( TO K. D.)

We moved along the gravelled way

Between the laurels and the yews,

Some touch of old enchantment lay

About us, some remembered news

Of men who rode among the trees

With burning dreams of Camelot,

Whose names are beauty’ s litanies,

As Galahad and Launcelot.

We looked along the vaulted gloom

Of boughs unstripped of winter’ s bane,

As for some pride of scarf and plume

And painted shield and broidered rein,

And through the cloven laurel walls

We searched the darkling pines and pale

Beech-boles and woodbine coronals,

As for the passing of the Grail.

But Launcelot no travel keeps,

For brother Launcelot is dead,

And brother Galahad he sleeps

This long while in his quiet bed,

And we are all the knights that pass

Among the yews and laurels now.

They are but fruit among the grass,

And we but fruit upon the bough.

No coloured blazon meets us here

Of all that courtly company;

Elaine is not, nor Guenevere,

The dream is but of dreams that die.

But yet the purple violet lies

Beside the golden daffodil,

And women strong of limb and wise

And fierce of blood are with us still.

And never through the woodland goes

The Grail of that forgotten quest,

But still about the woodland flows

The sap of God made manifest

In boughs that labour to their time,

And birds that gossip secret things,

And eager lips that seek to rhyme

The latest of a thousand springs.