THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL.PRELUDE TO PART FIRST.Over his keys the musing organist,Beginning doubtfully and far away,First lets his fingers wander as they list,And builds a bridge from Dreamland for his lay:Then, as the touch of his loved instrumentGives hope and fervor, nearer draws his theme,First guessed by faint auroral flushes sentAlong the wavering vista of his dream.* * * * *Not only around our infancyDoth heaven with all its splendors lie,Daily, with souls that cringe and plot,We Sinais climb and know it not.Over our manhood bend the skies;Against our fallen and traitor livesThe great winds utter prophecies;With our faint hearts the mountain strives,Its arms outstretched, the druid woodWaits with its benedicite;And to our age's drowsy bloodStill shouts the inspiring sea.Earth gets its price for what Earth gives us;The beggar is taxed for a corner to die in,The priest hath his fee who comes and shrives us,We bargain for the graves we lie in;At the devil's booth are all things sold,Each ounce of dross costs its ounce of gold;For a cap and bells our lives we pay,Bubbles we buy with a whole soul's tasking:'Tis heaven alone that is given away,'Tis only God may be had for the asking,No price is set on the lavish summer;June may be had by the poorest comer.And what is so rare as a day in June?Then, if ever, come perfect days;Then Heaven tries the earth if it be in tune,And over it softly her warm ear lays:Whether we look, or whether we listen,We hear life murmur, or see it glisten;Every clod feels a stir of might,An instinct within it that reaches and towers,And, groping blindly above it for light,Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers;The flush of life may well be seenThrilling back over hills and valleys;The cowslip startles in meadows green,The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice,And there's never a leaf nor a blade too meanTo 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'errunWith 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, and she to her nest,—In the nice ear of Nature which song is the best?Now is the high-tide of the year,And whatever of life hath ebbed awayComes flooding back with a ripply cheer,Into every bare inlet and creek and bay;Now the heart is so full that a drop overfills it,We are happy now because God wills it;No matter how barren the past may have been,'Tis enough for us now that the leaves are green;We sit in the warm shade and feel right wellHow the sap creeps up and the blossoms swell;We may shut our eyes but we cannot help knowingThat skies are clear and grass is growing;The breeze comes whispering in our ear,That dandelions are blossoming near,That maize has sprouted, that streams are flowing,That the river is bluer than the sky,That the robin is plastering his house hard by;And if the breeze kept the good news back,For other couriers we should not lack;We could guess it all by yon heifer's lowing,—And hark! how clear bold chanticleer,Warmed with the new wine of the year,Tells all in his lusty crowing!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 trueAs 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,The heart forgets its sorrow and ache;The soul partakes the season's youth,And the sulphurous rifts of passion and woeLie deep 'neath a silence pure and smooth,Like burnt-out craters healed with snow.What wonder if Sir Launfal nowRemembered the keeping of his vow?
