Chapter III

Ere the crowfoot on the lawn
Lifts its head,
Or the glow-worm's light be gone,
Dim and dead,
In a cobweb-hammock I
Swing between two ferns and lie
Hid away;
Where the drowsy musk-rose blows
And a sleepy runnel flows,
In the land of Faery,
There I rock, where none can see,
All the summer day.

AN ELF SWASHBUCKLER

Ho, my bullies, lift a tune
To Queen Mab, and, come, make merry,
By a mushroom in the moon,
White as bud of berry!

Gentlemen, come! take your grog!
Each one in his cap and mantlet:
Who refuses is a dog!--
He must lift my gantlet!

Look! my gaberdine how brave!
And my tunic, ouphen yellow!
One a bat's-wing lately gave,
And a frog its fellow.

And a moth's-head grew this fine
Feather of my beetle-bonnet;
See, my gnat-sting dagger's shine
Hath its blood still on it.

Faith! this ring I wear, I swear,
'Twas Queen Mab who gave it: studded,
As you see, with rubies rare--
Eyes of spiders blooded.

Doubt me, sirs, and by my blade!--
Sirrahs, a good stabbing hanger!
From a hornet's stinger made!--
You may dread my anger!

Fill the lichen pottles up,
Honey pressed from hearts of roses:
Cheek by jowl, up with each cup,
Till we hide our noses.

Good, sirs!--Marry!--'Twas the cock!--
Hey, away! the moon's lost fire!--
Ho! the cock! our dial and clock--
Hide beneath this brier!

ON THE EVE OF ST. JOHN

(_Scandinavian_)

Dizzily round,
On the elf-hills, white in the mellow moonlight,
To a sweet, unholy, ravishing sound
Of wizard voices from underground,
Their mazy dance the Elle-maids wound
On St. John's Eve.

Beautiful white,
Like a wreath of mist by the starbeams kissed,
Their frail, sweet faces bloomed out of the night,
With floating tresses of firefly light,
That puffed like foam to the left and the right,
On St. John's Eve.

Fitfully there
They danced like the daughters of starlit waters,--
But I saw what a mockery all of them were,
With their hollow bodies, when the moonlit air
Rayed out of their eyes with a glow-worm glare,
On St. John's Eve.

I turned my feet
To the river's banks: in the rush-flowers' ranks
I heard the Necken their songs repeat:
A music all made of the water's beat,
Of moss and of whispering winds that meet,
On St. John's Eve.

They called my name;
And I saw them there, in their beauty rare,
On the moonlit waves whence the music came,
With their harps of gold, and their locks of flame
Blown over pale brows, sans sin or blame,
On St. John's Eve.

'Twas nearing morn
When I turned me home; and a wizen'd gnome,
A Nis, all gray with flailing the corn,
And strong with the scent of byre and barn,
Scowled at me under the haunted thorn,
On St. John's Eve.

To end it all,
As I passed the hill by the ruined mill,
The hill rose up on pillars tall,
Crimson pillars that ranked a hall,
Where the Dwarfs and the Trolls were holding a ball,
On St. John's Eve.

One reached to me
A goblet of gold of a vintage old,
And I drank, and mixed with their mirth and glee,
And danced with them for an hour, may be.--
But they tell me now 'tis a year, you see,
Since St. John's Eve.

THE NIXIES

Deep down, beneath the waves,
Great emerald-curving caves
Dark-domed above it,
Dim-walled with pearl and gold
Glimmers their city old--
Hast thou heard of it?--
Where, through the long green nights, the spangling spars
Twinkle like misty stars.

Where the wind-ripple rays,
And the white water sprays
Over the rocks,
Sitting, they comb their hair;
Singing, with fingers fair
Braiding their locks;
While round their loveliness of naked limbs
The moon's gold glamour swims.

