VI.
Where gained the man this wondrous dower
Of song and superhuman power?
Tradition answers,—Elfland's Queen
Beheld the boy-bard on the green,
The description of the journey to Fairyland in the old ballad
is exquisitely poetical—few things more so:—
“‘Oh see ye not yon narrow road,
So thick beset with thorns and briers?
That is the path of righteousness,
Though after it but few inquires.
‘And see not ye that braid, braid road,
That lies across that lily leven?
That is the path of wickedness,
Though some call it the path to Heaven.
‘And see not ye that bonny road
That winds across the ferny brae?
That is the road to fair Elfland,
Where thou and I this night maun gae.’
Oh they rode on, and farther on,
And they waded through rivers aboon the knee;
And they saw neither sun nor moon,
But they heard the roaring of the sea.
It was mirk, mirk night, there was nae stern light,
And they waded through red blude to the knee;
For a' the blude that's shed on earth
Runs through the springs o' that countrie.”
BORDER MINSTRELSY, vol. iv.
Nursing pure thoughts and feelings high
With Poesy's abstracted eye;
Bewitched him with her sibyl charms,
Her tempting lips, and wreathing arms,
And lured him from the earth away
Into the light of milder day.
They passed through deserts wide and wild,
Whence living things were far exiled,
Shadows and clouds, and silence drear,
And shapes and images of fear;
Until they reached the land, where run
Rivers of blood, and shines no sun
By day—no moon, no star by night—
But glows a fair, a fadeless light—
The realm of Faëry.
There he dwelt,
Till seven sweet years had o'er him stealt—
A long, deep, rapturous trance, 'mid bowers
O'er-blossomed with perennial flowers—
One deep dream of ecstatic joy,
Unmeasured, and without alloy;
And when by Learmonth's turrets grey,
Which long had mourned their lord's delay,
Again 'mid summer's twilight seen,
His velvet shoon were Elfin green,
The livery of the tiny train
Who held him, and would have again.
