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: 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. |