When he rode past the pallid lake, The withered yellow stems of flags Stood breast-high for his horse to break; Lewd as the palsied lips of hags The petals in the moon did shake.
When he came by the mountain wall, The snow upon the heights looked down And said, "The sight is pitiful. The nostrils of his steed are brown With frozen blood; and he will fall."
The iron passes of the hills With question were importunate; And, but the sharp-tongued icy rills Had grown for once compassionate, The spiteful shades had had their wills.
Just when the ache in breast and brain And the frost smiting at his face Had sealed his spirit up with pain, He came out in a better place, And morning lay across the plain.
He saw the wet snails crawl and cling On fern-stalks where the rime had run, The careless birds went wing and wing, And in the low smile of the sun Life seemed almost a pleasant thing.
Right on the panting charger swung Through the bright depths of quiet grass; The knight's lips moved as if they sung, And through the peace there came to pass The flattery of lute and tongue.
From the mid-flowering of the mead There swelled a sob of minstrelsy, Faint sackbuts and the dreamy reed, And plaintive lips of maids thereby, And songs blown out like thistle seed.
Forth from her maidens came the bride, And as his loosened rein fell slack He muttered, "In their throats they lied Who said that I should ne'er win back To kiss her lips before I died!"
He plays the deuce with my writing time, For the penny my sixth-floor neighbor throws; He finds me proud of my pondered rhyme, And he leaves me--well, God knows It takes the shine from a tunester's line When a little mate of the deathless Nine Pipes up under your nose!
For listen, there is his voice again, Wistful and clear and piercing sweet. Where did the boy find such a strain To make a dead heart beat? And how in the name of care can he bear To jet such a fountain into the air In this gray gulch of a street?
Tuscan slopes or the Piedmontese? Umbria under the Apennine? South, where the terraced lemon-trees Round rich Sorrento shine? Venice moon on the smooth lagoon?-- Where have I heard that aching tune, That boyish throat divine?
Beyond my roofs and chimney pots A rag of sunset crumbles gray; Below, fierce radiance hangs in clots O'er the streams that never stay. Shrill and high, newsboys cry The worst of the city's infamy For one more sordid day.