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When the soundless earth is muffled,
And the caked snow is shuffled
From the ploughboy's heavy shoon;
When the Night doth meet the Noon
In a dark conspiracy

To banish Even from her sky.

-Sit thee there, and send abroad
With a mind self-overawed

Fancy, high-commissioned:-send her!
She has vassals to attend her;
She will bring, in spite of frost,
Beauties that the earth hath lost;
She will bring thee, all together,
All delights of summer weather; .
All the buds and bells of May
From dewy sward or thorny spray;
All the heaped Autumn's wealth,
With a still, mysterious stealth;

She will mix these pleasures up
Like three fit wines in a cup,

And thou shalt quaff it;-thou shalt hear
Distant harvest-carols clear;

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,
Foraging for sticks and straw.
Thou shalt, at one glance, behold
The daisy and the marigold;
White-plumed lilies, and the first
Hedge-grown primrose that hath burst;
Shaded hyacinth, alway

Sapphire queen of the mid-May;

And every leaf, and every flower
Pearlèd with the self-same shower.
Thou shalt see the field-mouse peep
Meagre from its celled sleep;
And the snake all winter-thin
Cast on sunny bank its skin;
Freckled nest-eggs thou shalt see
Hatching in the hawthorn tree,
When the hen-bird's wing doth rest
Quiet on her mossy nest;

Then the hurry and alarm

When the beehive casts its swarm;
Acorns ripe down-pattering

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
Whose lip mature is ever new?
Where's the eye, however blue,
Doth not weary? Where's the face
One would meet in every place?
Where's the voice, however soft,
One would hear so very oft?
At a touch sweet Pleasure melteth
Like to bubbles when rain pelteth.
Let then wingèd Fancy find
Thee a mistress to thy mind:
Dulcet-eyed as Ceres' daughter,
Ere the god of torment taught her
How to frown and how to chide;
With a waist and with a side

White as Hebe's, when her zone
Split its golden clasp, and down
Fell her kirtle to her feet
While she held the goblet sweet,

And Jove grew languid.-Break the mesh
Of the Fancy's silken leash;

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
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.

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;
O'er ladies' lips, who straight on kisses dream,—
Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues,
Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are:
Sometime she gallops o'er a courtier's nose,
And then dreams he of smelling out a suit;
And sometime comes she with a tithe-pig's tail,
Tickling a parson's nose as 'a lies asleep,
Then dreams he of another benefice :
Sometime she driveth o'er a soldier's neck,
And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats,
Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades,
Of healths five fathom deep; and then anon
Drums in his ear, at which he starts, and wakes;
And, being thus frighted, swears a prayer or two,
And sleeps again. This is that very Mab
That plats the manes of horses in the night;
And bakes the elf-locks in foul sluttish hairs,
Which, once untangled, much misfortune bodes:
This is the hag, when maids lie on their backs,
That presses them, and learns them first to bear,
Making them women of good carriage.

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.

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