A DREAMER OF DREAMS - M.C.

He lived beyond men, and so stood Admitted to the brotherhood Of beauty; dreams, with which he trod Companioned as some sylvan god. And oft men wondered, when his thought Made all their knowledge seem as naught, If he, like Uther's mystic son, Had not been born for Avalon. When wandering 'mid the whispering trees, His soul communed with every breeze; Heard voices calling from the glades, Bloom-words of the Leimoniads; Or Dryads of the ash and oak, Who syllabled his name and spoke With him of presences and powers That glimpsed in sunbeams, gloomed in showers. By every violet-hallowed brook, Where every bramble-matted nook Rippled and laughed with water sounds, He walked like one on sainted grounds, Fearing intrusion on the spell That kept some fountain-spirit's well, Or woodland genius, sitting where Red, racy berries kissed his hair. Once when the wind, far o'er the hill, Had fall'n and left the wildwood still For Dawn's dim feet to glide across,— Beneath the gnarled boughs, on the moss, The air around him golden ripe With daybreak,—there, with oaten pipe, His eyes beheld the wood-god, Pan, Goat-bearded, and half-brute, half-man; Who, shaggy-haunched, a savage rhyme Blew in his reed to rudest time; And swollen-jowled, with rolling eye— Beneath the slowly silvering sky, Whose light shone through the forest's roof— Danced, while beneath his boisterous hoof The branch was snapped, and, interfused Between great roots, the moss was bruised. And often when he wandered through Old forests at the fall of dew— A new Endymion who sought A beauty higher than all thought— Some night, men said, most surely he Would favored be of deity: That in the holy solitude Her sudden presence, long pursued, Unto his gaze would be confessed; The awful moonlight of her breast Come, high with majesty, and hold His heart's blood till his heart were cold, Unpulsed, unsinewed, and undone, And snatch his soul to Avalon. {End}