Part First.I."My golden spurs now bring to me,And bring to me my richest mail,For to-morrow I go over land and seaIn search of the Holy Grail;Shall never a bed for me be spread,Nor shall a pillow be under my head,Till I begin my vow to keep;Here on the rushes will I sleep,And perchance there may come a vision trueEre day create the world anew."Slowly Sir Launfal's eyes grew dim,Slumber fell like a cloud on him,And into his soul the vision flew.II.The crows flapped over by twos and threes,In the pool drowsed the cattle up to their knees,The little birds sang as if it wereThe one day of summer in all the year,And the very leaves seemed to sing on the trees,The castle alone in the landscape layLike an outpost of winter, dull and gray;'Twas the proudest hall in the North Countree,And never its gates might opened be,Save to lord or lady of high degree;Summer besieged it on every side,But the churlish stone her assaults defied;She could not scale the chilly wall,Though round it for leagues her pavilions tallStretched left and right,Over the hills and out of sight;Green and broad was every tent,And out of each a murmur wentTill the breeze fell off at night.III.The drawbridge dropped with a surly clang,And through the dark arch a charger sprang,Bearing Sir Launfal, the maiden knight,In his gilded mail, that flamed so brightIt seemed the dark castle had gathered allThose shafts the fierce sun had shot over its wallIn his siege of three hundred summers long,And, binding them all in one blazing sheaf,Had cast them forth: so, young and strong,And lightsome as a locust-leaf,Sir Launfal flashed forth in his unscarred mail,To seek in all climes for the Holy Grail.IV.It was morning on hill and stream and tree,And morning in the young knight's heart;Only the castle moodilyRebuffed the gifts of the sunshine free,And gloomed by itself apart;The season brimmed all other things upFull as the rain fills the pitcher-plant's cup.V.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 armor 'gan shrink and crawl,And midway its leap his heart stood stillLike a frozen waterfall;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.VI.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;He gives nothing but worthless goldWho gives from a sense of duty;But he who gives a slender mite,And gives to that which is out of sight,That thread of the all-sustaining BeautyWhich runs through all and doth all unite,—The hand cannot clasp the whole of his alms,The heart outstretches its eager palms,For a god goes with it and makes it storeTo the soul that was starving in darkness before."PRELUDE TO PART SECOND.Down swept the chill wind from the mountain peak,From the snow five thousand summers old;On open wold and hill-top bleakIt had gathered all the cold,And whirled it like sleet on the wanderer's cheekIt carried a shiver everywhereFrom the unleafed boughs and pastures bare;The little brook heard it and built a roof'Neath which he could house him, winter-proof;All night by the white stars' frosty gleamsHe groined his arches and matched his beams;Slender and clear were his crystal sparsAs the lashes of light that trim the stars:He sculptured every summer delightIn his halls and chambers out of sight;Sometimes his tinkling waters sliptDown through a frost-leaved forest-crypt,Long, sparkling aisles of steel-stemmed treesBending to counterfeit a breeze;Sometimes the roof no fretwork knewBut silvery mosses that downward grew;Sometimes it was carved in sharp reliefWith quaint arabesques of ice-fern leaf;Sometimes it was simply smooth and clearFor the gladness of heaven to shine through, and hereHe had caught the nodding bulrush-topsAnd hung them thickly with diamond drops,That crystalled the beams of moon and sun,And made a star of every one:No mortal builder's most rare deviceCould match this winter-palace of ice;'Twas as if every image that mirrored layIn his depths serene through the summer day,Each fleeting shadow of earth and sky,Lest the happy model should be lost,Had been mimicked in fairy masonryBy the elfin builders of the frost.Within the hall are song and laughter,The cheeks of Christmas glow red and jolly,And sprouting is every corbel and rafterWith lightsome green of ivy and holly;Through the deep gulf of the chimney wideWallows the Yule-log's roaring tide;The broad flame-pennons droop and flapAnd belly and tug as a flag in the wind;Like a locust shrills the imprisoned sap,Hunted to death in its galleries blind;And swift little troops of silent sparks,Now pausing, now scattering away as in fear,Go threading the soot-forest's tangled darksLike herds of startled deer.But the wind without was eager and sharp,Of Sir Launfal's gray hair it makes a harp,And rattles and wringsThe icy strings,Singing, in dreary monotone,A Christmas carol of its own,Whose burden still, as he might guess,Was—"Shelterless, shelterless, shelterless!"The voice of the seneschal flared like a torchAs he shouted the wanderer away from the