‘What’s Beauty?’ mused I; ’is it told
  By synthesis? analysis? 
Have you not made us lead of gold? 
To feed your crucible, not sold
  Our temple’s sacred chalices?’

Then o’er my senses came a change;
  My book seemed all traditions,
Old legends of profoundest range,
Diablery, and stories strange
  Of goblins, elves, magicians. 20

Old gods in modern saints I found,
  Old creeds in strange disguises;
I thought them safely underground,
And here they were, all safe and sound,
  Without a sign of phthisis.

Truth was, my outward eyes were closed,
  Although I did not know it;
Deep into dream-land I had dozed,
And thus was happily transposed
  From proser into poet. 30

So what I read took flesh and blood,
  And turned to living creatures: 
The words were but the dingy bud
That bloomed, like Adam, from the mud,
  To human forms and features.

I saw how Zeus was lodged once more
  By Baucis and Philemon;
The text said, ’Not alone of yore,
But every day, at every door
  Knocks still the masking Demon.’ 40

DAIMON ’twas printed in the book
  And, as I read it slowly,
The letters stirred and changed, and took
Jove’s stature, the Olympian look
  Of painless melancholy.

He paused upon the threshold worn: 
  ’With coin I cannot pay you;
Yet would I fain make some return;
The gift for cheapness do not spurn,
  Accept this hen, I pray you. 50

’Plain feathers wears my Hemera,
  And has from ages olden;
She makes her nest in common hay,
And yet, of all the birds that lay,
  Her eggs alone are golden.’

He turned, and could no more be seen;
  Old Bancis stared a moment,
Then tossed poor Partlet on the green,
And with a tone, half jest, half spleen,
  Thus made her housewife’s comment:  60

’The stranger had a queerish face,
  His smile was hardly pleasant,
And, though he meant it for a grace,
Yet this old hen of barnyard race
  Was but a stingy present.

’She’s quite too old for laying eggs,
  Nay, even to make a soup of;
One only needs to see her legs,—­
You might as well boil down the pegs
  I made the brood-hen’s coop of! 70

’Some eighteen score of such do I
  Raise every year, her sisters;
Go, in the woods your fortunes try,
All day for one poor earthworm pry,
  And scratch your toes to blisters!’

Philemon found the rede was good,
  And, turning on the poor hen,
He clapt his hands, and stamped, and shooed,
Hunting the exile tow’rd the wood,
  To house with snipe and moorhen. 80

A poet saw and cried:  ’Hold! hold! 
  What are you doing, madman? 
Spurn you more wealth than can be told,
The fowl that lays the eggs of gold,
  Because she’s plainly clad, man?’