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.