 | The Ballad of Babie Bell And Other Poems |  |
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A PASTORAL HYMN TO THE FAIRIES.
I.
O ye little tricksy gods!Tell me where ye sleep o' nights,
Where ye laugh and weep o' nights!
Is it in the velvet pods
Of the drooping violets—
In the purple palaces,
Scooped and shaped like chalices?
Or beneath the silver bend,
In among the cooling jets,
Of Iris-haunted, wood cascades
That tumble down from porphyry heights?
Do ye doze in rose-leaf boats
Where the dreamy streamlet floats,
Full of fish and phosphorus motes,
Through the heart of quiet glades?
II.
When we crush a pouting bloom,Ten to one we kill a Fairy!
May be that the light perfume
In our nostrils, sweet and airy,
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Floating upward. O, be wary!
Who can tell what size or make
The wilful little beings take?
There's a bird; now, who can say
'Tis a Robin or a Fay?
Why may not immortal things
Go on red and yellow wings!
Ah! if so the Fairies bide
Round us, with us, tell me why
Is their silver speech denied?
Are they deafened to my cry?
III.
If you ask me why my songMorn, and noon, and night complains,
I will tell you ... Long ago,
When the orchards and the lanes
Were, with fragrant apple-blooms,
White as in a fall of snow,
It was then we missed a Voice—
It was little Mary's!
For one morn she wandered forth,
In the spring-time of the earth,
And was lost among the Fairies!
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Through the shadows, by the brooks,
Talking to the solemn woods,
Peering into mossy nooks,
Asking sadly, now and then,
After tiny maids and men!
For my thoughts are with the child,
All my heart is gone with Mary's—
O, sad day she fled away,
And was lost among the Fairies!
| The Ballad of Babie Bell And Other Poems | |