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I whisper in your ear?

Hush, hush, hush, hush;

Do not listen, do not hear.

Melfort.On your brow the dangling flowers

Die; but I will gather you more,

Gather you more, gather you more . . .

See your blood and burning gore

Soaks and scalds me to the core . . .

See I struggle, see I sink,

See I settle more and more.

There’s no solid ground that’s meet

Here to rest my aching feet—

Only isles of mocking reeds,

And the tendrils of the weeds,

Dragging me down, dragging me down;

And your weight is weight of lead . . .

But I love you madly now,

Love and kiss your magic brow,

Suck the sweetness from your lips

As the bee his honey sips . . .

Yet I know my day is done,

Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful one.

Little Frog.Who slew the Wandering Jew?

Bull-Frogs.Mighty King Mud, mighty King Mud.

Melfort.Sadly, badly, madly I go,

Stumbling, tumbling, grumbling go,

Wearily wander, wearily go.

All my blood is weak and slow;

Heavily beats my heart below;

And it will be darkness soon,

For the night devours the moon.

Chorus.Down, down, down, down,

See the red moon drop and drown.

Bull-Frogs.Ho, ha, hinkutty hong,

Keep up the chorus, boys, keep up the song.

Frogs.Now for the jolly tune, now for the joy;

There’s no moonlight to annoy.

Crayfish.Hunch, munch, crickutty crunch,

Here’s a dead man for our lunch.

Snails.Hurry up, mate, or you’ll be late;

Things that are pleasant are soon out of date.

Efts. With our noses out of the flood,

We can sniff the delicate mud.

Mice.Creak, creak, creak, creak,

Some can sing and some can squeak.

Insects.Sum, sum, sum, sum,

We can make the marish hum.

Worms.In the day we creep along,

Trampled, weak, and suffering wrong;

But at midnight, in the mire,

Glow with phosphorescent fire.

Adders.For at night, night is light,

Bright is dark and dark is bright.

                       *

Melfort.Ah!

See, see, see, see.

See the silver stars above me;

Now the magic moon is sunken,

See them flash their flaming fires.

Evaïd.O, O, O, O,

Hide me from them, hide me from them,

Hide me from their hateful eyes.

Melfort.See the dagger, silver bright.

Glitter in the starlight white.

Evaïd.No, no, no, no;

Drop the dagger, drop the steel.

Melfort.See the dagger, clean and bright.

Gleaming in the starlight white.

Chorus.Hinkutty, honkutty, hinkutty han,

Kill her, kill her—if you can.

Bull-frogs.Ho, ha, yes—if you can.

Chorus.Yah, ho, yes—if you can;

Kill if you dare to, kill if you can.

Evaïd.I was wounded, I was dying,

Like a broken lily lying,

Sighing, dying, I was lying . . .

Chorus.Kill, kill, kill, kill,

Kill if you dare to, kill if you can.

Evaïd.“Put your head upon my breast;

I will bear you; be at rest;

I will bear you; I’m a man,

Man, man, man, man . . .”

Chorus.Hinkutty hoy, hinkutty han,

Kill her, kill her—if you can.

Evaïd.“I will save you, never leave you,

I will heal you, never grieve you . . .”

Melfort.Now I see it, now I know it,

Know the meaning of the chorus,

Of the cursèd croaking frogs.

Evaïd.Press, press, press, press.

Press to your bosom, press to your heart;

Kiss and cure the cruel smart.

Or, if you’ll not kisses give,

I will kiss you, so, and live.

They who kisses ne’er receive,

Kisses give, kisses give.

Melfort.I must slay you, kill you, slay you.

Plunge the dagger in your heart,

Or you’ll drown me in the darkness,

Madden’d with your magic kisses;

For I know you now, my darling,

Haunter of the horrible fen.

O my Beauty, O my Darling,

I am drunk with love of you;

But I’ll stab you with this dagger;

I must kill you or I perish.

Do not shudder, do not shriek,

Do not shudder when I stab you,

For you are a faery thing.

Evaïd.O no, no, no!

Do not kill me, do not stab me—

O, O, the burning steel.

See I love you, see I kiss you,

See I bind my arms about you.

Take the sharp point from my breast.

Melfort.Thus, thus, thus I stab you,

Kiss you, stab you, give you death;

Give you kisses, give you death;

Kiss your dying lips delicious,

Stab you in your tender breast.

Evaïd.O, O, O, O,

Take away the steel tormenting!

Will you slay the poor thing dying?

She has kissed you, never harm’d you,

O the poor, poor dying thing . . .

Kiss her then and kill her so . . .

Lover, lover, lover dear,

Let me whisper in your ear—

Now I’m dying you may hear—

How I love you. Hush, hush,

Hush, hush, hush, hush;

Now I’m dying, I am dying.

O the paining, O the torment.

You’ll to-morrow hear the birds sing:

I shall never, I shall never.

Melfort.She is fading, melting, dying,

Melting, turning into water.

Evaïd.Hush, hush, hush, hush;

I am dying, I am dead.

                       *

The Dawn-Wind.Sisters of the field awake,

Sweet children of the meads and rills

And of the wind-blown hills,

Flowers, little flowers!

O you that sleep in slumber deep,

Kissing and turn’d together

Between the sheltering heather,

Awake!

For the day-break.

Stars.Behold, the silver dawn is here,

Pearling the east with a light clear.

