ht. The
expression occurs in Tennyson's _Sir Galahad_. So "maiden mail" below.

137. As a locust-leaf: The small delicate leaflets of the compound
locust-leaf seem always in a "lightsome" movement.

138. The original edition has "unscarred mail."

138-139. Compare the last lines of Tennyson's _Sir Galahad_:

"By bridge and ford, by park and pale,
All-armed I ride, whate'er betide,
Until I find the Holy Grail."

147. Made morn: Let in the morning, or came into the full morning
light as the huge gate opened.

148. Leper: Why did the poet make the crouching beggar a leper?

152. For "gan shrink" the original has "did shrink."

155. Bent of stature: Criticise this phrase.

158. So he tossed ... in scorn: This is the turning-point of the
moral movement of the story. Sir Launfal at the very beginning makes
his fatal mistake; his noble spirit and lofty purposes break down with
the first test. He refuses to see a brother in the loathsome leper;
the light and warmth of human brotherhood had not yet entered his
soul, just as the summer sunshine had not entered the frowning castle.
The regeneration of his soul must be worked out through wandering and
suffering. Compare the similar plot of the _Ancient Mariner_.

163. No true alms: The alms must also be in the heart.

164. Originally "He gives nothing but worthless gold."

166. Slender mite: An allusion to the widow's "two mites." (_Luke_
xxi, 1-4.)

168. The all-sustaining Beauty: The all-pervading spirit of God that
unites all things in one sympathetic whole. This divinity in humanity
is its highest beauty. In _The Oak_ Lowell says:

"Lord! all thy works are lessons; each contains
Some emblem of man's all-containing soul."

172. A god goes with it: The god-like quality of real charity, of
heart to heart sympathy. In a letter written a little after the
composition of this poem Lowell speaks of love and freedom as being
"the sides which Beauty presented to him then."

172. Store: Plenty, abundance.

175. Summers: What is gained by the use of this word instead of
winters?

176. Wold: A high, open and barren field that catches the full sweep
of the wind. The "wolds" of north England are like the "downs" of the
south.

181. The little brook: In a letter written in December, 1848, Lowell
says: "Last night I walked to Watertown over the snow with the new
moon before me and a sky exactly like that in Page's evening
landscape. Orion was rising