Chill blows the wind, the pleasaunce-walks are drear: Madcap, what jest was this, to meet me here? Were feet like those made for so wild a way? The southern winter-parlor, by my fay, Had been the likeliest trysting-place to-day!-- “_Tristram!--nay, nay--thou must not take my hand!--_ _Tristram!--sweet love!--we are betrayed--out-planned._ _Fly--save thyself--save me! I dare not stay._” One last kiss first!--“’_Tis vain--to horse--away!_” * * * * * Ah! sweet saints, his dream doth move Faster surely than it should, From the fever in his blood! All the spring-time of his love Is already gone and past, And instead thereof is seen Its winter, which endureth still,-- Tyntagel on its surge-beat hill, The pleasaunce-walks, the weeping queen, The flying leaves, the straining blast, And that long, wild kiss,--their last. And this rough December-night, And his burning fever-pain, Mingle with his hurrying dream, Till they rule it; till he seem The pressed fugitive again, The love-desperate, banished knight, With a fire in his brain, Flying o’er the stormy main. --Whither does he wander now? Haply in his dreams the wind Wafts him here, and lets him find The lovely orphan child again In her castle by the coast; The youngest, fairest chatelaine, That this realm of France can boast, Our snowdrop by the Atlantic sea,-- Iseult of Brittany. And--for through the haggard air, The stained arms, the matted hair, Of that stranger-knight ill-starred, There gleamed something which recalled The Tristram who in better days Was Launcelot’s guest at Joyous Gard-- Welcomed here, and here installed, Tended of his fever here, Haply he seems again to move His young guardian’s heart with love, In his exiled loneliness, In his stately, deep distress, Without a word, without a tear. --Ah! ’tis well he should retrace His tranquil life in this lone place; His gentle bearing at the side Of his timid youthful bride; His long rambles by the shore On winter-evenings, when the roar Of the near waves came, sadly grand, Through the dark, up the drowned sand; Or his endless reveries In the woods, where the gleams play On the grass under the trees, Passing the long summer’s day Idle as a mossy stone In the forest-depths alone, The chase neglected, and his hound Couched beside him on the ground. --Ah! what trouble’s on his brow? Hither let him wander now; Hither, to the quiet hours Passed among these heaths of ours By the gray Atlantic sea,-- Hours, if not of ecstasy, From violent anguish surely free! TRISTRAM.