When, glittering on the shadowed ground,
He saw a purple muscle shell;

Thither he ran, and he bent him low,

He heaved at the stern and he heaved at the bow,
And he pushed her over the yielding sand,
Till he came to the verge of the haunted land.
She was as lovely a pleasure-boat

As ever fairy had paddled in,

For she glowed with purple paint without,
And shone with silvery pearl within;
A sculler's notch in the stern he made,
An oar he shaped of the bootle blade;
Then sprung to his seat with a lightsome leap,
And launched afar on the calm blue deep.

XIX.

The imps of the river yell and rave;
They had no power above the wave,
But they heaved the billow before the prow,
And they dashed the surge against her side,
And they struck her keel with jerk and blow,
Till the gunwale bent to the rocking tide.

She wimpled about in the pale moonbeam,

Like a feather that floats on a wind-tossed stream;

And momently athwart her track

The quarl upreared his island back,

And the fluttering scallop behind would float,

THE CULPRIT FAY.

And spatter the water about the boat;

But he bailed her out with his colen-bell,

And he kept her trimmed with a wary tread, While on every side like lightning fell

The heavy strokes of his bootle-blade.

XX.

Onward still he held his way,

Till he came where the column of moonshine lay,

And saw beneath the surface dim

The brown-backed sturgeon slowly swim:
Around him were the goblin train-

But he sculled with all his might and main,
And followed wherever the sturgeon led,
Till he saw him upward point his head;
Then he dropped his paddle blade,
And held his colen-goblet up

To catch the drop in its crimson cup.

XXI.

With sweeping tail and quivering fin,
Through the wave the sturgeon flew,

And, like the heaven-shot javelin,
He sprung above the waters blue.
Instant as the star-fall light,

He plunged him in the deep again,

33

But left an arch of silver bright

The rainbow of the moony main.
It was a strange and lovely sight
To see the puny goblin there;
He seemed an angel form of light,

With azure wing and sunny hair, Throned on a cloud of purple fair, Circled with blue and edged with white,

And sitting at the fall of even

Beneath the bow of summer heaven.

XXII.

A moment and its lustre fell,

But ere it met the billow blue, He caught within his crimson bell, A droplet of its sparkling dew

THE CULPRIT FAY.

35

Joy to thee, Fay! thy task is done,

Thy wings are pure, for the gem is won―

Cheerly ply thy dripping oar,

And haste away to the elfin shore.

XXIII.

He turns, and lo! on either side

The ripples on his path divide;

And the track o'er which his boat must pass
Is smooth as a sheet of polished glass.
Around, their limbs the sea-nymphs lave,
With snowy arms half swelling out,
While on the glossed and gleamy wave

Their sea-green ringlets loosely float;

They swim around with smile and song;
They press the bark with pearly hand,
And gently urge her course along,
Toward the beach of speckled sand;

And, as he lightly leaped to land,
They bade adieu with nod and bow,
Then gayly kissed each little hand,

And dropped in the crystal deep below.

XXIV.

A moment stayed the fairy there;

He kissed the beach and breathed a prayer,

Then spread his wings of gilded blue,
And on to the elfin court he flew;
As ever ye saw a bubble rise,

And shine with a thousand changing dies,
Till lessening far through ether driven,
It mingles with the hues of heaven;
As, at the glimpse of morning pale,
The lance-fly spreads his silken sail,
And gleams with blendings soft and bright,
Till lost in the shades of fading night;
So rose from earth the lovely Fay-
So vanished, far in heaven away!

*

Up, Fairy! quit thy chick-weed bower,
The cricket has called the second hour,
Twice again, and the lark will rise

To kiss the streaking of the skies—

Up! thy charmed armour don,

Thou 'lt nced it ere the night be gone.

XXV.

He put his acorn-helmet on;

It was plumed of the silk of the thistle down;
The corslet-plate that guarded his breast

Was once the wild-bee's golden vest;
His cloak, of a thousand mingled dies,
Was formed of the wings of butterflies;