^ 
 
 But now, methinks, in tender concert joined, i 
 
 The shadowy Mountain with its neighbouring Sea] i 
 
 Would fain essay on my behalf a dirge, j 
 
 A requiem for the lone Sir Lancelot, — | 
 
 That wandering Presence unforgotten yet ) 
 
 Upon the silent summit of the hill, j 
 
 Late, at the truthful bidding of my thoughts, 1 
 So oft environed by his restless feet. 
 
 So often vocal with his prayer or praise. I 
 
 Spirit! in whose companionship my mind i 
 
 For days of meditative love hath been, | 
 
 O with what true compassion have I burned t 
 
 For thine invented griefs, with what a heart ] 
 
 Of sympathy have I been wrought to tears, 1 
 
 And to hot rising thoughts more sharp than tears, ] 
 
 In musing o'er thy weariness, thy months i 
 
 Of self-accusing penance, and thy joys, — ! 
 
 The sacred Image granted to thine eye ^ 
 
 Of Jesus, and the timorous approach j 
 
 Of thine affections to the Mother Maid, i 
 
 The ritual Cross, and depth of sacrament | 
 
 Laid up unheeded in the common gift ^ 
 
X.] THE COMMUNION. 345 
 
 Of Speech whereby we name the special Name 
 Which stirs high Heaven and shakes the bolts of hell, 
 The Keys of Absolution in thy soul 
 Revolving sensibly, the vocal Dead 
 Into sweet contact coming with thy prayers, 
 The Angelic Ladders which to thy pure eye 
 Broke forth, obscuring all the solemn types 
 Of things inanimate, and blossoming 
 In steplike forms and luminous ascents 
 From out the apparent poverty of earth ! 
 Witness, ye cornices of mountain rock ! 
 Where I have murmured verses by the hour, 
 Ye winds! on which my voice hath oft been raised 
 With tremulous feeling, and, ye waterfalls ! 
 Which interwove your music with my strains ; — 
 Witness, thou quiet-lapsing Nen, and fields 
 Belted with silent steeples, like a ring 
 Of citadels to keep low thoughts away, — 
 Choice haunt of rural silence, undisturbed 
 Save by the infrequent boatman's song, or plaint, 
 For let us not misname it noisy mirth, 
 Of corncrake, its monotonous vespers singing. 
 In the concealment of the meadow-grass ! — 
 Or those much-cherished colonists, a pair 
 Of turtle-doves, with their soft woodland notes 
 Deepening so unaccountably the calm. 
 The summer-calm of those most pastoral banks ! — 
 Witness, if with unfeeling pains of art, 
 Or if with idle purpose I have sung 
 This lofty song, or dared to press the keys 
 Of spiritual music with an awe 
 Less deep than that wherewith a serious man 
 Upon a week-day in an empty Church 
 Bide the loud organ speak, and calls the stones 
 
346 SIR LANCELOT. [bOOK 
 
 To echo worship when tiie lips of men 
 Are silent, and, with frequent change of tune. 
 Oft like hushed breezes sinking self-subdued, 
 Plays to the Altar and the Angels there ! 
 
 Spirit ! which I have summoned from the Past, 
 (Freedom perchance too bold) and singled out 
 From the great multitude of souls who lie 
 Deep in the bosom of eternal light, 
 Not without purpose have I dared to think. 
 To speak, for those of that departed Age, 
 Investing them througli thee with such a light 
 As hath to mine own conscience been a lamp. 
 And might enlarge the hearts of those I love. 
 If God so further mine unworthy verse. 
 
 So have I sung as one who greatly fears 
 Lest the uncouth aspect of his real wish, 
 And urgent clamour of bold words, should scare 
 The hearts he fain would lure unto an end, 
 A mighty end whose safety and whose strength 
 He hath to his own conscience ascertained 
 By inward thought, the test of outward act. 
 And secret anguish of some dreadful hours 
 That leaned their weight on one most feeble truth. 
 Torturing the firmness which they could not break. 
 And if at times the pressure of a thought, 
 Rumours of actual conflict, or the wound 
 Of personal strife, have rent the figured veil. 
 And from its hidden course the indignant song. 
 Weary of its disguise, hath broken forth. 
 With the shrill Present drowning those soft strains 
 Which came refined by distance from the Past, 
 The very fault in minstrel-craft bat serves 
 To make the surface of my song reflect. 
 Even as the unconscious mirror of a lake. 
 
