Chapter I

Now, in the moonrise, from a wintry sky, The frost has come to charm with elfin might This quiet room; to draw with symbols bright Faces and forms in fairest charactery Upon the casement; all the thoughts that lie Deep hidden in my heart's core he would tell, How the red shoots of fancy strike and swell, How they are watered, what soil nourished by.

With eerie power he piles his atomies, Incrusted gems, star-glances overborne With lids of sleep pulled from the moth's bright eyes, And forests of frail ferns, blanched and forlorn, Where Oberon of unimagined size Might in the silver silence wind his horn.