My visual orbs are purged from film, and lo! I see old fairy land's miraculous show! Her trees of tinsel kissed by freakish gales, Her Ouphs that, cloaked in leaf-gold, skim the breeze, And fairies, swarming 'Tis the middle watch of a summer's nightThe earth is dark, but the heavens are bright; Nought 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 gray form to throw In a silver cone on the wave below; His sides are broken by spots of shade, The stars are on the moving stream, In an eel-like, spiral line below; Of the gauze-winged katy-did; And the plaint of the wailing whip-poor-will, Who moans 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, THE CULPRIT FAY. He has counted them all with click and stroke, 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- Hither, hither, wing your way! "Tis the dawn of the fairy day." IV. They come from beds of lichen green, From the silver tops of moon-touched trees, Where they swung in their cobweb hammocks high, And rocked about in the evening breeze; Some from the hum-bird's downy nest They had driven him out by elfin power, And, pillowed on plumes of his rainbow breast, Had slumbered there till the charmed hour; Some had lain in the scoop of the rock, With glittering ising-stars inlaid And some had opened the four-o'clock, And stole within its purple shade. 21 |