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The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems by James Russell Lowell; With a Biographical Sketch and Notes, a Portrait and Other Illustrations by James Russell Lowell
page 31 of 132 (23%)
Go threading the soot-forest's tangled darks
Like herds of startled deer.
But the wind without was eager and sharp, 225
Of Sir Launfal's gray hair it makes a harp,
And rattles and wrings
The icy strings,
Singing, in dreary monotone,
A Christmas carol of its own, 230
Whose burden still, as he might guess,
Was--"Shelterless, shelterless, shelterless!"
The voice of the seneschal flared like a torch
As he shouted the wanderer away from the porch,
And he sat in the gateway and saw all night 235
The great hall-fire, so cheery and bold,
Through the window-slits of the castle old,
Build out its piers of ruddy light
Against the drift of the cold.

[Footnote 4: The Empress of Russia, Catherine II., in a magnificent
freak, built a palace of ice, which was a nine-days' wonder. Cowper
has given a poetical description of it in _The Task_, Book V. lines
131-176.]

[Footnote 5: The Yule-log was anciently a huge log burned at the feast
of Juul (pronounced Yule) by our Scandinavian ancestors in honor of
the god Thor. Juul-tid (Yule-time) corresponded in time to Christmas
tide, and when Christian festivities took the place of pagan, many
ceremonies remained. The great log, still called the Yule-log, was
dragged in and burned in the fireplace after Thor had been
forgotten.]
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