DAYS AND DREAMS.

He dreamed of hills so deep with woods

Storm-barriers on the summer sky

Are not more dark, where plunged loud floods

Down rocks of sullen dye.

Flat ways were his where sparsely grew

Gnarled, iron-colored oaks, with rifts,

Between dead boughs, of Eden-blue:

Ways where the speedwell lifts

Its shy appeal, and spreading far —

The gold, the fallen gold of dawn

Staining each blossom's balanced star —

Hollows of cowslips wan.

Where‘ round the feet the lady-smock

And pearl-pale lady-slipper creep;

White butterflies upon them rock

Or seal-brown suck and sleep.

At eve the west shoots crooked fire

Athwart a half-moon leaning low;

While one white, arrowy star throbs higher

In curdled honey-glow.

Was it some elfin euphrasy

That purged his spirit so that there

Blue harebells, by those ways that be,

Seemed summoning to prayer?

For all the death within him prays;

Not he — his higher self, whose love

Fire-filled the flesh. Its light still stays

Touched by the soul above.

They found him dead his songs beside,

Six stairs above the din and dust

Of life: and that for which he died

Denied him even a crust.