THE REPLY OF THE FAIRIES

WHERE do we hide when the year is old,

When the days are short and the nights are cold?

Where?

When the flowers have laid them down to die,

And the winds rush past with a hollow sigh,

And witches and fiends on their broomsticks ride,

Where do we delicate fairies hide?

Where?

Some of us borrow the white mouse skin,

(Our gossamer dresses are far too thin),

And get up a ball in the palace of ice,

With a hop and a skip we are there in a trice;

And we don't go home from these midnight balls

Till the sun lights up our diamond halls,

We don't go home till morning.

The queer old elves of the Northern land

Welcome our beautiful fairy band,

Praise our eyes and our curling hair,

Our nimble steps and our music rare,

Our golden crowns and the gems we wear,

And all our rich adorning.

Sometimes we fly to the noonday isles,

Where summer for ever unfading smiles,

And crumple the tropical flowers for beds,

Where fairies nestle their small tir'd heads;

But when the stars of the South shine bright,

We chase the firefly thro' the night;

When the tigers growl and the lions roar

We fly over their heads and laugh the more,

And pinch their ears and their tails for spite,--

These are our games on a tropical night.

Sometimes we visit the children of earth,

And take up our stand at the social hearth;

We hover and sing by the couch of pain,

Till the frighten'd dreamer smiles again;

We polish the lash of a deep-blue eye,

And hush the troublesome baby's cry,

And make mushrooms grow on our verdant rings,

Are not we fairies good little things?

As the dormouse curl'd in its darken'd grave,

As the mermen and maids in the ice-bound cave,

As the poor scarlet-breast when it longs for a crumb,

As the naked woods when the birds are dumb,

As the torrent penn'd up in its glittering sheath,

We welcome the sight of the first green leaf.