Love Among the Ruins by Warwick Deeping

Down through the woods of Avalon rode the Lord Flavian of Gambrevault, down towards the forest track in the grey face of the dawn. In the meadows and beyond the orchards, water shone, and towers stood mistily. The voice of Spring pulsed in the air, songs of green woods, the wild wine of violets, pavements of primrose gold. Birds piped lustily in wood and thicket, and the ascending sun lavished his glittering archery from the chariots of the clouds.

The Lord Flavian was inordinately cheerful that morning, as he rode in green and red through the prophetic woods. Heart and weather were in kindred keeping, and his youth sang like a brook after April rains. The woods danced in dew. Far on its rocky hill the towers of Gilderoy would soon beckon him above the trees. Beneath the shadow of the cathedral tower stood a gabled house with gilded vanes and roofs of generous red. There in Gilderoy, in a room hung with cloth of purple and gold, white arms waited, and the bosom of a golden Helen held love like a red rose in a pool of milky spikenard.