When the soundless earth is muffled, To banish Even from her sky. -Sit thee there, and send abroad Fancy, high-commissioned:-send her! She will mix these pleasures up And thou shalt quaff it;-thou shalt hear Rustle of the reaped corn; Sweet birds antheming the morn; And in the same moment-hark! "T is the early April lark, Or the rooks, with busy caw, Sapphire queen of the mid-May; And every leaf, and every flower Then the hurry and alarm When the beehive casts its swarm; While the autumn breezes sing. O sweet Fancy! let her loose; Everything is spoilt by use: Where's the cheek that doth not fade, Too much gazed at? Where's the maid White as Hebe's, when her zone And Jove grew languid.-Break the mesh Quickly break her prison-string, And such joys as these she 'll bring: -Let the wingèd Fancy roam, Pleasure never is at home. JOHN KEATS. IMAGINATION. FROM "A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM," ACT V. SC. 2. THE lunatic, the lover, and the poet Are of imagination all compact: One sees more devils than vast hell can hold, That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic, Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt: The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven; And as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen SHAKESPEARE. II. FAIRIES: ELVES: SPRITES. QUEEN MAB. FROM "ROMEO AND JULIET," ACT I. SC. 4. O, THEN, I see, Queen Mab hath been with you. She is the fairies' midwife; and she comes In shape no bigger than an agate-stone On the fore-finger of an alderman, Drawn with a team of little atomies Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep : Her wagon-spokes made of long spinners' legs; The cover, of the wings of grasshoppers; The traces, of the smallest spider's web; The collars, of the moonshine's watery beams; Her whip, of cricket's bone; the lash, of film; Her wagoner, a small gray-coated gnat, Not half so big as a round little worm Pricked from the lazy finger of a maid: Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut, Made by the joiner squirrel, or old grub, Time out of mind the fairies' coach-inakers. And in this state she gallops night by night Through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love; On courtiers' knees, that dream on court'sies straight; O'er lawyers' fingers, who straight dream on fees; SHAKESPEARE. OBERON'S FEAST. SHAPCOT! to thee the Fairy State I with discretion dedicate: Because thou prizest things that are Curious and unfamiliar, Take first the feast; these dishes gone, We'll see the Fairy-court anon. |