University of Virginia Library

XXXVIII

With leagues of fog, which showed the sun
An agate-red without a ray,
And drowned the world in ghostly gray,

36

The chill, autumnal day begun:
A phantom in the mist, a run
Foamed over phantom ledges lone
In forests that seemed far away,
Wild woods of immaterial stone.
With horses saffron to the knees
A country cart drove through the fog;
Its creaking wheels grown one great clog
Of clay, and clanking swingletrees:
Its smothered rumble did not cease
Till hidden in the woodland mist,
Where, leaning on his fresh-cut log,
The muffled woodman blew his fist.
Another world I wander in
Of unlaid ghosts and dreams unfled;
A twilight world of drowsy-head
And mystery, built figment-thin
Between the worlds of death and sin:
Where dim and strange and incomplete,
And substanceless, seem things not dead,
And sorrowful as dimly sweet.