III.
Sir Launfal's raiment thin and spare
Was idle mail 'gainst the barbed air,
260For it was just at the Christmas time;
So he mused, as he sat, of a sunnier clime,
And sought for a shelter from cold and snow
In the light and warmth of long-ago;
He sees the snake-like caravan crawl
265O'er the edge of the desert, black and small,
Then nearer and nearer, till, one by one,
He can count the camels in the sun,
As over the red-hot sands they pass
To where, in its slender necklace of grass,
270The little spring laughed and leapt in the shade,
And with its own self like an infant played,
And waved its signal of palms.
IV.
"For Christ's sweet sake, I beg an alms;"—
The happy camels may reach the spring,
275But Sir Launfal sees only the grewsome thing,
The leper, lank as the rain-blanched bone,
That cowers beside him, a thing as lone
And white as the ice-isles of Northern seas
In the desolate horror of his disease.
V.
280And Sir Launfal said,—"I behold in thee
An image of Him who died on the tree;
Thou also hast had thy crown of thorns,—
Thou also hast had the world's buffets and scorns,—
And to thy life were not denied
285The wounds in the hands and feet and side;
Mild Mary's Son, acknowledge me;
Behold, through him, I give to Thee!"
VI.
Then the soul of the leper stood up in his eyes
And looked at Sir Launfal, and straightway he
290Remembered in what a haughtier guise
He had flung an alms to leprosie,
When he girt his young life up in gilded mail
And set forth in search of the Holy Grail.
The heart within him was ashes and dust;
295He parted in twain his single crust,
He broke the ice on the streamlet's brink,
And gave the leper to eat and drink:
'T was a mouldy crust of coarse brown bread,
'T was water out of a wooden bowl,—
300Yet with fine wheaten bread was the leper fed,
And 't was red wine he drank with his thirsty soul.
