the all-sustaining Beauty
    Which runs through, ail and doth all unite,—­
    The hand cannot clasp the whole of his alms, 170
    The heart outstretches its eager palms,
    For a god goes with it and makes it store
    To the soul that was starving in darkness before.”

PRELUDE TO PART SECOND

    Down swept the chill wind from the mountain peak,
      From the snow five thousand summers old; 175
    On open, wold and hill-top bleak
      It had gathered all the cold,
    And whirled it like sleet on the wanderer’s cheek: 
    It carried a shiver everywhere
    From the unleafed boughs and pastures bare; 180
    The little brook heard it and built a roof
    ’Neath which he could house him, winter-proof;
    All night by the white stars’ frosty gleams
    He groined his arches and matched his beams: 
    Slender and clear were his crystal spars 185
    As the lashes of light that trim the stars;
    He sculptured every summer delight
    In his halls and chambers out of sight;
    Sometimes his tinkling waters slipt
    Down through a frost-leaved forest-crypt, 190
    Long, sparkling aisles of steel-stemmed trees
    Bending to counterfeit a breeze;
    Sometimes the roof no fretwork knew
    But silvery mosses that downward grew;
    Sometimes it was carved in sharp relief 195
    With quaint arabesques of ice-fern leaf;
    Sometimes it was simply smooth and clear
    For the gladness of heaven to shine through, and here
    He had caught the nodding bulrush-tops
    And hung them thickly with diamond-drops, 200
    That crystalled the beams of moon and sun,
    And made a star of every one: 
    No mortal builder’s most rare device
    Could match this winter-palace of ice;
    ’Twas as if every image that mirrored lay 205
    In his depths serene through the summer day,
    Each fleeting shadow of earth and sky,
      Lest the happy model should be lost,
    Had been mimicked in fairy masonry
      By the elfin builders of the frost. 210

    Within the hall are song and laughter. 
      The cheeks of Christmas glow red and jolly,
    And sprouting is every corbel and rafter
      With lightsome green of ivy and holly: 
    Through the deep gulf of the chimney wide 215
    Wallows the Yule-log’s roaring tide;
    The broad flame-pennons droop and flap
      And belly and tug as a flag in the wind;
    Like a locust shrills the imprisoned sap,
      Hunted to death in its galleries blind; 220
    And swift little troops of silent sparks,
      Now pausing, now scattering away as in fear,
    Go threading the soot-forest’s tangled darks
      Like herds of startled deer.