[Illustration:  As Sir Launfal Made Morn Through the Darksome Gate.]

    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[4]
    Could match this winter-palace of ice;
    ’Twas as if every image that mirrored lay 205
    In his depths serene through the summer day,[5]
    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 grow 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. 
    But the wind without was eager and sharp, 225
    Of Sir Launfal’s gray hair it makes a harp,
        And rattles and wrings
        The icy strings,
      Singing, in dreary monotone,
      A Christmas carol of its own, 230
      Whose burden still, as he might guess,
      Was—­“Shelterless, shelterless, shelterless!”
    The voice of the seneschal flared like a torch
    As he shouted the wanderer away from the porch,
    And he sat in the gateway and saw all night 235
      The great hall-fire, so cheery and bold,
      Through the window-slits of the castle old,
    Build out its piers of ruddy light
      Against the drift of the cold.

[Footnote 4:  The Empress of Russia, Catherine II., in a magnificent freak, built a palace of ice, which was a nine-days’ wonder.  Cowper has given a poetical description of it in The Task, Book V. lines 131-176.]

[Footnote 5:  The Yule-log was anciently a huge log burned at the feast of Juul (pronounced Yule) by our Scandinavian ancestors in honor of the god Thor.  Juul-tid (Yule-time) corresponded in time to Christmas tide, and when Christian festivities took the place of pagan, many ceremonies remained.  The great log, still called the Yule-log, was dragged in and burned in the fireplace after Thor had been forgotten.]