"It was a wild and melancholy glen,
Made gloomy by tall firs and cypress dark,
Whose roots, like any bones of buried men,
Pushed through the rotten sod for fear's remark;
A hundred horrid stems, jagged and stark,
Wrestled with crooked arms in hideous fray,
Besides sleek ashes with their dappled bark,
Like crafty serpents climbing for a prey,
With many blasted oaks moss-grown and gray.

"But here upon this final desperate clause
Suddenly I pronounced so sweet a strain,
Like a panged nightingale it made him pause,
Till half the frenzy of his grief was slain,
The sad remainder oozing from his brain
In timely ecstasies of healing tears,

Which through his ardent eyes began to drain; -
Meanwhile the deadly fates unclosed their shears:
So pity me and all my fated peers! "

Thus Ariel ended, and was some time hushed:
When with the hoary shape a fresh tongue pleads,
And red as rose the gentle Fairy blushed

To read the record of her own good deeds:

"It chanced," quoth she, " in seeking through the meads

For honeyed cowslips, sweetest in the morn,

Whilst yet the buds were hung with dewy beads,

And Echo answered to the huntsman's horn,

We found a babe left in the swarths forlorn

"A little, sorrowful, deserted thing,
Begot of love, and yet no love begetting
Guiltless of shame, and yet for shame to wring;
And too soon banished from a mother's petting,

To churlish nurture and the wide world's fretting, For alien pity and unnatural care;

Alas! to see how the cold dew kept wetting
His childish coats, and dabbled all his hair,
Like gossamers across his forehead fair.

"His pretty pouting mouth, witless of speech,
Lay half-way open like a rose-lipped shell;
And his young cheek was softer than a peach,
Whereon his tears, for roundness, could not dwell,
But quickly rolled themselves to pearls, and fell,
Some on the grass, and some against his hand,
Or haply wandered to the dimpled well,
Which love beside his mouth had sweetly planned,
Yet not for tears, but mirth and smilings bland.

"Pity it was to see those frequent tears
Falling regardless from his friendless eyes;
There was such beauty in those twin blue spheres,
As any mother's heart might leap to prize;
Blue were they, like the zenith of the skies.
Softened betwixt two clouds, both clear and mild;
Just touched with thought, and yet not over wise,
They showed the gentle spirit of a child,
Not yet by care or any craft defiled.

"Pity it was to see the ardent sun

Scorching his helpless limbs - it shone so warm;
For kindly shade or shelter he had none,
Nor mother's gentle breast, come fair or storm.
Meanwhile I bade my pitying mates transform
Like grasshoppers, and then, with shrilly cries,
All round the infant noisily we swarm,
Haply some passing rustic to advise

Whilst providential Heaven our care espies

"And sends full soon a tender-hearted hind,
Who, wondering at our loud unusual note,
Strays curiously aside, and so doth find
The orphan child laid in the grass remote,
And laps the foundling in his russet coat,
Who thence was nurtured in his kindly cot:
But how he prospered let proud London quote,
How wise, how rich, and how renowned he got,
And chief of all her citizens, I wot.

"Witness his goodly vessels on the Thames,
Whose holds were fraught with costly merchandise,-
Jewels from Ind, and pearls for courtly dames,
And gorgeous silks that Samarcand supplies:
Witness that Royal Bourse he bade arise,
The mart of merchants from the East and West;
Whose slender summit, pointing to the skies,
Still bears, in token of his grateful breast,
The tender grasshopper, his chosen crest

-

"The tender grasshopper, his chosen crest,
That all the summer, with a tuneful wing,
Makes merry chirpings in its grassy nest,
Inspirited with dew to leap and sing:-
So let us also live, eternal King!
Partakers of the green and pleasant earth :
Pity it is to slay the meanest thing,

That, like a mote, shines in the smile of mirth:
Enough there is of joy's decrease and dearth!

Enough of pleasure, and delight, and beauty,
Perished and gone, and hasting to decay;-
Enough to sadden even thee, whose duty
Or spite it is to havoc and to slay:

Too many a lovely race, razed quite away;

Hath left large gaps in life and human loving :
Here then begin thy cruel war to stay,

And spare fresh sighs, and tears, and groans, reproving
Thy desolating hand for our removing."

Now here I heard a shrill and sudden cry,
And looking up, I saw the antic Puck

Grappling with Time, who clutched him like a fly,
Victim of his own sport, the jester's luck!
He, whilst his fellows grieved, poor wight, had stuck
His freakish gauds upon the Ancient's brow,
And now his ear, and now his beard, would pluck;
Whereas the angry churl had snatched him now,
Crying, "Thou impish mischief, who art thou?"
"Alas!" quoth Puck, "a little random elf,
Born in the sport of nature, like a weed,
For simple sweet enjoyment of myself,
But for no other purpose, worth, or need;
And yet withal of a most happy breed ;
And there is Robin Goodfellow besides,
My partner dear in many a prankish deed
To make dame Laughter hold her jolly sides,
Like merry mummers twain on holy tides.
"Tis we that bob the angler's idle cork,
Till even the patient man breathes half a curse;
We steal the morsel from the gossip's fork,
And curdling looks with secret straws disperse,
Or stop the sneezing chanter at mid verse:
And when an infant's beauty prospers ill,
We change, some mothers say, the child at nurse
But any graver purpose to fulfil,

We have not wit enough, and scarce the will

"We never let the canker melancholy

To gather on our faces like a rust,

But gloss our features with some change of folly,
Taking life's fabled miseries on trust,

But only sorrowing when sorrow must:
We ruminate no sage's solemn cud,

But own ourselves a pinch of lively dust
To frisk upon a wind, whereas the flood
Of tears would turn us into heavy mud.

"Beshrew those sad interpreters of nature,
Who gloze her lively universal law,

As if she had not formed our cheerful feature
To be so tickled with the slightest straw!
So let them vex their mumping mouths, and draw
The corners downward, like a watery moon,
And deal in gusty sighs and rainy flaw -
We will not woo foul weather all too soon,
Or nurse November on the lap of June.

"For ours are winging sprites, like any bird
That shun all stagnant settlements of grief;
And even in our rest our hearts are stirred,
Like insects settled on a dancing leaf:
This is our small philosophy in brief,
Which thus to teach hath set me all agape.
But dost thou relish it? O, hoary chief!
Unclasp thy crooked fingers from my nape,
And I will show thee many a pleasant scrape.'

Then Saturn thus:-shaking his crooked blade
O'erhead, which made aloft a lightning flash
In all the fairies' eyes, dismally frayed!

His ensuing voice came like the thunder crash