Hide still, best Good, in subtile wise, Beyond my nature's utmost scope; Be ever absent from mine eyes

To be twice present in my hope!

1

GOLD EGG: A DREAM-FANTASY.

HOW A STUDENT IN SEARCH OF THE BEAUTIFUL, FELL

ASLEEP IN DRESDEN OVER HERR PROFESSOR DOCTOR
VISCHER'S WISSENSCHAFT DES SCHÖNEN, AND WHAT

CAME THEREOF.

I

SWAM with undulation soft,

Adrift on Vischer's ocean,

And, from my cockboat up aloft,
Sent down my mental plummet oft

In hope to reach a notion.

But from the metaphysic sea

No bottom was forthcoming,
And all the while (how drearily!)

In one eternal note of B

My German stove kept humming.

"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.

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 so was happily transposed

From proser into poet.

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."

DAIMON 't was 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.

"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 Baucis stared a moment,

Then tossed poor Partlet on the green, And with a tone, half jest, half spleen, Thus made her housewife's comment:

"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!

-