Day in, day out, or sun or rain, Or sallow leaf, or summer grain, Beneath a wintry morning moon Or through red smouldering afternoon, With simple joy, with careful pride, He plies the craft he long has plied: To shape the stave, to set the sting, To fit the shaft with irised wing; And farers by may hear him sing, For still his door is wide: “Laugh and sigh, live and die,-- The world swings round; I know not, I, If north or south mine arrows fly!” And sometimes, while he works, he dreams, And on his soul a vision gleams: Some storied field fought long ago, Where arrows fell as thick as snow. His breath comes fast, his eyes grow bright, To think upon that ancient fight. Oh, leaping from the strainèd string Against an armoured Wrong to ring, Brave the songs that arrows sing! He weighs the finished flight: “Live and die; by and by The sun kills dark; I know not, I, In what good fight mine arrows fly!” Or at the gray hour, weary grown, When curfew o’er the wold is blown, He sees, as in a magic glass, Some lost and lonely mountain-pass; And lo! a sign of deathful rout The mocking vine has wound about,-- An earth-fixed arrow by a spring, All greenly mossed, a mouldered thing; That stifled shaft no more shall sing! He shakes his head in doubt. “Laugh and sigh, live and die,-- The hand is blind: I know not, I, In what lost pass mine arrows lie! One to east, one to west, Another for the eagle’s breast,-- The archer and the wind know best!” The stars are in the sky; He lays his arrows by. IVO OF CHARTRES Now may it please my lord, Louis the king, Lily of Christ and France! riding his quest, I, Bishop Ivo, saw a wondrous thing. There was no light of sun left in the west, And slowly did the moon’s new light increase. Heaven, without cloud, above the near hill’s crest, Lay passion-purple in a breathless peace. Stars started like still tears, in rapture shed, Which without consciousness the lids release. All steadily, one little sparkle red, Afar, drew close. A woman’s form grew up Out of the dimness, tall, with queen-like head, And in one hand was fire; in one, a cup. Of aspect grave she was, with eyes upraised, As one whose thoughts perpetually did sup At the Lord’s table. While the cresset blazed, Her I regarded. “Daughter, whither bent, And wherefore?” As by speech of man amazed, One moment her deep look to me she lent; Then, in a voice of hymn-like, solemn fall, Calm, as by rote, she spake out her intent: