Pierol’s Christmas

Into the hall on the night of Yule Capered the jester, blithe Pierol, Crying merrily, “Gifts for a fool!” Sooth, right well did he play the role, Though the wolf of bitterness gnawed his soul! Proud his birth as the proudest there,— Count or baron or haughty knight, But poverty was his sorry share,— A lonely tower on a barren height (And a wit as bright as his purse was light). So under the motley he hid his name; Under the motley he hid his heart; But he could not hide nor he could not tame His leaping spirit that would out-start, Nor his face,—Endymion’s counterpart. “Gifts for a fool!” Troth, they loved him well,— Loved his beauty and blithesomeness, Loved his quips and lyric spell Of the songs he sang with so gay a stress, And his head thrown back like a hawk in jess! So they tossed him,—this one a golden chain, That one a bracelet, another a ring; Till out of all of that feasting train There was only a maid who had failed to fling Some bauble to him,—some costly thing. And she,—how fair like the thorn in May She seemed as she sat in her stainless guise!— As he paused in his pirouetting gay, Caught to heart the look in his fearless eyes That were fixed upon her in yearning wise; And raising a hand,—ne’er was shapelier By prince or paladin won, I wis, In the shock of the lists, or the silken stir Of the courts of Love who is queen of bliss!— She cast him the honeyed boon of a kiss. “Gifts—for a—fool!” far, fainter the cry Drooped in the distance to quaver and shift, A moment to linger, and then to die. Of all that meed of a jester’s thrift Which to Pierol was the dearest gift?