porch,And he sat in the gateway and saw all nightThe great hall-fire, so cheery and bold,Through the window-slits of the castle old,Build out its piers of ruddy lightAgainst the drift of the cold.Part Second.I.There was never a leaf on bush or tree,The bare boughs rattled shudderingly;The river was numb and could not speak,For the weaver Winter its shroud had spun;A single crow on the tree-top bleakFrom his shining feathers shed off the cold sun.Again it was morning, but shrunk and cold,As if her veins were sapless and old,And she rose up decrepitlyFor a last dim look at earth and sea.II.Sir Launfal turned from his own hard gate,For another heir in his earldom sate;An old, bent man, worn out and frail,He came back from seeking the Holy Grail;Little he recked of his earldom's loss,No more on his surcoat was blazoned the cross,But deep in his soul the sign he wore,The badge of the suffering and the poor.III.Sir Launfal's raiment thin and spareWas idle mail 'gainst the barbèd air,For it was just at the Christmas time;So he mused, as he sat, of a sunnier clime,And sought for a shelter from cold and snowIn the light and warmth of long-ago;He sees the snake-like caravan crawlO'er the edge of the desert, black and small,Then nearer and nearer, till, one by one,He can count the camels in the sun,As over the red-hot sands they passTo where, in its slender necklace of grass,The little spring laughed and leapt in the shade,And with its own self like an infant played,And waved its signal of palms.IV."For Christ's sweet sake, I beg an alms;"—The happy camels may reach the spring,But Sir Launfal sees only the grewsome thing,The leper, lank as the rain-blanched bone,That cowers beside him, a thing as loneAnd white as the ice-isles of Northern seasIn the desolate horror of his disease.V.And Sir Launfal said,—"I behold in theeAn image of Him who died on the tree;Thou also hast had thy crown of thorns,—Thou also hast had the world's buffets and scorns,—And to thy life were not deniedThe wounds in the hands and feet and side:Mild Mary's Son, acknowledge me;Behold, through him, I give to thee!"VI.Then the soul of the leper stood up in his eyesAnd looked at Sir Launfal, and straightway heRemembered in what a haughtier guiseHe had flung an alms to leprosie,When he girt his young life up in gilded mailAnd 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 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.VII.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,Shining and tall and fair and straightAs the pillar that stood by the Beautiful Gate,—Himself the Gate whereby men canEnter the temple of God in Man.VIII.His words were shed softer than leaves from the pine,And they fell on Sir Launfal as snows on the brine,Which mingle their softness and quiet in oneWith the shaggy unrest they float down upon;And the voice that was calmer than silence said,"Lo, it is I, be not afraid!In many climes, without avail,Thou hast spent thy life for the Holy Grail;Behold it is here,—this cup which thouDidst fill at the streamlet for me but now;This crust is my body broken for thee,This water His blood that died on the tree;The Holy Supper is kept, indeed,In whatso we share with another's need;Not what we give, but what we share,—For the gift without the giver is bare;Who gives himself with his alms feeds three,—Himself, his hungering neighbor, and me."IX.Sir Launfal awoke as from a swound:—"The Grail in my castle here is found!Hang my idle armor up on the wall,Let it be the spider's banquet hall;He must be fenced with stronger mailWho would seek and find the Holy Grail."X.The castle gate stands open now,And the wanderer is welcome to the hallAs the hangbird is to the elm-tree bough;No longer scowl the turrets tall,The Summer's long siege at last is o'er;When the first poor outcast went in at the door,She entered with him in disguise,And mastered the fortress by surprise;There is no spot she loves so well on ground,She lingers and smiles there the whole year round;The meanest serf on Sir Launfal's landHas hall and bower at his command;And there's no poor man in the North CountreeBut is lord of the earldom as much as he.
Note.—According to the mythology of the Romancers, the San Greal, or Holy Grail, was the cup out of which Jesus partook of the last supper with his disciples. It was brought into England by Joseph of Arimathea, and remained there, an object of pilgrimage and adoration, for many years in the keeping of his lineal descendants. It was incumbent upon those who had charge of it to be chaste in thought, word, and deed; but one of the keepers having broken this condition, the Holy Grail disappeared. From that time it was a favorite enterprise of the knights of Arthur's court to go in search of it. Sir Galahad was at last successful in finding it, as we may read in the seventeenth book of the Romance of King Arthur. Tennyson has made Sir Galahad the subject of one of the most exquisite of his poems.
