ASSORTED POEMS AND QUOTES FROM PLAYS ABOUT FAIRIES

Mist-clad in the light of the moon
Starspun seekers - I search for thee!
Faery light - I ask thy boon
Of branch and thorn and Elder tree!
Wood woven creatures, shadow weavers
River keepers - come to me!
Just beyond reaching
Never in keeping
Spirits of Faery - I call unto thee!
Wind-hewn wildness
Dark and brightness
Spiral enchantments - born of the sky!
Cradle me with elven hands,
Abide with me, thy human child!
--W.B Yeats

Where are the fairies? Where can we find them?
We've seen the fairy rings, they leave behind them when they have danced all night,
Where do they go? Lark, in the sky above, Say, do you know?
It is a secret, no one is telling.
Why, in your garden, surely their dwelling!
No need for journeying, Seeking afar:
Where there are flowers, there fairies are!"
--Cicely Mary Barker

Extract from
"The Maydes Metamorphosis"

Trip it, little urchins all,
Lightly as the little bee,
Two by two, and three by three;
And about go we, about go we.
Upon the next live creature that it sees.
--John Lyly

Excerpt from
"June"

And what if cheerful shouts at noon
Come, from the village sent,
Or song of maids, beneath the moon
With fairy laughter blent?
--William Cullen Bryant

Excerpt from
"The Deserted Garden"

My childhood from my life is parted,
My footstep from the moss which drew
Its fairy circle round: anew
The garden is deserted.
--Elizabeth Barrett Browning

"Those that see the people of Faerie most often,
and so have the most of their wisdom,
are often very poor, but often, too,
they are thought to have a strength beyond man."
--W.B. Yeats

"Come faeries, take me out of this dull world,
for I would ride with you upon the wind
and dance upon the mountains like a flame"
--W.B.Yeats

I do wander everywhere,
Swifter than the moone's sphere;
And I serve the fairy queen,
To dew her orbs upon the green.
--William Shakespeare

A little child, a limber elf,
Singing, dancing to itself,
A fairy thing with red round cheeks,
That always finds and never seeks. . . .
--Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Grey lichens, mid they hills of creeping thyme,
Grow like to fairy forests hung with rime;
And fairy money-pots are often found
That spring like little mushrooms out of ground,
Some shaped like cups and some in slender trim
Wine glasses like, that to the very rim
Are filled with little mystic shining seed.
--John Clare, Fairy Things

If so befel, in that fair morning tide,
The faries sported on the garden's side,
And in the midst their monarch and his bride.
So featly tripped the light-foot ladies round,
The knight so nimbly o'er the greensward bound,
That scarce they bent the flowers or touched the ground.
The dances ended, all the fairy train
For pinks and daisies searche'd the flowery plain.
--Alexander Pope

Her mother was the faire Chrysogonee,
The daughter of Amphisa, who by race
A Faerie was, borne of high degree.
--Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene

"The land of faery,
Where nobody gets old and godly and grave,
Where nobody gets old and crafty and wise,
Where nobody gets old and bitter of tongue."
--William Butler Yeats

"In olde days of the King Artour,
Of which the Bretons speken gret honour,
All was this lond fulfilled of faerie;
The elf-quene, with hire joly compagnie,
Danced ful oft in many a grene mede.
This was the old opinion as I rede;
I speke of many hundred yeres ago;
But now can no man see non elves mo,
For now the grete charitee and prayers
Of limitoures and othere freres,
That serchen every land, and every streme,
As thickke as motes in the sunnebeme,
Blissing halles, chambres, kichenes, and boures,
Citees and burghes, castles highe and toures,
Thropes and bernes, shepenes and dairies,
This maketh that ther ben no faeries."
--Chaucer

THE fairies break their dances
And leave the printed lawn,
And up from India glances
The silver sail of dawn.

The candles burn their sockets,
The blinds let through the day,
The young man feels his pockets
And wonders what's to pay.
--A.E. Housman, XXI (selections from Last Poems)

"Bid me discourse, I will enchant thine ear,
Or like a fairy, trip upon the green,
Or like a nymph, with long dishevelled hair,
Dance on the sands, and yet no footing scene:
Love is a spirit all compact of fire,
Not gross to sink, but light, and will aspire."
--William Shakespeare, excerpt from Venus and Adonis

"I know a bank whereon the wild thyme blows,
Where ox lips and the nodding violet grows;
Quite over-canopied with lush woodbine,
With sweet musk roses, and with eglantine:
There sleeps Titania, sometime of the night,
Lulled in these flowers with dances and delight,
And there the snake throws her enamell'd skin,
Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in."
--William Shakespeare, excerpt from A Midsummer Night's Dream

"Fairies, black, grey, green, and white,
You moonshine revellers, and shades of night,
You orphan heirs of fixed destiny,
Attend your office and your quality."
--William Shakespeare, excerpt from Merry Wives of Windsor, Mistress Quickly at V, v.

