O Love Divine, that claspest our tired earth,
  And lullest it upon thy heart,
Thou knowest how much a gentle soul is worth
  To teach men what thou art!

His was a spirit that to all thy poor
  Was kind as slumber after pain: 
Why ope so soon thy heaven-deep Quiet’s door
  And call him home again?

Freedom needs all her poets:  it is they
  Who give her aspirations wings,
And to the wiser law of music sway
  Her wild imaginings.

Yet thou hast called him, nor art thou unkind,
  O Love Divine, for ’tis thy will
That gracious natures leave their love behind
  To work for Mercy still.

Let laurelled marbles weigh on other tombs,
  Let anthems peal for other dead,
Rustling the bannered depth of minster-glooms
  With their exulting spread.

His epitaph shall mock the short-lived stone,
  No lichen shall its lines efface,
He needs these few and simple lines alone
  To mark his resting-place: 

’Here lies a Poet.  Stranger, if to thee
  His claim to memory be obscure,
If thou wouldst learn how truly great was he,
  Go, ask it of the poor.’

THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL

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 may be 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 following 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 supposed date of King Arthur’s reign.

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 instrument
  Gives hope and fervor, nearer draws his theme,
First guessed by faint auroral flushes sent
  Along the wavering vista of his dream.

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