my heels.

Once, as I passed by a cottage, there came out a lovely fairy
child, with two wondrous toys, one in each hand. The one was the
tube through which the fairy-gifted poet looks when he beholds
the same thing everywhere; the other that through which he looks
when he combines into new forms of loveliness those images of
beauty which his own choice has gathered from all regions wherein
he has travelled. Round the child's head was an aureole of
emanating rays. As I looked at him in wonder and delight, round
crept from behind me the something dark, and the child stood in
my shadow. Straightway he was a commonplace boy, with a rough
broad-brimmed straw hat, through which brim the sun shone from
behind. The toys he carried were a multiplying-glass and a
kaleidoscope. I sighed and departed.

One evening, as a great silent flood of western gold flowed
through an avenue in the woods, down the stream, just as when I
saw him first, came the sad knight, riding on his chestnut steed.

But his armour did not shine half so red as when I saw him first.

Many a blow of mighty sword and axe, turned aside by the strength
of his mail, and glancing adown the surface, had swept from its
path the fretted rust, and the glorious steel had answered the
kindly blow with the thanks of returning light. These streaks
and spots made his armour look like the floor of a forest in the
sunlight. His forehead was higher than before, for the
contracting wrinkles were nearly gone; and the sadness that
remained on his face was the sadness of a dewy summer twilight,