Invocation to Fancy

Oh, be the thin enamel of a river

That never deepens to a darkened glass.

Set up your china pasture, gilt with grass,

Receive me through your tiny stile forever.

From the heart's hoof, enormous and alarming,

Give the spent mind this porcelain escape,

Where Life is only some small shepherd-shape,

Remotely moving, graceful, dreamy, charming.

And, innocently tinted and entrancing,

Unroll your landscape like a gauze of green,

Here even Death is exquisitely seen

As but a horned child on a hillside dancing.