THE CULPRIT FAY.

My visual orbs are purged from film, and lo!
Instead of Anster's turnip-bearing yales

I see old fairy land's miraculous show!
"Her trees of tinsel kissed by freakish gales,

"Her Ouplis that, cloaked in leaf-gold, skim the breeze,
"And fairies, swarming-

TENNANT'S ANSTER FAIR.

1.

'Tis the middle watch of a summer's nightThe earth is dark, but the heavens are bright; Naught is seen in the vault on high

But the moon, and the stars, and the cloudless sky, And the flood which rolls its milky hue,

A river of light on the welkin blue.

The moon looks down on old Cronest,

She mellows the shades on his shaggy breast,

And seems his huge grey form to throw

In a silver cone on the wave below;

B

His sides are broken by spots of shade,
By the walnut bough and the cedar made,
And through their clustering branches dark
Glimmers and dies the fire-fly's spark

Like starry twinkles that momently break.:
Through the rifts of the gathering tempest's rack.

The stars are on the moving stream,.
And fling, as its ripples gently flow,
A burnished length of wavy beam
In an eel-like, spiral line below;
The winds are whist, and the owl is still,
The bat in the shelvy rock is hid,
And naught is heard on the lonely hill
But the cricket's chirp and the answer shrill
Of the gauze-winged katy-did;

And the plaint of the wailing whip-poor-will
Who mourns unseen, and ceaseless sings,
Ever a note of wail and wo,

Till morning spreads her rosy wings,
And earth and sky in her glances glow.

III.

'Tis the hour of fairy ban and spell :
The wood-tick has kept the minutes well;
He has counted them all with click and stroke,
Deep in the heart of the mountain oak,
And he has awakened the sentry elve

Who sleeps with him in the haunted tree,

To bid him ring the hour of twelve,

And call the fays to their revelry;

Twelve small strokes on his tinkling bell('Twas made of the white snail's pearly shell:-) "Midnight comes, and all is well!

Hither, hither, wing your way!

'Tis the dawn of the fairy day."

IV.

They come from beds of lichen green,
They creep from the mullen's velvet screen;
Some on the backs of beetles fly

From the silver tops of moon-touched trees,

Where they swung in their cobweb hammocks high,

And rock'd about in the evening breeze;