II

Sir Launfal turned from his own hard gate, 250
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 spare
Was idle mail ’gainst the barbed air,
For it was just at the Christmas time; 260
So he mused, as he sat, of a sunnier clime,
And sought for a shelter from cold and snow
In the light and warmth of long-ago;
He sees the snake-like caravan crawl
O’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 pass
To where, in its slender necklace of grass,
The little spring laughed and leapt in the shade, 270
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 lone
And white as the ice-isles of Northern seas
In the desolate horror of his disease.

V

And Sir Launfal said, ’I behold in thee 280
An 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 denied
The 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 eyes
 And looked at Sir Launfal, and straightway he
Remembered in what a haughtier guise 290
  He had flung an alms to leprosie,
When he girt his young life up in gilded mail
And 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, 300
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 straight
As the pillar that stood by the Beautiful Gate,—­
Himself the Gate whereby men can
Enter the temple of God in Man.