A letter, word for word; and when he ask'd

'Is it for Lancelot, is it for my dear lord?
Then will I bear it gladly;' she replied,

'For Lancelot and the Queen and all the world,
But I myself must bear it.' Then he wrote
The letter she devised; which being writ
And folded, 'O sweet father, tender and true,
Deny me not,' she said-'you never yet
Denied my fancies-this, however strange,
My latest lay the letter in my hand

A little ere I die, and close the hand

Upon it; I shall guard it even in death.

And when the heat is gone from out my heart,

Then take the little bed on which I died

For Lancelot's love, and deck it like the Queen's

For richness, and me also like the Queen

In all I have of rich, and lay me on it.'
And let there be prepared a chariot-bier
To take me to the river, and a barge
Be ready on the river, clothed in black.

I go in state to court, to meet the Queen.
There surely I shall speak for mine own self,
And none of you can speak for me so well.
And therefore let our dumb old man alone
Go with me, he can steer and row, and he
Will guide me to that palace, to the doors.'

She ceased her father promised; whereupon She grew so cheerful that they deem'd her death Was rather in the fantasy than the blood.

But ten slow mornings past, and on the eleventh

Her father laid the letter in her hand,

And closed the hand upon it, and she died.

So that day there was dole in Astolat.

But when the next sun brake from underground, Then, those two brethren slowly with bent brows Accompanying, the sad chariot-bier

Past like a shadow thro' the field, that shone

Full-summer, to that stream whereon the barge,

Pall'd all its length in blackest samite, lay.
There sat the lifelong creature of the house,
Loyal, the dumb old servitor, on deck,
Winking his eyes, and twisted all his face.

So those two brethren from the chariot took
And on the black decks laid her in her bed,
Set in her hand a lily, o'er her hung

The silken case with braided blazonings,

And kiss'd her quiet brows, and saying to her 'Sister, farewell for ever,' and again

'Farewell, sweet sister,' parted all in tears.

Then rose the dumb old servitor, and the dead

Steer'd by the dumb went upward with the flood

In her right hand the lily, in her left

The letter-all her bright hair streaming down

And all the coverlid was cloth of gold

Drawn to her waist, and she herself in white
All but her face, and that clear-featured face
Was lovely, for she did not seem as dead
But fast asleep, and lay as tho' she smiled.

That day Sir Lancelot at the palace craved

Audience of Guinevere, to give at last

The price of half a realm, his costly gift,

Hard-won and hardly won with bruise and blow,
With deaths of others, and almost his own,

The nine-years-fought-for diamonds; for he saw
One of her house, and sent him to the Queen
Bearing his wish, whereto the Queen agreed
With such and so unmoved a majesty

She might have seem'd her statue, but that he,
Low-drooping till he wellnigh kiss'd her feet

For loyal awe, saw with a sidelong eye
The shadow of a piece of pointed lace,

In the Queen's shadow, vibrate on the walls,
And parted, laughing in his courtly heart.

All in an oriel on the summer side,

Vine-clad, of Arthur's palace toward the stream,

They met, and Lancelot kneeling utter'd, Queen,
Lady, my liege, in whom I have my joy,

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3

Take, what I had not won except for you,

These jewels, and make me happy, making them

An armlet for the roundest arm on earth,

Or necklace for a neck to which the swan's

Is tawnier than her cygnet's: these are words:
Your beauty is your beauty, and I sin

In speaking, yet O grant my worship of it
Words, as we grant grief tears. Such sin in words

Perchance, we both can pardon: but, my Queen,

I hear of rumours flying thro' your court.

Our bond, as not the bond of man and wife,
Should have in it an absoluter trust

To make up that defect: let rumours be :
When did not rumours fly? these, as I trust

That you trust me in your own nobleness,

I

may not well believe that you believe.'

While thus he spoke, half turn'd away, the Queen

Brake from the vast oriel-embowering vine

Leaf after leaf, and tore, and cast them off,

P