X.] THE COMMUNION. 347 
 
 The shadows of the times, when hardy truth. 
 By poor conventions overlaid, hath dared 
 To emerge above the impediments, and stand 
 Before the unwilling presence of the world, 
 Through deeds which for the moment have appeared 
 To shift the ancient bouads of right and wrong, — 
 Times when the strife 'twixt Earnestness and Forms 
 Hath reached its height, and victory's golden beam 
 Inclines, but hath not absolutely sunk. 
 
 Hearts of England ! loyal, good, and true, 
 Lovers of home beyond all other men. 
 Yet without homes for your uncertain souls, — 
 Forgive me, if from out my happy home 
 Of faith that hath forgotten how to doubt, 
 In hopeful love one counsel more I give. 
 Simplicity is ever nigh to Truth, 
 And hath a royal road thereto, — a road 
 Better than long inductions, and the lore 
 Of coarse disdainful polemics, and steps, 
 Hardly and separately won, of proofs 
 And disentangled doubts, — a royal road 
 Which if ye humbly tread, why should ye fear 
 Though Conscience with infallible constraints. 
 Turning your faces homeward, bring your steps 
 Back to the foot of Peter's Sovran Chair ? 
 
 THB XNP. 
 
 BICHABDSON ANO SON, PBlNTlt«S, DEBBT. 
 
PUBLISHED BY RICHARDSON AND SON. 
 
 LIFE AND LETTERS OF FEEDEBICK WILLIAM 
 FABER, D.D., Priest of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri. 
 By John Edward Bowden, of the same Congregation. One 
 vol., demy 8vo, price lOs. 6d., full gilt sides 2s. 6d. extra. 
 
 BRIEF SKETCH OF THE EAKLY LIFE OF THE LATE 
 F. W, FABER, D.D. By his only surviving Brother. Post 
 8vo, price 2s. 6d. 
 
 WORKS BY THE VERY REV. DR. FABER. 
 
 NOTES ON DOCTRINAL AND SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS. 
 Selected from the Papers of the late Very Rev. Father Faber, 
 D.D,, Priest of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri. Edited by 
 John Edward Bowden, Priest of the same Congregation. 
 Complete in two volumes, price 10s. 
 
 ALL FOR JESUS : or the Easy Ways of Divine Love. With a 
 copious Index. (Eighth Edition, Fifteenth thousand.) Price 5s. 
 
 THE PRECIOUS BLOOD ; or the Price of our Salvation. 
 (Second Edition, Fourth thousand.) Price 58. 
 
 BETHLEHEM. With a copious Index. (Second Edition.) Ta. 
 
 THE BLESSED SACRAMENT; or the Works and Ways of 
 God. With a copious Index. (Third Edition, Sixth Thou- 
 sand.) Price 7s. 6d. 
 
 THE CREATOR AND THE CREATURE ; or the Wonders of 
 Divine Love. (Fourth Edition, Fifth Thousand.) Price 6s. 
 
 SPIRITUAL CONFERENCES. (Third Edition, Fifth Thou- 
 sand. ) With a copious Index. Price 6s. 
 
 GROWTH IN HOLINESS, or the Progress of the Spiritual Life. 
 (Third Edition, Sixth Thousand.) With a copious Index. 68. 
 
 HYMNS, hitlierto scattered in different Publications, together 
 with Fifty-Six New Hymns. (Second Edition.) Price 6s. 
 
 THE FOOT OF THE CROSS : or the Sorrows of Mary. With 
 a copious Index. (Fourth Edition, Sixth Thousand.) Price 6s. 
 
 ETHEL'S BOOK : or, Tales of the Angels. (Second Edition.) 
 Price 2s. 6d. 
 
 SIR LANCELOT. A Tale of the Middle Ages. (Second Edi- 
 tion.) Price 5s. 
 
 POEMS. (Fourth Edition.) Price 7s. 6d. 
 
 AN ESSAY on CANONIZATION and BEATIFICATION. Ss. 
 
