Pleasant, pleasant woods of Warwick, when the shaws are thick with summer:
Green and golden, gloom and sunshine, leafy wealth of wilderness;
Velvet mosses plashing rainbows round the feet of any comer
Lingering where the dew still lingers, branches droop, and odors press;
High above the castle towers; down below the wild brook brawling;
And across a dream of sorrow, hark! the nightingales are calling
Far away in long-drawn depths of dusky dell and dark recess.
I was never there, were you, dear? Yet at once, my eyelids closing,
Thrice a hundred years have vanished and a tender hand I lay
On this ancient tree-bole's furrows, crooked gnarls and knots, supposing
When 'twas young a lad I know of chanced to stroll this self-same way;
Warbling wood-notes as he loitered, and, the blood in blushes bringing —
While a cuckoo mocked, and madly many thrushes burst out singing —
Here Will Shakespeare, it may happen, cut the name " Anne Hatheway! "
Thrush, or cuckoo? Nay, beshrew me! did he see that cuckoo mocking
When he turned his head to listen and his fancy felt the spell?
In his hand — its sweetest secrets under old black-letter locking —
Chaucer's was the verse he carried, opening where the pages tell
Of the elf-queen and her people when the land was full of fairy.
Thrush, or cuckoo? Nay, a gladsome spirit, delicate and airy,
Nay, an airy spirit was it of the name of Ariel!
On the turf he threw him gaily with old Chaucer for his pillow;
Far along the level greenwood where he sent a happy eye
Wind and boughs and latest sunbeams swept in billow over billow,
Oxlips and the nodding violets danced between him and the sky,
Wild thyme and the sweet musk-roses sent their fragrance out to find him,
There a jewelled snake slipped leaving his enamelled skin behind him,
Bees with brimming honey-bags, and big and burly, blundered by.
Was he sure it was a snake then wore the gilded weed and cleft it?
" Weed, " he murmured, " wide enough to wrap a fairy in. " And might
That Titania be, who doffed the gauzy coverlid and left it,
Hovering in the gentle gloom, and shining there in sheer delight?
Was the bee that just sung by him, where the shade was deep and mellow,
Kind Hobgoblin, loved of firesides, he the shrewd and knavish fellow,
Was that Puck, the lob of spirits, merry wanderer of the night?
Evening sun forsook the forest, twilight gathered in the hollows;
Winds went rustling, dewy coolness fell like shadow on the air;
Where the new moon hung, the leaves stirred like the wings of darting swallows;
Where the new moon, slight and glorious, hung a sudden silver flare,
In its lovely crescent swiftly stole a glimmering apparition,
Lost among the tossing branches, half a dream and half a vision,
Oberon, the king of fairies, in that moment passing there!
Hist! No whisper! In the royal lustre who were these came trooping?
What gay swarm of silken banners, wings, and scarfs of damask dyes?
Topsy-turvy, hurly-burly, tripping, tumbling, soaring, swooping,
All the elves in humming murmur of light laughs and rippling cries!
Cobweb, floating through the darkness, filmy as a bat and slender:
Balancing above a poppy, Moth with wings of downy splendor
And Peasblossom, flower or fairy, fluttering with the butterflies!
" Master! " 'Twas a cry of music, Queen Titania's voice, oh hearken!
" Though, indeed, you know the summer still doth tend upon my state — "
Breathe not, think not! She all rosy glows while shadows round her darken!
" Yet I fain of other lands would tempt the pleasures, try the fate.
Running stream no fairy ventures, witch nor warlock crosses water,
Woe betide the sorry elf if urchins of the great seas caught her!
Yet, beyond them, richer roses, sweeter nightingales must wait. "
Have you, with a south-wind blowing, heard a harpstring's silver shiver?
Oberon, the king, was speaking: " Fairy-land obeys my nod,
And, though like a forester I these groves may tread forever,
Let me break a lance, I pray you, with some chapleted Greek god!
Into lands of antique story, Master, you alone can send us,
One midsummer night's mad revel in Athenian forests lend us!
We are Gothic fairies, take us where the fauns of Greece have trod! "
" Master, Master, " chimed the chorus, " we are homebred English fairies,
We the little people who, the old dame tells you, bless the hearth,
Sweep the dust behind the door, and churn the cream in lucky dairies,
Dance within the nine men's-morris, haunt the nightside with our mirth,
Light us tapers from the waxen thighs of humble-bees, and cheery
Blow our elfin horns and scatter when the stars do. But we weary,
Long for other sports, and weary of this corner of the earth! "
Night came sweeping through the forest, soft her sombre garments trailing;
With a sound of gallant chiding distant hounds began to bay;
Like a shoal of dancing waters in the moon, the crew went sailing,
Like a cloud of flying rose-leaves when the winds are up and away.
" Following darkness like a dream, " sighed Will Shakespeare half in sadness,
Underneath his breath, and spelled in this mid-summer night's dream madness,
All the woods of Warwick ringing with the elfin roundelay.
