VI.

The leper raised not the gold from the dust: "Better to me the poor man's crust, 160 Better the blessing of the poor, Though I turn me empty from his door; That is no true alms which the hand can hold; He gives nothing but worthless gold Who gives from a sense of duty; 165 But he who gives but a slender mite, And gives to that which is out of sight, That thread of the all-sustaining Beauty Which runs through all and doth all unite,-- The hand cannot clasp the whole of his alms, 170 The heart outstretches its eager palms, For a god goes with it and makes it store To the soul that was starving in darkness before."

PRELUDE TO PART SECOND.

Down swept the chill wind from the mountain peak,[3] From the snow five thousand summers old; 175 On open wold and hill-top bleak It had gathered all the cold, And whirled it like sleet on the wanderer's cheek; It carried a shiver everywhere From the unleafed boughs and pastures bare; 180 The little brook heard it and built a roof 'Neath which he could house him, winter-proof; All night by the white stars frosty gleams He groined his arches and matched his beams; Slender and clear were his crystal spars 185 As the lashes of light that trim the stars; He sculptured every summer delight In his halls and chambers out of sight; Sometimes his tinkling waters slipt Down through a frost-leaved forest-crypt, 190 Long, sparkling aisles of steel-stemmed trees Bending to counterfeit a breeze; Sometimes the roof no fretwork knew But silvery mosses that downward grew; Sometimes it was carved in sharp relief 195 With quaint arabesques of ice-fern leaf;

[Footnote 3: Note the different moods that are indicated by the two preludes. The one is of June, the other of snow and winter. By these preludes the poet, like an organist, strikes a key which he holds in the subsequent parts.]

[Illustration: As Sir Launfal Made Morn Through the Darksome Gate.]

Sometimes it was simply smooth and clear For the gladness of heaven to shine through, and here He had caught the nodding bulrush-tops And hung them thickly with diamond-drops, 200 That crystalled the beams of moon and sun, And made a star of every one: No mortal builder's most rare device[4] Could match this winter-palace of ice; 'Twas as if every image that mirrored lay 205 In his depths serene through the summer day,[5] Each fleeting shadow of earth and sky, Lest the happy model should be lost, Had been mimicked in fairy masonry By the elfin builders of the frost. 210

Within the hall are song and laughter, The cheeks of Christmas grow red and jolly, And sprouting is every corbel and rafter With lightsome green of ivy and holly; Through the deep gulf of the chimney wide 215 Wallows the Yule-log's roaring tide The broad flame-pennons droop and flap And belly and tug as a flag in the wind; Like a locust shrills the imprisoned sap, Hunted to death in its galleries blind; 220 And swift little troops of silent sparks, Now pausing, now scattering away as in fear, Go threading the soot-forest's tangled darks Like herds of startled deer. But the wind without was eager and sharp, 225 Of Sir Launfal's gray hair it makes a harp, And rattles and wrings The icy strings, Singing, in dreary monotone, A Christmas carol of its own, 230 Whose burden still, as he might guess, Was--"Shelterless, shelterless, shelterless!" The voice of the seneschal flared like a torch As he shouted the wanderer away from the porch, And he sat in the gateway and saw all night 235 The great hall-fire, so cheery and bold, Through the window-slits of the castle old, Build out its piers of ruddy light Against the drift of the cold.

[Footnote 4: The Empress of Russia, Catherine II., in a magnificent freak, built a palace of ice, which was a nine-days' wonder. Cowper has given a poetical description of it in _The Task_, Book V. lines 131-176.]

[Footnote 5: The Yule-log was anciently a huge log burned at the feast of Juul (pronounced Yule) by our Scandinavian ancestors in honor of the god Thor. Juul-tid (Yule-time) corresponded in time to Christmas tide, and when Christian festivities took the place of pagan, many ceremonies remained. The great log, still called the Yule-log, was dragged in and burned in the fireplace after Thor had been forgotten.]

PART SECOND.