The leper raised not the gold from the dust:—­
    “Better to me the poor man’s crust,
    Better the blessing of the poor,
    Though I turn me empty from his door: 
    That is no true alms which the hand can hold;
    He gives only the worthless gold
      Who gives from a sense of duty: 
    But he who gives but a slender mite,
    And gives to that which is out of sight,—­
      That thread of the all-sustaining Beauty
    Which runs through all and doth all unite,—­
    The hand cannot clasp the whole of his alms,
    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;
  On open wold and hilltop 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;
  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
  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. 
  Long, sparkling aisles of steel stemmed trees
  Mending to counterfeit a breeze;
  Sometimes the roof no fretwork knew
  But silvery mosses that downward grew;
  Sometimes it was carved in sharp relief
  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. 
  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;
  ’T was as if every image that mirrored lay
  In his depths serene through the summer day,
  Each fleeting shadow of earth and sky,
    Lest the happy model should be lost. 
  Sad been mimicked in fairy masonry
    By the elfin builders of the frost.

  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
  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;
  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.