Chapter III

[Sidenote: By his art the king casts four new bells that blend in perfect harmony with the hermit's. When they ring together the five bells charm all the senses.]

Three years the king has dwelt within a cell
That he might dream his garden first to build it well,
His ministers are black with wrath
And the stone floor is hollowed to a path,
But still he hears the bell,
A frozen sound clear as a cold, deep well.
The king is melancholy mad, I guess.
At nights
The tower windows flash with lights
And many an artisan
Comes after midnight with the garden's plan
Of walls and towers
And terraces and flowers,
And spreads them wondering upon the floor;
The queen comes seldom now and least
Of all the priest;
There is no priest alive
That can the king's soul shrive;
The dead hermit from his cell
Has lured him close to heaven with his bell,
A strange, a mad, a melancholy spell.

The master of campanology
Has cast four lovely voices for the king,
Four godlike metal throats that sing
In towers at the corners of the wall;
And all the garden hears them call,
Four miracles of tone,
Of sound that flows to nothingness
Like water lines upon a river stone.

Gracious as a good gift given freely,
Comes from each campanile
At each corner of the wall,
The keen voice of a bell,
"_Lan-up, lan-up_," they ring,
And call and call the king
With the voice of the old spell
That they inherit from the hermit's bell--
Five times as strong,--
The king must go ere long--
He has the key to the garden gates,
He only waits
In courtesy to say the queen farewell.

Alas! Alas! The king is mad!
The people throng to see him pass,
And he has heard a mass.

[Sidenote: All the world is convinced of his madness, especially lovers.]

It was an eery thing to see
The king go merrily
And all the world forgo--
At dawn when little birds sing charmingly,
There was a ringing sound of horses' feet
And lovers in their upper rooms stopped clinging,
To hear go down the street
The minstrelsy
And little foolscap bells a-ringing.