The plot (if I may give that name to anything so slight) of the foregoing poem is my own, and, to serve its purposes, I have enlarged the circle of competition in search of the miraculous cup in such a manner as to include, not only other persons than the heroes of the Round Table, but also a period of time subsequent to the date of King Arthur's reign.
Reader!walk up at once (it will soon be too late)and buy at a perfectly ruinous rate
A
OR, BETTER,
(I like, as a thing that the reader's first fancy may strike,an old-fashioned title-page,such as presents a tabular view of the volume's contents)
A GLANCE
AT A FEW OF OUR LITERARY PROGENIES
(Mrs. Malaprop's word)
FROM
THE TUB OF DIOGENES;
A VOCAL AND MUSICAL MEDLEY,
THAT IS,
A SERIES OF JOKES
By A Wonderful Quiz,
who accompanies himself with a rub-a-dub-dub, full ofspirit and grace, on the top of the tub.
Set forth in October, the 31st day,In the year '48, G. P. Putnam, Broadway.
It being the commonest mode of procedure, I premise a few candid remarks
To the Reader;
This trifle, begun to please only myself and my own private fancy, was laid on the shelf. But some friends, who had seen it, induced me, by dint of saying they liked it, to put it in print. That is, having come to that very conclusion, I consulted them when it could make no confusion. For, (though in the gentlest of ways,) they had hinted it was scarce worth the while, I should doubtless have printed it.
I began it, intending a Fable, a frail, slender thing, rhyme-ywinged, with a sting in its tail. But, by addings and alterings not previously planned,—digressions chance-hatched, like birds' eggs in the sand,—and dawdlings to suit every whimsy's demand, (always freeing the bird which I held in my hand, for the two perched, perhaps out of reach, in the tree,)—it grew by degrees to the size which you see. I was like the old woman that carried the calf, and my neighbors, like hers, no doubt, wonder and laugh, and when, my strained arms with their grown burthen full, I call it my Fable, they call it a bull.
Having scrawled at full gallop (as far as that goes) in a style that is neither good verse nor bad prose, and being a person whom nobody knows, some people will say I am rather more free with my readers than it is becoming to be, that I seem to expect them to wait on my leisure in following wherever I wander at pleasure, that, in short, I take more than a young author's lawful ease, and laugh in a queer way so like Mephistopheles, that the public will doubt, as they grope through my rhythm, if in truth I am making funatthem orwiththem.
So the excellent Public is hereby assured that the sale of my book is already secured. For there is not a poet throughout the whole land, but will purchase a copy or two out of hand, in the fond expectation of being amused in it, by seeing his betters cut-up and abused in it. Now, I find, by a pretty exact calculation, there are something like ten thousand bards in the nation, of that special variety whom the Review and Magazine critics callloftyandtrue, and about thirty thousand (thistribe is increasing) of the kinds who are termedfull of promiseandpleasing. The Public will see by a glance at this schedule, that they cannot expect me to be over-sedulous about courtingthem, since it seems I have got enough fuel made sure of for boiling my pot.
As for such of our poets as find not their names mentioned once in my pages, with praises or blames, let themsend in their cards, without furtherdelay, to my friendG. P. Putnam, Esquire, in Broadway, where alistwill be kept withthe strictest regard to the day and the hour of receiving the card. Then, taking them up as I chance to have time, (that is, if their names can be twisted in rhyme,) I will honestly give each hisproper position, at the rate ofone authorto eachnew edition. Thus a PREMIUM is offered sufficientlyhigh(as the magazines say when they tell their best lie) to induce bards toclubtheir resources and buy the balance of every edition, until they have all of them fairly been run through the mill.