Or, on some stormy night,
Seen through the glow-worm light
Haunting the sands,
Thou canst behold them drift
Wild thro' the foam, and lift
Pale arms and hands;
Or, in the lightning's leap, along the lake,
Dance in the tempest's wake.

Singing: "Come join our dance!
Come, while the lightnings glance,
Or when the moon
Spills all her flowers of light
At the dark feet of night;
And soon, ah, soon,
Within our shadowy halls thou shalt forget
Earth's fever and its fret."

THE WATER-FAIRY

Stars above her, stars beneath,
White she rose, as white as death,
Where the waters glassed the splendor
Of a thousand thousand stars,
Twinkling where the lilies slender
Rocked above the ripple-bars.
Slow she oared a shining shoulder
To a blossom-crested boulder.
With slim fingers, long and milky,
From the wave and water-lilies,
Up the rock she drew her silky
Beauty, wild as any rill is
Flashing from a hilly height.
Sitting, dripping in the night,
Sweet she sang unto the lilies,
Sang unto the listening lilies,
Till arose the wool-white moon
In the silken hush of heaven;
Then she wreathed her brow with seven
Lily-buds, all sweet with June;
Belted, wreathed with lilies seven,
Then again upon the boulder,
Dark locks on a milk-white shoulder,
Wild she sang; a wilder ditty
To the wool-white moon;
To the lilies and the moon:
Beautiful and without pity,
Sang, and sang an elfin tune;
Till a youth, who wandered far,
Saw her sitting like a star;
Heard her singing to the moon;
Found her sitting, starry white,
On the flower-crested boulder,
Dark locks on a milky shoulder,
In the low moon's lilied light,
'Neath the wool-white moon....
And the creature wrapped her hair
Round his white throat, sitting there
Singing, smiled into his eyes,
While she wrapped her raven hair
Slowly round his throat; and then
Laughed and whispered to the skies,
Kissed him once and then again;
Smiled; and left him stark and strangled
In the water-lilies tangled,
Staring up, with open eyes,
At the moon with open eyes.

THE MORNING-GLORIES

They swing from the garden-trellis
In Ariel-airy ease;
And their aromatic honey
Is sought by the earliest bees.

The rose, it knows their secret,
And the jessamine also knows:
And the rose told me the secret,
That the jessamine told the rose.

And the jessamine said: At midnight,
Ere the red cock woke and crew,
The Fays of Queen Titania
Came here to bathe i' the dew.

And the yellow moonlight glistened
On braids of elfin hair:
And fairy feet on the flowers
Fell lighter than any air.

And their petticoats, gay as bubbles,
They hung up, every one,
On the morning-glory's tendrils,
Till their moonlight bath were done.

But the barn-cock crew too early,
And the Fairies fled in fear,
Leaving their petticoats, one and all,
Like blossoms hanging here.

THE GLADIOLES

As tall as the lily, as rich as the rose,
And deep as the bloom of the hollyhock,
They lift their blossoms in furbelows
Of flame that the warm winds rock.

And some are red as the humming-bird's throat,
And some are pied as the butterfly's wings,
And each is shaped like an elfin coat,
Or a goblin cap that swings.

Freaked with fire or red as blood,
They nod at me in my garden old,
Each flower a pixy helm or hood,
Lace-lined with fairyland gold.

For you know the goblins that come at dusk,--
Whose firefly eyes you have seen,--each one,
(When is sprinkled the dew and scattered the musk,)
Hangs here his cap when done.

THE TIGER-LILY

Tall in his tawny turban,
A sultan 'mid his bands,
In my garden, old and urban,
The tiger-lily stands.

The poppies there that glisten,
Whose gaudy garments glow,
Are eunuchs who guard and listen
Round his seraglio

Of roses, myrrhed and musky;
Some whiter than a dove,
And others, deep and dusky,
His odalisks of love.

Circassian-white and slender,
His dancing-girls and slaves,
To the August-lilies tender,
His haughty hand he waves.

