cowslip startles in meadows green,The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice,
And there's never a leaf or a blade too mean
To be some happy creature's palace;
The little bird sits at his door in the sun
Atilt like a blossom among the leaves,
And lets his illumined being o'errun
With the deluge of summer it receives.
His mate feels the eggs beneath her wings,
And the heart in her dumb breast flutters and sings —
He sings to the wide world, she to her nest.
Joy comes, grief goes, we know not how;
Everything is happy now,
Everything is upward striving;
'Tis as easy now for the heart to be true
As for grass to be green or skies to be blue, —
'Tis the natural way of living:
Who knows whither the clouds have fled?
In the unscarred heaven they leave no wake;
And the eyes forget the tears they have shed,
And the heart forgets its sorrow and ache;
And the soul partakes the season's youth."
The drawbridge of the castle is let down, and Sir Launfal, on his charger, springs from under the archway, clothed in his glittering mail —
"To seek in all climes for the Holy Grail."
"As Sir Launfal made morn through the darksome gate
He was ware of a leper, crouched by the same,
Who begged with his hand and moaned as he sate;
And a loathing over Sir Launfal came;
The sunshine went out of his soul with a thrill,
The flesh 'neath his armour did shrink and crawl,
For this man, so foul and bent of stature,
Rasped harshly against his dainty nature,
And seemed the one blot on the summer morn, —
So he tossed him a piece of gold in scorn.
The leper raised not the gold from the dust:
'Better to me the poor man's crust.
Better the blessing of the poor,
Though I turn me empty from his door;
That is no true alms which, the hand can hold.'"
Sir Launfal proceeds in search of the Holy Grail; but he finds it not. He returns an old man, worn with toil, and sad at heart, and full of tender commiseration for all the afflicted and distressed. It is winter when he returns to his castle. There sits the same miserable leper, and moans out the same prayer for alms; but this time it is answered in a very different spirit.
"Straightway he
Remembered in what a haughty guise
He had flung an alms to leprosie,
When he caged his young life up in gilded mail
To set forth in search of the Holy Grail —
The heart within him was ashes and dust;
He parted in twain his single crust,
He broke the ice on the streamlet's brink,
And gave the leper to eat and to drink;
'Twas a mouldy crust of coarse brown bread,
'Twas water out of a wooden bowl, —
Yet with fine wheaten bread was the leper fed,
And 'twas red wine he drank with his thirsty soul.
As Sir Launfal mused with a downcast face,
A light shone round about the place;
The leper no longer crouched at his side,
But stood before him glorified,
And a voice that was calmer than silence said —
'In many climes, without avail,
Thou hast spent thy life for the Holy Grail;
Behold it is here, – this cup which thou
Didst fill at the streamlet for me but now!
The Holy Supper is kept, indeed,
In whatso we share with another's need.'"
Such was the dream or vision of Sir Launfal. We need hardly add that, when he awoke from it, he exclaimed that the Holy Grail was already found – bade his servants hang up his armour on the wall, and open his gates to the needy and the poor.
We shall venture upon one more quotation before we quit Mr Lowell. We must premise that we do not always mark by asterisks the omission that we make, when that omission creates no obscurity whatever in the passage. The following poem we take the liberty of abridging, and we print it, without any interruption of this kind, in its abridged form. In this form it will perhaps remind our readers of some of those tender, simple, and domestic lyrics in which German poetry is so rich. There is no other language from which so many beautiful poems might be collected which refer to childhood, and the love of children, as from the German. It has sometimes occurred to us that our poetesses, or fair translators of poetry, might contrive a charming volume of such lyrics on childhood.
THE CHANGELING
"I had a little daughter,
And she was given to me
To lead me gently onward
To the Heavenly Father's knee.
I know not how others saw her,
But to me she was wholly fair,
And the light of the heaven she came from
Still lingered and gleamed in her hair.
She had been with us scarce a twelvemonth,
And it hardly seemed a day,
When a troop of wandering angels
Stole my little daughter away.
But they left in her stead a changeling,
A little angel child,
That seems like her bud in full blossom,
And smiles as she never smiled.
This child is not mine as the first was,
I cannot sing it to rest,
I cannot lift it up fatherly,
And bless it upon my breast.
Yet it lies in my little one's cradle,
And sits in my little one's chair,
And the light of the heaven she's gone to
Transfigures its golden hair."
We have still a brief space for Mr Holmes. It is fit that, amongst our list, there should be one representative of the comic muse. Mr Holmes, however, is not always comic. Some of his serious pieces are not without a certain manly pathos. Some, too, are of a quite didactic character, and have the air of college exercises. But it is only a few of his lighter pieces we should feel any disposition to quote, or refer to. Mr Holmes portrays himself to us as a boon companion; – a physician by profession, and one to whom poetry has been only an occasional amusement – one of those choice spirits who can set the table in a roar, and who can sing himself the good song that he indites. Such being the case, we have only to lay down the critical pen to court