O, for my beads! I cross me for a sinner.
This is the fairy land: O spite of spites!
We talk with goblins, owls and sprites:
If we obey them not, this will ensue,
They'll suck our breath, or pinch us black and blue.
--William Shakespeare, excerpt from The Comedy of Errors, Act 2, Scene 2

Merry, merry England has kissed the lips of June:
All the wings of fairyland were here beneath the moon;
Like a flight of rose-leaves fluttering in a mist
Of opal and ruby and pearl and amethyst.
--Alfred Noyes, excerpt from Sherwood

Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes and groves,
And ye that on the sands with printless foot
Do chase the ebbing Neptune and do fly him
When he comes back; you demi-puppets that
By moonshine do the green sour ringlets make,
Whereof the ewe not bites, and you whose pastime
Is to make midnight mushrooms, that rejoice
To hear the solemn curfew; by whose aid,
Weak masters though ye be, I have bedimm'd
The noontide sun, call'd forth the mutinous winds,
And 'twixt the green sea and the azured vault
Set roaring war: to the dread rattling thunder
Have I given fire and rifted Jove's stout oak
With his own bolt; the strong-based promontory
Have I made shake and by the spurs pluck'd up
The pine and cedar: graves at my command
--William Shakespeare, excerpt from The Tempest

They also say, if earth or stone,
From verdant Erin’s hallowed land
Were on this magic island thrown,
For ever fixed, it then would stand,
But, when for this, some little boat
In silence ventures from the shore -
The mermaid sinks - hushed is the note,
The fairy isle is seen no more!
--Anonymous, excerpt from The Enchanted Island

When at home alone I sit
And am very tired of it,
I have just to shut my eyes
To go sailing through the skies--
To go sailing far away
To the pleasant Land of Play;
To the fairy land afar
Where the Little People are;
Where the clover-tops are trees,
And the rain-pools are the seas,
And the leaves, like little ships,
Sail about on tiny trips;
And above the Daisy tree
Through the grasses,
High o'erhead the Bumble Bee
Hums and passes.
--Robert Louis Stevenson, excerpt from The Little Land

It is the season now to go
About the country high and low,
Among the lilacs hand in hand,
And two by two in fairy land.
--Robert Louis Stevenson, excerpt from It Is The Season Now To Go

I threw one look to either hand,
And knew I was in Fairyland.
And yet one point of being so
I lacked. For, Lady (as you know),
Whoever by his might of hand,
Won entrance into Fairyland,
Found always with admiring eyes
A Fairy princess kind and wise.
It was not long I waited; soon
Upon my threshold, in broad noon,
Gracious and helpful, wise and good,
The Fairy Princess Moe stood.
--Robert Louis Stevenson, excerpt from To An Island Princess

"And what should I make wi' a horse o' pride,
And what should I make wi' a sword so brown,
But spill the rings o' the Gentle Folk
And flyte my kin in the Fairy Town?"
--Rudyard Kipling, excerpt from The Last Ryme of True Thomas

I have just to shut my eyes
To go sailing through the skys
To go sailing far away
To the pleasant land of Play
To the fairy land afar
Where the little people are..."
--Robert Louis Stevenson. excerpt from The Little Land

We may see how all things are
Seas and cities, near and far,
And the flying fairies' looks,
In the picture story-books.
--Robert Louis Stevenson, excerpt from Picture Books in Winter

"Tis merry, 'tis merry, in Fairy-land,
When fairy birds are singing,
When the court cloth ride by their monarch's side,
With bit and bridle ringing:
'And gayly shines the Fairy-land-"
--Sir Walter Scott, excerpt from Lady in the Lake

Thorn, Ash and Oak are their favorite trees
So perhaps you could circle the boughs with these:
Some Foxgloves for thimbles, some Thyme for a treat
Bluebells for their magic and logs for a seat!
Plant Primrose and eat them if you dare by the day
and it is said by the evening you'll glance a few Fey!

Believe in the fairies who make dreams come true.
Believe in the magic from the fairies above,
They dance in the flowers and sing songs of love.
And if you believe and always stay true,
The fairies will be there to watch over you.
--Grimshaw

Ah, you open straight into fairyland,
and the fairies love you and they will never change.
Fairyland's always been there,
it always was from the beginning of time
and always will be to the end.
--Henry James

Bright Eyes, Light Eyes! Daughter of a Fay!
I had not been a married wife a twelvemonth and a day,
I had not nursed my little one a month upon my knee,
When down among the blue bell banks rose elfins three times three:
They griped me by the raven hair, I could not cry for fear,
They put a hempen rope around my waist and dragged me here;
They made me sit and give thee suck as mortal mothers can,
Bright Eyes, Light Eyes! strange and weak and wan!
--Robert Buchanan, The Fairy Foster Mother

This is the fairy land. O spite of spites,
We talk with goblins, owls, and sprites!
If we obey them not, this will ensue:
They'll suck our breath, or pinch us black and blue.
--William Shakespeare, The Comedy of Errors (Dromio of Syracuse at II, ii)

They are fairies; he that speaks to them shall die.
I'll wink and couch; no man their works must eye.
--William Shakespeare, The Merry Wives of Windsor (Falstaff at V, v)

But light as any wind that blows
So fleetly did she stir,
The flower, she touch'd on, dipt and rose,
And turned to look at her.
--Lord Alfred Tennyson, The Talking Oak (st. 33)

The Faeries went from the world dear
Because men's hearts grew cold 
And only the eyes of children see
What is hidden from the old. 

And only the magic of love dear
Can ever turn the key 
That unlocks the gates of Faerieland
To set the Sidhe folk free. 

--Kathleen Foyle, The Little Good Folk