of a tower,
  Whole, like a crag that tumbles from the cliff,
  And like a crag was gay with wilding flowers: 
  And high above a piece of turret stair,
  Worn by the feet that now were silent, wound
  Bare to the sun, and monstrous ivy-stems
  Claspt the gray walls with hairy-fibred arms,
  And suck’d the joining of the stones, and look’d
  A knot, beneath, of snakes, aloft, a grove.

    And while he waited in the castle court,
  The voice of Enid, Yniol’s daughter, rang
  Clear thro’ the open casement of the hall,
  Singing; and as the sweet voice of a bird,
  Heard by the lander in a lonely isle,
  Moves him to think what kind of bird it is
  That sings so delicately clear, and make
  Conjecture of the plumage and the form;
  So the sweet voice of Enid moved Geraint;
  And made him like a man abroad at morn
  When first the liquid note beloved of men
  Comes flying over many a windy wave
  To Britain, and in April suddenly
  Breaks from a coppice gemm’d with green and red,
  And he suspends his converse with a friend,
  Or it may be the labor of his hands,
  To think or say, “There is the nightingale;”
  So fared it with Geraint, who thought and said,
  “Here, by God’s grace, is the one voice for me.”

    It chanced the song that Enid sang was one
  Of Fortune and her wheel, and Enid sang: 

    “Turn, Fortune, turn thy wheel and lower the proud;
  Turn thy wild wheel thro’ sunshine, storm, and cloud;
  Thy wheel and thee we neither love nor hate.

    “Turn, Fortune, turn thy wheel with smile or frown;
  With that wild wheel we go not up or down;
  Our hoard is little, but our hearts are great.

    “Smile and we smile, the lords of many lands;
  Frown and we smile, the lords of our own hands;
  For man is man and master of his fate.

    “Turn, turn thy wheel above the staring crowd;
  Thy wheel and thou are shadows in the cloud;
  Thy wheel and thee we neither love nor hate.”

[Illustration:  GERAINT HEARS ENID SINGING]

    “Hark, by the bird’s song ye may learn the nest,”
  Said Yniol; “enter quickly.”  Entering then,
  Right o’er a mount of newly-fallen stones,
  The dusky-rafter’d many-cobweb’d hall,
  He found an ancient dame in dim brocade;
  And near her, like a blossom vermeil-white,[2]
  That lightly breaks a faded flower-sheath,
  Moved the fair Enid, all in faded silk,
  Her daughter.  In a moment thought Geraint,
  “Here by God’s rood is the one maid for me.” 
  But none spake word except the hoary Earl: 
  “Enid, the good knight’s horse stands in the court;
  Take him to stall, and give him corn, and then
  Go to the town and buy us flesh and wine;
  And we will make us merry as we may. 
  Our hoard is little, but our hearts are great.”