Then rode Geraint, a little spleenful yet, Across the bridge that spann’d the dry ravine. There musing sat the hoary-headed Earl 295 (His dress a suit of fray’d magnificence, Once fit for feasts of ceremony), and said: “Whither, fair son?” to whom Geraint replied, “O friend, I seek a harbourage for the night.” Then Yniol, “Enter, therefore, and partake 300 The slender entertainment of a house Once rich, now poor, but ever open-door’d.” “Thanks, venerable friend,” replied Geraint; “So that you do not serve me sparrow-hawks For supper, I will enter, I will eat 305 With all the passion of a twelve hours’ fast.” Then sigh’d and smil’d the hoary-headed Earl, And answer’d, “Graver cause than yours is mine To curse this hedgerow thief, the sparrow-hawk. But in, go in; for save yourself desire it, 310 We will not touch upon him ev’n in jest.”
Then rode Geraint into the castle court, His charger trampling many a prickly star Of sprouted thistle on the broken stones. He look’d, and saw that all was ruinous. 315 Here stood a shatter’d archway plumed with fern; And here had fall’n a great part of a tower, Whole, like a crag that tumbles from the cliff, And like a crag was gay with wilding flowers: And high above a piece of turret stair, 320 Worn by the feet that now were silent, wound Bare to the sun, and monstrous ivy-stems Claspt the gray walls with hairy-fibred arms, And suck’d the joining of the stones, and look’d A knot, beneath, of snakes, aloft, a grove. 325
And while he waited in the castle court, The voice of Enid, Yniol’s daughter, rang Clear through the open casement of the hall, Singing; and as the sweet voice of a bird, Heard by the lander in a lonely isle, 330 Moves him to think what kind of bird it is That sings so delicately clear, and make Conjecture of the plumage and the form,— So the sweet voice of Enid moved Geraint; And made him like a man abroad at morn 335 When first the liquid note beloved of men Comes flying over many a windy wave To Britain, and in April suddenly Breaks from a coppice gemm’d with green and red, And he suspends his converse with a friend, 340 Or it may be the labour of his hands, To think or say, “There is the nightingale,”— So fared it with Geraint, who thought and said, “Here, by God’s grace, is the one voice for me.”