What charm thy music works! thou makest pass before me, Ladies and cavaliers long dead, barons are in their castle halls, the troubadours are singing, Arm’d knights go forth to redress wrongs, some in quest of the holy Graal; I see the tournament, I see the contestants encased in heavy armor seated on stately champing horses, I hear the shouts, the sounds of blows and smiting steel; I see the Crusaders’ tumultuous armies⁠—hark, how the cymbals clang, Lo, where the monks walk in advance, bearing the cross on high.

Blow again trumpeter! and for thy theme, Take now the enclosing theme of all, the solvent and the setting, Love, that is pulse of all, the sustenance and the pang, The heart of man and woman all for love, No other theme but love⁠—knitting, enclosing, all-diffusing love.