A stately Huntsman, clad in green,
And round him a fresh forest-scene.
On that clear forest-knoll he stays, 155
With his pack round him, and delays.
He stares and stares, with troubled face,
At this huge, gleam-lit fireplace,
At that bright, iron-figured door,
And those blown rushes on the floor. 160
He gazes down into the room
With heated cheeks and flurried air,
And to himself he seems to say:
_"What place is this, and who are they?
Who is that kneeling Lady fair? 165
And on his pillows that pale Knight
Who seems of marble on a tomb?
How comes it here, this chamber bright,
Through whose mullion'd windows clear
The castle-court all wet with rain, 170
The drawbridge and the moat appear,
And then the beach, and, mark'd with spray,
The sunken reefs, and far away
The unquiet bright Atlantic plain?
--What, has some glamour made me sleep, 175
And sent me with my dogs to sweep,
By night, with boisterous bugle-peal,
Through some old, sea-side, knightly hall,
Not in the free green wood at all?
That Knight's asleep, and at her prayer 180
That Lady by the bed doth kneel--
Then hush, thou boisterous bugle-peal!"_
--The wild boar rustles in his lair;
The fierce hounds snuff the tainted air;
But lord and hounds keep rooted there. 185

Cheer, cheer thy dogs into the brake,
O Hunter! and without a fear
Thy golden-tassell'd bugle blow,
And through the glades thy pastime take--
For thou wilt rouse no sleepers here! 190
For these thou seest are unmoved;
Cold, cold as those who lived and loved
A thousand years ago. deg. deg.193

III

ISEULT OF BRITTANY deg.

A year had flown, and o'er the sea away,
In Cornwall, Tristram and Queen Iseult lay;
In King Marc's chapel, in Tyntagel old--
There in a ship they bore those lovers cold.

The young surviving Iseult, one bright day, 5
Had wander'd forth. Her children were at play
In a green circular hollow in the heath
Which borders the sea-shore--a country path
Creeps over it from the till'd fields behind.
The hollow's grassy banks are soft-inclined, 10
And to one standing on them, far and near
The lone unbroken view spreads br