Our watch is ended; let’s begone;

The sun will follow soon anon.

Say, brothers, went your watching well? . . .

All’s well, all’s well.

Melfort.I wake! why, have I slept?—I hear

The fine shrill clarion of the cock.

I am alive then. O sweet Dawn,

Pearl of the sky, that makest clear

The old grey steeple in the east,

Wash from my soul this terrible night.

I breathe, I live; the air is pure.

THE BOY’S DREAM

Oberon

Titania,

and Puck

 

 

A boy sleeps on the wooded bank of a small river running

out upon the seashore. A night in spring.

 

Oberon.Well met by starlight, my Titania.

Titania.For thrice a hundred years we have not met!

Oberon.But drug’d by some mad magic have drowsed away

Three centuries in a night.

Titania. Three centuries in a night.The charm is broken.

Oberon.Thee in a crystal-cavern’d isle that weeps

Embargo’d on the bosom of a lake,

It caught in slumber mid thy maiden fays;

And in a blasted, bent, and strippen willow,

Pleading his bleach’d bones over a festering pool

In a black forest, me; and all our train,

So wont to win the air on wanton wings,

Imprison’d in the caves of bears or boles

Of mouldy oaks, in age-long lethargy—

Half dead, but for their beating hearts, that fright

The furry denizens dwelling there.

Titania. The furry denizens dwelling there.And so

The stars have spill’d their silvery beams in vain,

Teeming the flowers’ chalices with light,

But not for us; nor have we ever heard

The tree-top throstle clarioning the Spring.

Oberon. But million’d men, rid of our sooth control,

Like chattering magpies in a frozen field,

Or eyeless emmets pestering in the mire,

Have fought for foolish gods, and furrow’d earth,

And fed the sea, or sop’d the soil with blood,

All about nothing.

Titania. All about nothing.Who strew’d the spell? Some Sage?

Oberon.Rather some fool! For fools, ’tis writ, have power

To clamp the whole world in inviolate chains

Whene’er they wish!

Titania. Whene’er they wish!O dreadful law! But say,

My love and king, what curst particular fool

So persecutes us?

Oberon. So persecutes us?First the fool who made

God in his own image, and pent us up

A hundred years; and then a lower lown

Who taught us, all are equal; and a third,

That every raff should have his rights. Between them

Two centuries more they thrall’d us. Such the woe

When meddling men made Heaven so and so,

And Folly like a fitful gale essay’d

To blow predestined ocean from his bed.

Titania.But so think I.

Oberon. Titania.But so think I.Why then your creed prevails!

But it is scathless: fools are always males!—

So now that every sot has said his say,

Wisdom and we may get again our day,

To tell men if they live with love and mirth,

The earth is Heav’n indeed, and Heaven earth.

So, Fairies, come; and keep our old-time revel;

And let those ghosts go die to haunt the devil!

Puck.Hush, master! See a mortal lying near.

If he’s a fool, perchance he’ll overhear

And lock us up another hundred year.

Oberon.Go, then, my gentle Puck, and see

Who sleepeth there on yonder lea.

Puck.I vow, a truant boy from school,

And therefore not at all a fool.

Oberon.Be careful, friend, and do not err:

He may be a philosopher.

Puck.O, scarcely such a thing abhorrèd:

I see indeed he has a forehead.

Oberon.Perchance he is—’tis my suspicion—

A prophet or a politician.

Puck.I gather neither: for he’s young,

And has not yet full-grown his tongue.

Oberon.A boy at midnight not abed,

Is either fairy-fain or dead.

Puck.I take the former—for he sleeps.

Three pennies in a pouch he keeps,

A mouse, a beetle in a box,

A candle, and some bits of rocks.

What’s here? A diamond? No, alas,

Only a piece—of pure glass!

My lord, I vow by this I know it,

Here’s not a fool, but but a poet.

Oberon.So then we’re safe. Let him sleep on,

And ride from Troy to Helicon.

Titania.Once more we breathe the summer-sweeten’d air.

Night, and the still stars, and the world are fair.

Oberon.Immortal; and the grumbling clouds descend,

Mingle with mists upon the verge, and end.

Titania.Now wearied Winter, with her aged eyes,

Sunk on a drift of last year’s dead leaves, dies;

Oberon.Earth opens, and green-spangling Spring leaps forth,

Laughing his warm breath to the unfrozen north.

Titania.Now even the airs of night are hot with balm,

That buds be heard uncurling through the calm;

Oberon.And o’er black banks of bryony and brier

White planets blaze like beacons guttering fire.

Titania.Now mystic, warm, the rich-enrobèd Moon

Foots forth the eastern meads on silvery shoon.

Oberon.The rushes in the stream she rings aglance,

Like Indian maids, with anklets for the dance.

Titania.And the new-budded trees, like laughing girls,

Step forth from night, attirèd in her pearls.

The Moon

Come all creatures of delight,

Beauty’s brightest in the night.

I am Beauty, and I bear

Emeralds in my amber hair,

And a crystal gemmary

To adorn earth, air, and sea.

I am watching Wisdom too,

For, while others dream, I do;

Light the world to let men know

Where’s the way for them to go.

I am Love, for I behold

All things ever and of old;

Stars with eager eyes, new-born;

Blind ones wandering forlorn;

Watch the evening, watch the morn,

Without envy, without scorn.

New things may be bright or

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