A Dead Craftsman

The soft glen, heavy with evening, Is still in unbroken dew—

No paleness is brushed on the grasses, No crush from his shoe

Is trailed through the airy passes— Where only a moon moves now

Crushing the dusk through wet grasses, And dusk in his brow!

That moon stood barely a stripling Of half a twilight old,

When he found me in dreamy houses Near the wood’s blue threshold;

But while he smiled in that twilight (His dark head slanting bird-wise

To stringed musics heard through my fingers)

Sleep grew on his eyes.

Sleep strained from his mind the beauty Seen from his cunning hand;

And under the quiet veilings Of a sleeping land

He moves now, unseen with the dew-time,

Unknown to the yellow clay, In ways of the rainy willows To dawn on a strange day!