Songs of
Fancy

The urns of the silent snow,

And earthquake and thunder
Did rend in sunder

The bars of the springs below.
The beard and the hair
Of the River-god were
Seen through the torrent's sweep,
As he followed the light

Of the fleet nymph's flight
To the brink of the Dorian deep.

"Oh! save me! Oh! guide me!
And bid the deep hide me!
For he grasps me now by the hair!"
The loud Ocean heard,

To its blue depth stirred,
And divided at her prayer;

And under the water

The Earth's white daughter

Fled like a sunny beam,

Behind her descended,

Her billows unblended

With the brackish Dorian stream.

Like a gloomy stain
On the emerald main,

Alpheus rushed behind,-
As an eagle pursuing

A dove to its ruin

Down the streams of the cloudy wind.

Under the bowers

Where the Ocean Powers Sit on their pearlèd thrones; Through the coral woods.

Of the weltering floods; Over heaps of unvalued stones; Through the dim beams

Which amid the streams Weave a network of colored light; And under the caves

Where the shadowy waves

Are as green as the forest's night;
Outspeeding the shark,

And the swordfish dark,

Under the ocean foam,

And up through the rifts

Of the mountain clifts,They passed to their Dorian home.

And now from their fountains

In Enna's mountains,

Down one vale where the morning basks,
Like friends once parted

Grown single-hearted,

They ply their watery tasks.

At sunrise they leap

From their cradles steep

In the cave of the shelving hill;

Songs of
Fancy

Songs of
Fancy

At noontide they flow
Through the woods below
And the meadows of asphodel;
And at night they sleep
In the rocking deep
Beneath the Ortygian shore;-

Like the spirits that lie
In the azure sky,

When they love but live no more.

PERCY BYSShe Shelley.

The Culprit Fay
(Extracts)

III

Fairy Dawn

'Tis the hour of fairy ban and spell:

The wood-tick has kept the minutes well;
He has counted them all with click and stroke,
Deep in the heart of the mountain oak,

And he has awakened the sentry elve

Who sleeps with him in the haunted tree,

To bid him ring the hour of twelve,
And call the fays to their revelry;

Twelve small strokes on his tinkling bell

("Twas made of the white snail's pearly shell)- Songs of

"Midnight comes, and all is well!

Hither, hither, wing your way!

"Tis the dawn of the fairy-day."

IV

The Assembling of the Fays

They come from beds of lichen green,
They creep from the mullein's velvet screen;
Some on the backs of beetles fly

From the silver tops of moon-touched trees,
Where they swung in their cobweb hammocks

high,

And rocked about in the evening breeze;
Some from the humbird's downy nest-
They had driven him out by elfin power,
And, pillowed on plumes of his rainbow
breast,

Had slumbered there till the charmèd hour;
Some had lain in the scoop of the rock,
With glittering ising-stars inlaid;

And some had opened the four-o'clock,

And stole within its purple shade.

And now they throng the moonlight glade,
Above-below-on every side,

Their little minim forms arrayed,
In the tricksy pomp of fairy pride.

Fancy

Songs of
Fancy

VI

The Throne of the Lily-King
grass,

The throne was reared upon the
Of spice-wood and of sassafras;
On pillars of mottled tortoise-shell
Hung the burnished canopy—
And over it gorgeous curtains fell
Of the tulip's crimson drapery.
The monarch sat on his judgment-seat,
On his brow the crown imperial shone,
The prisoner Fay was at his feet,

And his peers were ranged around the throne,
He waved his sceptre in the air,

He looked around and calmly spoke;

His brow was grave and his eye severe,
But his voice in a softened accent broke:

VII

The Fay's Crime

Fairy! Fairy! list and mark:

Thou hast broke thine elfin chain;

Thy flame-wood lamp is quenched and dark,
And thy wings are dyed with a deadly stain-
Thou hast sullied thine elfin purity

In the glance of a mortal maiden's eye,
Thou hast scorned our dread decree,

And thou shouldst pay the forfeit high,