The Unfinished Dream

Rare-sweet the air in that unimagined country -         My spirit had wandered far      From its weary body close-enwrapt in slumber         Where its home and earth-friends are;      A milk-like air - and of light all abundance;         And there a river clear      Painting the scene like a picture on its bosom,         Green foliage drifting near.      No sign of life I saw, as I pressed onward,         Fish, nor beast, nor bird,      Till I came to a hill clothed in flowers to its summit,         Then shrill small voices I heard.      And I saw from concealment a company of elf-folk         With faces strangely fair,      Talking their unearthly scattered talk together,         A bind of green-grasses in their hair,      Marvellously gentle, feater far than children,         In gesture, mien and speech,      Hastening onward in translucent shafts of sunshine,         And gossiping each with each.      Straw-light their locks, on neck and shoulder falling,         Faint of almond the silks they wore,      Spun not of worm, but as if inwoven of moonbeams         And foam on rock-bound shore;      Like lank-legged grasshoppers in June-tide meadows,         Amalillios of the day,      Hungrily gazed upon by me - a stranger,         In unknown regions astray.      Yet, happy beyond words, I marked their sunlit faces,         Stealing soft enchantment from their eyes,      Tears in my own confusing their small image,         Harkening their bird-like cries.      They passed me, unseeing, a waft of flocking linnets;         Sadly I fared on my way;      And came in my dream to a dreamlike habitation,         Close-shut, festooned and grey.      Pausing, I gazed at the porch dust-still, vine-wreathd,         Worn the stone steps thereto,      Mute hung its bell, whence a stony head looked downward,         Grey 'gainst the sky's pale-blue -      Strange to me: strange....