Then rode Geraint, a little spleenful yet, Across the bridge that spanned the dry ravine. There musing sat the hoary-headed Earl, (His dress a suit of frayed magnificence, Once fit for feasts of ceremony) and said: “Whither, fair son?” to whom Geraint replied, “O friend, I seek a harbourage for the night.” Then Yniol, “Enter therefore and partake The slender entertainment of a house Once rich, now poor, but ever open-doored.” “Thanks, venerable friend,” replied Geraint; “So that ye do not serve me sparrow-hawks For supper, I will enter, I will eat With all the passion of a twelve hours’ fast.” Then sighed and smiled the hoary-headed Earl, And answered, “Graver cause than yours is mine To curse this hedgerow thief, the sparrow-hawk: But in, go in; for save yourself desire it, We will not touch upon him even in jest.” Then rode Geraint into the castle court, His charger trampling many a prickly star Of sprouted thistle on the broken stones. He looked and saw that all was ruinous. Here stood a shattered archway plumed with fern; And here had fallen a great part of a tower, Whole, like a crag that tumbles from the cliff, And like a crag was gay with wilding flowers: And high above a piece of turret stair, Worn by the feet that now were silent, wound Bare to the sun, and monstrous ivy-stems Claspt the gray walls with hairy-fibred arms, And sucked the joining of the stones, and looked A knot, beneath, of snakes, aloft, a grove. And while he waited in the castle court, The voice of Enid, Yniol’s daughter, rang Clear through the open casement of the hall, Singing; and as the sweet voice of a bird, Heard by the lander in a lonely isle, Moves him to think what kind of bird it is That sings so delicately clear, and make Conjecture of the plumage and the form; So the sweet voice of Enid moved Geraint; And made him like a man abroad at morn When first the liquid note beloved of men Comes flying over many a windy wave To Britain, and in April suddenly Breaks from a coppice gemmed with green and red, And he suspends his converse with a friend, Or it may be the labour of his hands, To think or say, “There is the nightingale;” So fared it with Geraint, who thought and said, “Here, by God’s grace, is the one voice for me.” It chanced the song that Enid sang was one Of Fortune and her wheel, and Enid sang: “Turn, Fortune, turn thy wheel and lower the proud; Turn thy wild wheel through sunshine, storm, and cloud; Thy wheel and thee we neither love nor hate. “Turn, Fortune, turn thy wheel with smile or frown; With that wild wheel we go not up or down; Our hoard is little, but our hearts are great. “Smile and we smile, the lords of many lands; Frown and we smile, the lords of our own hands; For man is man and master of his fate.