 AN ESSAY ON THE INTERESTS AND CHARACTERIS- 
 TICS OF THE LIVES OF THE SAINTS. Price 28. 
 
 AN ESSAY ON CATHOLIC HOME MISSIONS. Printed 
 wrapper, price Is. 6d. 
 
 DEVOTION TO THE POPE. Price 4d. 
 
 DEVOTION TO THE CHURCH. Price 4d. 
 
 DEVOTION TO THE POPE, and DEVOTION TO THE 
 CHURCH. Third Edition, price 3d. 
 
PUBLISHED BY RICHARDSON AND SON. 
 
 A LETTER to the Members of the Confraternity of the Most 
 Precious Blood. 8 pages 8vo. fine paper, |d. 
 
 THANKSGIVING AFTER COMMUNION. From "All for 
 Jesus." Price Id. in wrapper. 
 
 THREE BEAUTIFUL PRINTS OF THE HOLY SOULS 
 IN PURGATORY. With Verses. Price One Penny each. 
 
 SCHEME OF INTERCESSORY PRAYER for the MONTH. 
 For tlie Use of the Confraternity of the Precious Blood. Id. 
 
 THE LONDON ORATORY and the Union Newspaper. Being 
 Three Letters on the Respect Due to Our Blessed Lord, Id. 
 
 THE MONTH OF MARY CONCEIVED WITHOUT SIN. 
 Translated from the French of A. Gkatrv, Prieat of the 
 Oratory of the Immaculate Conception. With an Introduction 
 by the Very Rev. F. W. Faber, D.D., of the London Oratory. 
 Superfine paper, cloth lettered, price 3s. 
 
 THE NEW GLORIES OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH, 
 Translated from the Italian, by the Fathers of the London 
 Oratory, at the request of the Cardinal Archbishop of West- 
 minster, with a Preface by His Eminence. Superfine paper, 
 price 4s. 6d. 
 
 DEVOTION TO THE HEART OF JESUS. With an Intro- 
 duction on the History of Jansenism. By the Rev. Father 
 Dalgairns, Priest of the Oratory. Superfine cloth, lettered, 
 price 33. 6d. 
 
 MEDALS OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD. Id. 
 
 MEDALS OF ST, PHILIP NERI, ^d. and Id. 
 
 EDITED BY THE VERY REVEREND DR. FABER. 
 
 ©ratnrtan ^ib^s oi t^e Saints, 
 
 Translated from various languages, for spiritual reading, with 
 Prefaces, post 8vo., cloth lettered, price 4s. per volume. 
 Companions of St. Philip Neri, 1 vol. — Fathers of the Oratory. 
 B. Sebastian Valfre, De Santi, Matteucci, 1 vol. — B. Sebastian of 
 Apparizio, 1 vol. — St. Alphonso Liguori, 5 vols. — Companions of 
 St. Alphonso, I vol. — F. Anchieta, Alvera Von Virmundt, V, 
 John Berchmans, 1 vol. — B. Benedict Joseph Labre, 1 vol. — 
 Fathers of the Oratory, V. Fabrizio Dall' Aste, V. Mariano 
 Sozzini, 1 vol. — St. Joseph Calasanctius, B. Ippolito Galantuii, 
 1 vol. — St. Camilius of Lellis, V. Louis da Ponte, and F. La 
 Nuza, 2 vols. — Fathers of the Oratory, Talpa, Eustachio, and 
 Prever, 1 vol. — Fathers Segneri, Piuamonti, and V. John De 
 Britto, 1 vol. — St. Catherine of Ricci, 1 vol. — B, Paul of tiie 
 Cross, 3 vols. — St. Peter of Alcantara, and Ven. Father Ignaiius 
 Azevedo, 2 vols. — Pope Benedict XIV. on Heroic Virtue, 3 vols. 
 
 ST. PHILIP NERI, one volume, price Ss. 
 
 B. MARGARET MARY ALACOQUE, 1 vol. price Ss. 
 
 ST. ROSE OF LIMA, B. Colomba of Rieti, and St. Juliana 
 
 Falconieri, complete in one volume, price 43. 
 ST. FRANCIS OF SALES, complete in two volumes, price Sa. 
 Any volume may be had separately. 
 
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GENERAL LIBRARY - U.C. BERKELEY 
 
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