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? 4. Then o'er my senses came a change: My book seemed all traditions, Old legends of profoundest range, Diablerie, and stories strange Of goblins, elves, magicians. 5. Truth was, my outward eyes were closed, Although I did not know it; Deep into Dreamland I had dozed, And found me suddenly transposed From proser into poet. 6. 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. 7. 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." 8. DAIMON 't was printed in the book; And as I read it slowly, The letters moved and changed and took Jove's stature, the Olympian look Of painless melancholy. 9. He paused upon the threshold worn:-- "With coin I cannot pay you; Yet would I fain make some return,-- You will not the gift's cheapness spurn,-- Accept this fowl, I pray you. 10. "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." 11. 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: 12. "The stranger had a queerish face, His smile was most unpleasant; And though he meant it for a grace, Yet this old hen of barnyard race Was but a stingy present. 13. "She's quite too old for laying eggs, Nay, even to make a soup of; It only needs to see her legs,-- You might as well boil down the pegs I made the brood-hen's coop of! 14. "More than three hundred such do I Raise every year, her sisters; Go, in the woods your fortune try, All day for one poor earth-worm pry, And scratch your toes to blisters!" 15. Philemon found the rede was good; And turning on the poor hen, He clapped his hands, he stamped, hallooed, Hunting the exile toward the wood, To house with snipe and moor-hen. 16. 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?" 17. To him Philemon,--"I'll not balk Thy will with any shackle; Wilt add a burden to thy walk? Then take her without further talk; You're both but fit to cackle!"