One word to such readers (judicious and wise) as read books with something behind the mere eyes, of whom in the country, perhaps, there are two, including myself, gentle reader, and you. All the characters sketched in this slightjeu d'esprit, though, it may be, they seem, here and there, rather free, and drawn from a Mephistophelian stand-point, aremeantto be faithful, and that is the grand point, and none but an owl would feel sore at a rub from a jester who tells you, without any subterfuge, that he sits in Diogenes' tub.
* * * * *
A PRELIMINARY NOTE TO THE SECOND EDITION,
though it well may be reckoned, of all composition, the species at once most delightful and healthy, is a thing which an author, unless he be wealthy and willing to pay for that kind of delight, is not, in all instances, called on to write. Though there are, it is said, who, their spirits to cheer, slip in a new title-page three times a year, and in this way snuff up an imaginary savor of that sweetest of dishes, the popular favor,—much as if a starved painter should fall to and treat the Ugolino inside to a picture of meat.
You remember (if not, pray turn over and look) that, in writing the preface which ushered my book, I treated you, excellent Public, not merely with a cool disregard, but downright cavalierly. Now I would not take back the least thing I then said, though I thereby could butter both sides of my bread, for I never could see that an author owed aught to the people he solaced, diverted, or taught; and, as for mere fame, I have long ago learned that the persons by whom it is finally earned, are those with whomyourverdict weighed not a pin, unsustained by the higher court sitting within.
But I wander from what I intended to say—that you have, namely, shown such a liberal way of thinking, and so much æsthetic perception of anonymous worth in the handsome reception you gave to my book, spite of some private piques, (having bought the first thousand in barely two weeks,) that Ithink, past a doubt, if you measured the phiz of your's most devotedly, Wonderful Quiz, you would find that its vertical section was shorter, by an inch and two tenths, or 'twixt that and a quarter.
You have watched a child playing—in those wondrous years when belief is not bound to the eyes and the ears, and the vision divine is so clear and unmarred, that each baker of pies in the dirt is a bard? Give a knife and a shingle, he fits out a fleet, and, on that littlemud puddleover the street, his invention, in purest good faith, will make sail round the globe with a puff of his breath for a gale, will visit, in barely ten minutes, all climes, and find Northwestern passages hundreds of times. Or, suppose the young Poet fresh stored with delights from that Bible of childhood the Arabian Nights, he will turn to a crony and cry, "Jack, let's play that I am a Genius!" Jacky straightway makes Aladdin's lamp out of a stone, and, for hours, they enjoy each his own supernatural powers. This is all very pretty and pleasant, but then suppose our two urchins have grown into men, and both have turned authors,—one says to his brother, "Let's play we're the American somethings or other, (only let them be big enough, no matter what.) Come, you shall be Goethe or Pope, which you choose; I'll be Coleridge, and both shall write mutual reviews." So they both (as mere strangers) before many days, send each other a cord of anonymous bays. Each, in piling his epithets, smiles in his sleeve to see what his friend can be made to believe; each, in reading the other's unbiased review, thinks—Here's pretty high praise, but no more than is true. Well, we laugh at them both, and yet make no great fuss when the same farce is acted to benefit us. Even I, who, if asked, scarce a month since, what Fudge meant, should have answered, the dear Public's critical judgment, begin to think sharpwitted Horace spoke sooth when he said, that the Publicsometimeshit the truth.
