The air of the December-night Steals coldly around the chamber bright, Where those lifeless lovers be; Swinging with it, in the light Flaps the ghostlike tapestry. And on the arras wrought you see A stately Huntsman, clad in green, And round him a fresh forest-scene. On that clear forest-knoll he stays, With his pack round him, and delays. He stares and stares, with troubled face, At this huge, gleam-lit fireplace, At that bright, iron-figured door, And those blown rushes on the floor. He gazes down into the room With heated cheeks and flurried air, And to himself he seems to say: "_What place is this, and who are they?_ _Who is that kneeling Lady fair?_ _And on his pillows that pale Knight_ _Who seems of marble on a tomb?_ _How comes it here, this chamber bright,_ _Through whose mullion'd windows clear_ _The castle-court all wet with rain,_ _The drawbridge and the moat appear,_ _And then the beach, and, mark'd with spray,_ _The sunken reefs, and far away_ _The unquiet bright Atlantic plain?_ _--What, has some glamour made me sleep,_ _And sent me with my dogs to sweep,_ _By night, with boisterous bugle-peal,_ _Through some old, sea-side, knightly hall,_ _Not in the free green wood at all?_ _That Knight's asleep, and at her prayer_ _That Lady by the bed doth kneel--_ _Then hush, thou boisterous bugle-peal!_" --The wild boar rustles in his lair; The fierce hounds snuff the tainted air; But lord and hounds keep rooted there. Cheer, cheer thy dogs into the brake, O Hunter! and without a fear Thy golden-tassell'd bugle blow, And through the glades thy pastime take-- For thou wilt rouse no sleepers here! For these thou seest are unmoved; Cold, cold as those who lived and loved A thousand years ago. III Iseult of Brittany A year had flown, and o'er the sea away, In Cornwall, Tristram and Queen Iseult lay; In King Marc's chapel, in Tyntagel old-- There in a ship they bore those lovers cold.