Burning, beneath the cold
  Armour of steel, a never-dying flame: 
    The fierce desire
  Consuming honour’s gold on the heart’s altar fire!

    And thither in great love he brought
    The fugitives of love,
  Isoud and Tristram fleeing from King Mark. 
    One day ’twixt dark and dark
    These lovers, by fate caught
  In love’s bright web, dreamed with blue skies above
    Of love no tide
  Of wavering life may part, or death’s swift sea divide.

But Launcelot, in their bliss forlorn,
Fled from the laughter clear
Of happy lovers, and love’s silent noon;
All night beneath the moon
He strode, his spirit torn
For Guenevere!  All night on Guenevere
He cried aloud
Unto the moonlit foam and every windy cloud.

* * * * *

Then faded, quivering, from my sight
The memory-woven dream. 
The towers of Joyous Garde shall never more
Lighten that desolate shore;
No longe’r through the night
Wrestling with love, beneath the pale moon gleam
That anguished form!—­
But keen with snow and wind, and loud with gathering storm.

  _—­Wilfrid W. Gibson_.

  (In “The Northern Counties Magazine,” March, 1901).

  MY NORTH COUNTRIE.

  O though here fair blows the rose, and the woodbine waves on high,
  And oak, and elm, and bracken fronds enrich the rolling lea,
  And winds, as if in Arcady, breathe joy as they go by,
  Yet I yearn and I pine for my North Countrie!

  I leave the drowsing South, and in thought I northward fly,
  And walk the stretching moors that fringe the ever-calling sea,
  And am gladdened as the gales that are so bitter-sweet rush by. 
  While grey clouds sweetly darken o’er my North Countrie.

  For there’s music in the storms, and there’s colour in the shades,
  And joy e’en in the grief so widely brooding o’er the sea;
  And larger thoughts have birth amid the moors and lonely glades
  And reedy mounds and sands of my North Countrie!

  —­Thomas Runciman.

[Illustration]

[Illustration:  Sketch Map Of Northumberland.]