While he watches them, nothing missing,
In her bower of bloom on high,
His favorite rose is kissing
A Bedouin butterfly.

THE MOTH, THE ROSE, AND THE PINK

White as snow I saw it sink
On the pungent-petaled pink
Through the moonlit dusk;
Moth? or fairy? or, who knows?--
Ghost, perhaps, of some dead rose
'Mid the roses' musk.

Then it seemed I heard a sweet
Tinkle as of elfin feet
Underneath the blooms,
Where one rose hung desolate,
Sick of heart and filled with hate,
Dead with its perfumes.

"Thou, for whom I died to-day,"
So I seemed to hear it say,
"Listen, lovely pink:
Vampire-like, unto thy heart
Now I send, through my white art,
My pale ghost to drink."

GLAMOUR

With fall on fall, from wood to wood,
The brook pours mossy music down--
Or is it, in the solitude,
The murmur of a Faery town?

A town of Elfland filled with bells
And holiday of hurrying feet:
Or traffic now, whose small sound swells,
Now sinks from busy street to street.

Whose Folk I often recognize
In wingéd things that hover round,
Who to men's eyes assume disguise
When on some Faery errand bound.--

The bee, that haunts the touch-me-not,
Big-bodied, making braggart din,
Is elfin brother to that sot,
Jack Falstaff of the Boar's Head Inn.

The dragon-fly, whose wings of black
Are mantle for his garb of green,
Is Ancient to this other Jack,
Another Pistol, long and lean.

The butterfly, in royal tints,
Is Hal, mad Hal in cloth of gold,
Who passes these, as once that Prince
Passed his companions boon of old.

FAERY MORRIS

I

The winds are whist; and, hid in mist,
The moon hangs o'er the wooded height:
The bushy bee, with unkempt head,
Hath made the sunflower's disk his bed,
And sleeps half-hid from sight.
The owlet makes us melody--
Come dance with us in Faery,
Come dance with us to-night.

II

The dew is damp; the glow-worm's lamp
Blurs in the moss its tawny light:
The great gray moth sinks, half-asleep,
Where, in an elfin-laundered heap,
The lily-gowns hang white.
The crickets make us minstrelsy--
Come dance with us in Faery,
Come dance with us to-night.

III

With scents of heat, dew-chilled and sweet,
The new-cut hay smells by the bight:
The ghost of some dead pansy bloom
The butterfly seems, in the gloom,
Its pied wings folded tight.
The world is drowned in fantasy--
Come dance with us in Faery,
Come dance with us to-night.

THE LITTLE PEOPLE

I

When the lily nods in slumber,
And the roses are all sleeping;
When the night hangs deep and umber,
And the stars their watch are keeping:
When the clematis uncloses
Like a hand of snowy fire;
And the golden-lipped primroses,
To the tiger-moths' desire,
Each a mouth of musk unpuckers--
Silken pouts of scented sweetness,
Which they sip with honey-suckers:--
Shod with hush and winged with fleetness,
You may see the Little People,
Round and round the drowsy steeple
Of a belfried hollyhock,--
Clad in phlox and four-o'-clock,
Gay of gown and pantaloon,--
Dancing by the glimmering moon,
Till the cock, the long-necked cock,
Crows them they must vanish soon.

II

When the cobweb is a cradle
For the dreaming dew to sleep in;
And each blossom is a ladle
That the perfumed rain lies deep in:
When the flaming fireflies scribble
Darkness as with lines flame-tragic,
And the night seems some dim sibyl
Speaking gold, or wording magic
Silent-syllabled and golden:
Capped with snapdragon and hooded
With the sweet-pea, vague-beholden,
You may see the Little People
Underneath the sleepy steeple
Of a towering mullein stock,
Trip it over moss and rock
To the owlet's elvish tune,
And the tree-toad's gnome-bassoon;
Till the cock, the barnyard cock,
Crows them they must vanish soon.