Here learn who will the art of noble words,
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If he may snatch the secret the words keep
Of speech like new-sprung grass to nibbling herds,
Yet old as graves of long-forgotten sleep;
Bright as young joy, yet with a heart as deep
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As those old wells of tears that never dry;
Alike for those who laugh or those who weep
Friendly of face as is the morning sky,
Bannered with bloom-tipt clouds lullingly moving by.
Like some green glade in middle of the wood,
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Buttressed with beech and oak and arched with bowers,
Spreads the old tale in nature's amplitude,
And many a grassy corner blue with flowers;
Anon uprears a castle grim with towers,
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Anon a horn is blown, in silken weeds
A lovely lady, fairer far than ours,
On a white palfrey rides, anon there speeds
A knight with vizor down, intent on flaming deeds.
Here, by a well—beware her woven charms—
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A faery woman sits and softly sings,
White as shed blossom are her beckoning arms,
And in her eyes a thousand vanished springs;
She lies in wait to snare the youth of kings,
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On their fair strength is all her whiteness fed,
A joy like honey in the mouth she brings,
Yet whoso tasteth it is surely sped
Down to the hollow halls of the dishonoured dead.
Of all within this Forest Perilous
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Hight is the world, there is no thing to fear
Deadly as she, no giant Orgulous,
No Questing Beast, or no illustrious spear;
Yea! though the Hundred Knights should draw anear,
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Better, with lance in rest, it were to fall
Than to her lonely singing to give ear;
Fame hath a voice more nobly musical,
And thus to dare to die is scarce to die at all.
Old book that still hath such a morning face,
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Dust are old eyes that read thee, yet no dust
Is on the page they read; for thee no place
Where dim Oblivion turneth all to rust,
And later scrolls diurnally are thrust;
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But thou of Youth art still the very friend,
And Age grows Youth to read thee—such a gust
Dwells in the glamoured page o'er which we bend,
And still we sigh that the old tale, like life, must end.
I read thee, like my fellows, in the morn,
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And now the westering sun begins to throw
A pathos o'er the realm where I was born,
Touching with fire old fanes of long ago,
Re-animating with a charmèd glow
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Memories dim and faces fled away—
I hear again thy bannered trumpets blow,
And fall a-dream on that heraldic day
When I was a young knight and she a little may.
Gone! and yet here forever still abide,
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Stored as in music, all the aching joy
And glory of young hearts that, side by side,
Beat on when she was girl and I was boy,
And the Round Table, and the Siege of Troy,
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And Roland's Song, and the far wandering seas
Round Jason's keel, and all the long employ
Of Hercules, were our realities,—
Nor had we doubt to find, we two, the Hesperides.
Yea! this old book, as others writ of old,
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And writ for ever, like a palimpsest,
Is over-writ with other words of gold,
Though marring not the meaning of the rest:
The words low uttered when two lovers pressed
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Hot cheeks together o'er the tear-stained tale,
And the long secret was at last confessed—
And twilight wove for love a starry veil,
And silence was all speech—save for the nightingale.
Would we who write in this thought-burdened day
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Seek for our words endurance such as this,
Have unborn lovers read us even as they
That read of Launcelot—then dared to kiss,
And blessed the magic book that wrought their bliss,
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Forgot a moment, but remembered ever—
Somewhere in this old book the secret is:
No more, perchance, though some shall find it never,
Than—wouldst thou be immortal, be thou not too clever.
This too—the golden increment of Time—
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Mark in these noble books that never die:
A mystic ripening, be it prose or rhyme,
With deeper meanings, as the years go by,
Something not there for the first reader's eye;
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As though even books were part of Nature's scheme,
And, with the suns, drew something from the sky,
Thrilling with subtler sense the simple theme,
Broadening to vaster scope the artless early dream.
So, he of Mancha on his sorry steed,
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Tilting at windmills, and his fellow fool,
Seemed not at first as now for us who read,—
For Man hath since so often gone to school—
And, as the weathering years make beautiful
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Old stone beyond the builder's first intent,
An art of Time, past reach of skill or tool,
Makes of his book more than its author meant,
And a quaint tale becomes a people's monument.
Yet, 'tis enough—the tale as first was told,
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Read with a boy's hot heart, or with a mind
To watch the blazoned narrative unfold,
And of the simple words the magic find,
Watching the art that leaves no clue behind:
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Sudden as sunshine on a grassy place,
Mark how this pen, with art as undesigned,
Writes but a name, and lo! the lovely face
Of La Belle Isoud blooms with death-defying grace.
Though Gawaine's skull, and the old Table Round,
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And Cradok's mantle, and Sir Launcelot
His sword—beheld of Caxton—now be found
No more at Winchester or Camelot;
And Arthur's seal, as Arthur's self, is not,
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And all the lovely queens are even as they,
And Orkney hath no memory of King Lot;
And all the magic art of Nimuè
Be spent, and even Merlin's dust be blown away;
Here live they still, as in that mirrored spring—
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With life's own colours on them, clear to see—
Where Palamides, gazing, gan to sing
Of Isoud, for whose sake all gaunt was he,
And dared to tell Sir Tristram love was free,
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And Isoud his to love, though ne'er to win,
As any man's—though he Sir Tristram be. . .
Ah! noble paynim, long since chrismed of sin,
When Tristram to Christ's font brother-like, led thee in!
"Go," said Isoud, "and tell Queen Guenevere,
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That in the world there be true lovers four:
She and Sir Launcelot, and Sir Tristram here,
And I, Isoud, and on the earth no more"—
Proud boast ensuing Time hath not out-wore,
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Still, like a rose upon her lips, you brave
A world un-friend to lovers as of yore,—
Writ was the whole of love the hours you gave
The golden cup to Tristram, golden to the grave.
And, in the shock of times that shake the world,
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I hear no thunder in the wars men wage
As when Sir Tristram on Sir Marhaus hurled—
Writ is the whole of battle in that page;
Yet whatsoe'er of glory gilds the rage
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Of metal, soul-less, upon metal flung,
Springs from this noble England's heritage,
This book of England's knights in England's tongue,
When her great speech and her great heart alike were young.
Nor, when man's heart beneath the Unseen bows,
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And the dread holiness that hidden dwells
In being bends the knee, and in God's house
A light passes, and the sound of mystic bells,
And man is ware of opening heavens and hells,
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Shall he such vision have as the pure lad
Of whose hushed quest the old romancer tells,—
All, all is here, all lovely good and bad;
God too is in the book—with young Sir Galahad.