“O! who are ye,” sweet Lucy cries, “that in a dreadful ring,
All muffled up in brindled shawls, do caper, frisk, and spring?”
“A witch, and witches, one and nine,” they straight to her reply,
And looked upon her narrowly, with green and needle eye.

Then Lucy sees in clouds of gold green cherry trees upgrow,
And bushes of red roses that bloomed above the snow;
She smells, all faint, the almond-boughs blowing so wild and fair,
And doves with milky eyes ascend fluttering in the air.

Clear flowers she sees, like tulip buds, go floating by like birds,
With wavering tips that warbled sweetly strange enchanted words;
And, as with ropes of amethyst, the boughs with lamps were hung,
And clusters of green emeralds like fruit upon them clung.

“O witches nine, ye dreadful nine, O witches seven and three! 
Whence come these wondrous things that I this Christmas morning see?”
But straight, as in a clap, when she of Christmas says the word,
Here is the snow, and there the sun, but never bloom nor bird;

Nor warbling flame, nor gloaming-rope of amethyst there shows,
Nor bunches of green emeralds, nor belfry, well, and rose,
Nor cloud of gold, nor cherry-tree, nor witch in brindled shawl,
But like a dream that vanishes, so vanished were they all.

When Lucy sees, and only sees three crows upon a bough,
And earthly twigs, and bushes hidden white in driven snow,
Then “O!” said Lucy, “three times three is nine—­I plainly see
Some witch has been a-walking in the fields in front of me.”

THE ENGLISHMAN

I met a sailor in the woods,
  A silver ring wore he,
His hair hung black, his eyes shone blue,
  And thus he said to me:—­

“What country, say, of this round earth,
  What shore of what salt sea,
Be this, my son, I wander in,
  And looks so strange to me?”

Says I, “O foreign sailorman,
  In England now you be,
This is her wood, and there her sky,
  And that her roaring sea.”

He lifts his voice yet louder,
  “What smell be this,” says he,
“My nose on the sharp morning air
  Snuffs up so greedily?”

Says I, “It is wild roses
  Do smell so winsomely,
And winy briar, too,” says I,
  “That in these thickets be.”

“And oh!” says he, “what leetle bird
  Is singing in yon high tree,
So every shrill and long-drawn note
  Like bubbles breaks in me?”

Says I, “It is the mavis
  That perches in the tree,
And sings so shrill, and sings so sweet,
  When dawn comes up the sea.”

At which he fell a-musing,
  And fixed his eye on me,
As one alone ’twixt light and dark
  A spirit thinks to see.

“England!” he whispers soft and harsh,
  “England!” repeated he,
“And briar, and rose, and mavis,
  A-singing in yon high tree.