In reading these lines, you perhaps have a vision of a person in pretty good health and condition, and yet, since I put forth my primary edition, I have been crushed, scorched, withered, used up and put down, (by Smith with the cordial assistance of Brown,) in all, if you put any faith in my rhymes, to the number of ninety-five several times, and, while I am writing—I tremble to think of it, for I may at this moment be just on the brink of it—Molybdostom, angry at being omitted, has begun a critique,—am I not to be pitied?[B]
Now I shall not crushthemsince, indeed, for that matter, no pressure I know of could render them flatter; nor wither, nor scorch them,—no action of fire could make either them or theirarticles drier; nor waste time in putting them down—I am thinking not their own self-inflation will keep them from sinking; for there's this contradiction about the whole bevy—though without the least weight, they are awfully heavy. No, my dear honest bore,surdo fabulam narras, they are no more to me than a rat in the arras. I can walk with the Doctor, get facts from the Don, or draw out the Lambish quintessence of John, and feel nothing more than a half-comic sorrow, to think that they all will be lying to-morrow tossed carelessly up on the waste-paper shelves, and forgotten by all but their half-dozen selves. Once snug in my attic, my fire in a roar, I leave the whole pack of them outside the door. With Hakluyt or Purchas I wander away to the black northern seas or barbaric Cathay; getfouwith O'Shanter, and sober me then with that builder of brick-kilnish dramas, rare Ben; snuff Herbert, as holy as a flower on a grave; with Fletcher wax tender, o'er Chapman grow brave; with Marlowe or Kyd take a fine poet-rave; in Very, most Hebrew of Saxons, find peace; with Lycidas welter on vext Irish seas; with Webster grow wild, and climb earthward again, down by mystical Browne's Jacob's-ladder-like brain, to that spiritual Pepys (Cotton's version) Montaigne; find a new depth in Wordsworth, undreamed of before,—that divinely-inspired, wise, deep, tender, grand,—bore. Or, out of my study, the scholar thrown off, nature holds up her shield 'gainst the sneer and the scoff; the landscape, forever consoling and kind, pours her wine and her oil on the smarts of the mind. The waterfall, scattering its vanishing gems; the tall grove of hemlocks, with moss on their stems, like plashes of sunlight; the pond in the woods, where no foot but mine and the bittern's intrudes; these are all my kind neighbors, and leave me no wish to say aught to you all, my poor critics, but—pish! I have buried the hatchet; I am twisting an allumette out of one of you now, and relighting my calumet. In your private capacities, come when you please, I will give you my hand and a fresh pipe a-piece.
As I ran through the leaves of my poor little book, to take a fond author's first tremulous look, it was quite an excitement to hunt theerrata, sprawled in as birds' tracks are in some kinds of strata, (only these made things crookeder.) Fancy an heir, that a father had seen born well-featured and fair, turning suddenly wry-nosed, club-footed, squint-eyed, hare-lipped, wapper-jawed, carrot-haired, from a pride become an aversion,—my case was yet worse. A club-foot (by way of a change) in a verse, I might have forgiven, ano's being wry, a limp in ane, or a cock in ani,—but to have the sweet babe of my brain served inpi! I am not queasy-stomached, but such a Thyestean banquet as that was quite out of the question.
In the edition now issued, no pains are neglected, and my verses, as orators say, stand corrected. Yet some blundersremain of the public's own make, which I wish to correct for my personal sake. For instance, a character drawn in pure fun and condensing the traits of a dozen in one, has been, as I hear by some persons applied to a good friend of mine, whom to stab in the side, as we walked along chatting and joking together, would not bemyway. I can hardly tell whether a question will ever arise in which he and I should by any strange fortune agree, but meanwhile my esteem for him grows as I know him, and, though not the best judge upon earth of a poem, he knows what it is he is saying and why, and is honest and fearless, two good points which I have not found so rife I can easily smother my love for them, whether on my side or t'other.
For my otheranonymi, you may be sure that I know what is meant by a caricature, and what by a portrait. There are those who think it is capital fun to be spattering their ink on quiet unquarrelsome folk, but the minute the game changes sides and the others begin it, they see something savage and horrible in it. As for me I respect neither women nor men for their gender, nor own any sex in a pen. I choose just to hint to some causeless unfriends that, as far as I know, there are always two ends (and one of them heaviest, too) to a staff, and two parties also to every good laugh.
[B]The wise Scandinavians probably called their bards by the queer-looking title of Scald, in a delicate way, as it were, just to hint to the world the hot water they always get into.