Xxxviii

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