hens red,
Besides these grown, are meat the Brownies broiled
Above a glow-worm bed.

The smears of silver on the webs that line
The tree's crook'd roots, or stretch, white-wove, within
The hollow stump, are stains of Faery wine
Spilled on the cloth where Elf-land sat to dine,
When night beheld them drinking, chin to chin,
O' the moon's fermented shine.

What but their chairs the mushrooms on the lawn,
Or toadstools hidden under flower and fern,
Tagged with the dotting dew!--With knees updrawn
Far as his eyes, have I not come upon
PUCK seated there? but scarcely 'round could turn
Ere, presto! he was gone.

And so though Science from the woods hath tracked
The Elfin; and with prosy lights of day
Unhallowed all his haunts; and, dulling, blacked
Our eyesight, still hath Beauty never lacked
For seers yet; who, in some wizard way,
Prove Fancy real as Fact.

DREAMS.

My thoughts have borne me far away
To Beauties of an older day,
Where, crowned with roses, stands the DAWN,
Striking her seven-stringed barbiton
Of flame, whose chords give being to
The seven colours, hue for hue;
The music of the colour-dream
She builds the day from, beam by beam.

My thoughts have borne me far away
To Myths of a diviner day,
Where, sitting on the mountain, NOON
Sings to the pines a sun-soaked tune
Of rest and shade and clouds and skies,
Wherein her calm dreams idealize
Light as a presence, heavenly fair,
Sleeping with all her beauty bare.

My thoughts have borne me far away
To Visions of a wiser day,
Where, stealing through the wilderness,
NIGHT walks, a sad-eyed votaress,
And prays with mystic words she hears
Behind the thunder of the spheres,
The starry utterance that's hers,
With which she fills the Universe.

THE OLD HOUSE.

Quaint and forgotten, by an unused road,
An old house stands: around its doors the dense
Blue iron-weeds grow high;
The chipmunks make a highway of its fence;
And on its sunken flagstones slug and toad
Silent as lichens lie.

The timid snake upon its hearth's cool sand
Sleeps undisturbed; the squirrel haunts its roof;
And in the clapboard sides
Of closets, dim with many a spider woof,
Like the uncertain