Madison Julius Cawein

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.