In his picture "The Annunciation" Mary is standing motionless beside the great basin of a well-spring, at the portico of her house. To the left the messenger of God appears in the air. He has floated solemnly down, and it seems as if the folds of his robes, which fall straight from the body, had hardly been ruffled in his flight, as if his wings had scarcely moved; with the extremities of his feet he touches the branches of a laurel. Mary does not shrink, and makes no gesture. There they stand, gravely, and as still as statues. The robe of the angel is white, and white that of the Virgin, and white the marble floor and the wainscoting of the house; and it is only the pinions of the heavenly messenger that gleam in a golden brightness. A picture called "Sponsa die Libano" bore as a motto the words from _The Song of Solomon_: "Awake, O north wind; and come, thou south; blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out." The bride, in an ample blue robe, walks musing beside a stream, upon the bank of which white lilies grow, whilst the vehement figures of the North and South Winds rush through the air in grey, fluttering garments. In addition to his love for Homer and the Bible, Burne-Jones has a passion for the old Trouvères of the _Chansons de Geste_, the great and fanciful adventures of vanished chivalry, Provençal courts of love, and the legends of Arthur, Merlin, and the Knights of the Round Table. His "Chant d'Amour" is like a page torn out of an old English or Provençal tale. On the meadow before a mediæval town a lady is kneeling, a sort of St. Cecilia, in a white upper-garment and a gleaming skirt, playing upon an organ, the full chords of which echo softly through the evening landscape. To the left a young knight is sitting upon the ground, and silently listens, lost in the music, while a strange figure, clad in red, is pressing upon the bellows of the instrument. "The Enchantment of Merlin," with which he made his first appearance in 1877, illustrated the passage in the old legend of Merlin and Vivien, relating how it came to pass one day that she and Merlin entered a forest, which was called the forest of Broceliande, and found a glorious wood of whitethorn, very high and all in blossom, and seated themselves in the shadow: and Merlin fell asleep, and when she saw that he slept she raised herself softly, and began the spell, exactly according to the teaching of Merlin, drawing the magic circle nine times and uttering the spell nine times. And Merlin looked around him, and it seemed to him as though he were imprisoned in a tower, the highest in the world, and he felt his strength leave him as if the blood were streaming from his veins.