Khemnitzer.

The gathering of the fairies.

I.

’Tis the middle watch of a summer’s night—­
The earth is dark, but the heavens are bright;
Naught is seen in the vault on high
But the moon, and the stars, and the cloudless sky,
And the flood which rolls its milky hue,
A river of light on the welkin blue. 
The moon looks down on old Cro’nest;
She mellows the shades on his craggy breast;
And seems his huge gray form to throw
In a silver cone on the waves below. 
His sides are broken by spots of shade,
By the walnut-bough and the cedar made,
And through their clustering branches dark
Glimmers and dies the fire-fly’s spark,
Like starry twinkles that momently peak
Through the rifts of the gathering tempest’s rack.

II.

The stars are on the moving stream,
And fling, as its ripples gently flow,
A burnished length of wavy beam
In an eel-like, spiral line below;
The winds are whist, and the owl is still,
The bat in the shelvy rock is hid. 
And naught is heard on the lonely hill
But the cricket’s chirp, and the answer shrill
Of the gauze-winged katy-did,
And the plaint of the wailing whippoorwill,
         Who moans unseen, and ceaseless sings,
Ever a note of wail and woe,
         Till the morning spreads her rosy wings,
And earth and sky in her glances glow.

III.

’Tis the hour of fairy ban and spell;—­
The wood-tick has kept the minutes well;
He has counted them all with click and stroke
Deep in the heart of the mountain-oak;
And he has awakened the sentry Elve
       Who sleeps with him in the haunted tree,
To bid him ring the hour of twelve,
       And call the Fays to their revelry;
Twelve small strokes on his tinkling bell—­
’Twas made of the white snail’s pearly shell. 
“Midnight comes, and all is well! 
Hither, hither wing your way! 
’Tis the dawn of the fairy-day!”

IV.

They come from beds of lichen green,
They creep from the mullein’s velvet screen,
        Some on the backs of beetles fly
From the silver tops of moon-touched trees,
       Where they swing in their cobweb hammocks
           high,
And rocked about in the evening breeze;
       Some from the hum-bird’s downy nest—­
They had driven him out by elfin power,
       And, pillowed on plumes of his rainbow breast,
Had slumbered there till the charmed hour;
Some had lain in the scoop of the rock,
        With glittering rising-stars inlaid;
And some had opened the four-o’clock,
        And stole within its purple shade. 
       And now they throng the moonlight glade,
Above—­below—­on every side,
       Their little minim forms arrayed
In the tricksy pomp of fairy pride.