Green and golden, gloom and sunshine, leafy wealth of wilderness;
Velvet mosses plashing rainbows round the feet of any comer
Lingering where the dew still lingers, branches droop, and odors press;
High above the castle towers; down below the wild brook brawling;
And across a dream of sorrow, hark! the nightingales are calling
Far away in long-drawn depths of dusky dell and dark recess.
I was never there, were you, dear? Yet at once, my eyelids closing,
Thrice a hundred years have vanished and a tender hand I lay
On this ancient tree-bole's furrows, crooked gnarls and knots, supposing
When 'twas young a lad I know of chanced to stroll this self-same way;
Warbling wood-notes as he loitered, and, the blood in blushes bringing —
While a cuckoo mocked, and madly many thrushes burst out singing —
Here Will Shakespeare, it may happen, cut the name " Anne Hatheway! "
Thrush, or cuckoo? Nay, beshrew me! did he see that cuckoo mocking
When he turned his head to listen and his fancy felt the spell?
In his hand — its sweetest secrets under old black-letter locking —
Chaucer's was the verse he carried, opening where the pages tell
Of the elf-queen and her people when the land was full of fairy.
Thrush, or cuckoo? Nay, a gladsome spirit, delicate and airy,
Nay, an airy spirit was it of the name of Ariel!
On the turf he threw him gaily with old Chaucer for his pillow;
Far along the level greenwood where he sent a happy eye
Wind and boughs and latest sunbeams swept in billow over billow,
Oxlips and the nodding violets danced between him and the sky,
Wild thyme and the sweet musk-roses sent their fragrance out to find him,
There a jewelled snake slipped leaving his enamelled skin behind him,
Bees with brimming honey-bags, and big and burly, blundered by.
Was he sure it was a snake then wore the gilded weed and cleft it?
" Weed, " he murmured, " wide enough to wrap a fairy in. " And might
That Titania be, who doffed the gauzy coverlid and left it,
Hovering in the gentle gloom, and shining there in sheer delight?
Was the bee that just sung by him, where the shade was deep and mellow,
Kind Hobgoblin, loved of firesides, he the shrewd and knavish fellow,
Was that Puck, the lob of spirits, merry wanderer of the night?
Evening sun forsook the forest, twilight gathered in the hollows;
Winds went rustling, dewy coolness fell like shadow on the air;
Where the new moon hung, the leaves stirred like the wings of darting swallows;
Where the new moon, slight and glorious, hung a sudden silver flare,
In its lovely crescent swiftly stole a glimmering apparition,
Lost among the tossing branches, half a dream and half a vision,
Oberon, the king of fairies, in that moment passing there!
Hist! No whisper! In the royal lustre who were these came trooping?
What gay swarm of silken banners, wings, and scarfs of damask dyes?
Topsy-turvy, hurly-burly, tripping, tumbling, soaring, swooping,
All the elves in humming murmur of light laughs and rippling cries!
Cobweb, floating through the darkness, filmy as a bat and slender:
Balancing above a poppy, Moth with wings of downy splendor
And Peasblossom, flower or fairy, fluttering with the butterflies!
" Master! " 'Twas a cry of music, Queen Titania's voice, oh hearken!
" Though, indeed, you know the summer still doth tend upon my state — "
Breathe not, think not! She all rosy glows while shadows round her darken!
" Yet I fain of other lands would tempt the pleasures, try the fate.
Running stream no fairy ventures, witch nor warlock crosses water,
Woe betide the sorry elf if urchins of the great seas caught her!
Yet, beyond them, richer roses, sweeter nightingales must wait. "
Have you, with a south-wind blowing, heard a harpstring's silver shiver?
Oberon, the king, was speaking: " Fairy-land obeys my nod,
And, though like a forester I these groves may tread forever,
Let me break a lance, I pray you, with some chapleted Greek god!
Into lands of antique story, Master, you alone can send us,
One midsummer night's mad revel in Athenian forests lend us!
We are Gothic fairies, take us where the fauns of Greece have trod! "
" Master, Master, " chimed the chorus, " we are homebred English fairies,
We the little people who, the old dame tells you, bless the hearth,
Sweep the dust behind the door, and churn the cream in lucky dairies,
Dance within the nine men's-morris, haunt the nightside with our mirth,
Light us tapers from the waxen thighs of humble-bees, and cheery
Blow our elfin horns and scatter when the stars do. But we weary,
Long for other sports, and weary of this corner of the earth! "
Night came sweeping through the forest, soft her sombre garments trailing;
With a sound of gallant chiding distant hounds began to bay;
Like a shoal of dancing waters in the moon, the crew went sailing,
Like a cloud of flying rose-leaves when the winds are up and away.
" Following darkness like a dream, " sighed Will Shakespeare half in sadness,
Underneath his breath, and spelled in this mid-summer night's dream madness,
All the woods of Warwick ringing with the elfin roundelay.