ON MIDSUMMER NIGHT
I
All the poppies, in their beds
Nodding crumpled, crimson heads;
And the larkspurs, in whose ears
Twilight hangs, like twinkling tears,
Sleepy jewels of the rain;
All the violets, that strain
Eyes of amaranthine gleam;
And the clover-blooms that dream
With pink baby-fists closed tight,—
They can hear upon this night,
Noiseless as the moon's white light,
Footsteps and the glimmering flight,
Shimmering flight,
Of the Fairies.
II
Every sturdy four-o'-clock,
In its variegated frock;
Every slender sweet-pea, too,
In its hood of pearly hue;
Every primrose pale that dozes
By the wall and slow uncloses
A sweet mouth of dewy dawn
In a little silken yawn,—
On this night of silvery sheen,
They can see the Fairy Queen,
On her palfrey white, I ween,
Tread dim cirques of haunted green,
Moonlit green,
With her Fairies.
III
Never a foxglove-bell, you see,
That's a cradle for a bee;
Never a lily, that's a house
Where the butterfly may drowse;
Never a rose-bud or a blossom,
That unfolds its honeyed bosom
To the moth, that nestles deep
And there sucks itself to sleep,—
But can hear and also see,
On this night of witchery,
All that world of Faerie,
All that world where airily,
Merrily,
Trip the Fairies.
IV
It was last Midsummer Night,
In the moon's uncertain light,
That I stood among the flowers,
And, in language unlike ours,
Heard them speaking of the Pixies,
Trolls and Gnomes and Water-Nixes;
How in this flow'r's ear a Fay
Hung a gem of rainy ray;
And round that flow'r's throat had set,
Dim, a dewdrop carcanet;
Then among the mignonette
Stretched a cobweb-hammock wet,
Dewy wet,
For the Fairies.
V
Long I watched, but never a one,
Ariel, Puck, or Oberon,
Mab, or Queen Titania—
Fairest of them all they say—
Clad in morning-glory hues,
Did I glimpse among the dews.
Only once I thought the torch
Of that elfin-rogue and arch,
Robin Goodfellow, afar
Flashed along a woodland bar—
Bright, a jack-o'-lantern star,
A green lamp of firefly spar,
Glow-worm spar,
Loved of Fairies.
