Classic Poem

When I was young I used to wear
Upon my head a garland fair:
A magic wreath in summers gone,
And wondrous bright the flowers shone.

Though all admired the radiant crown,
The wearer only won a frown.
From yellow envy and her brood
I fled to woodland solitude.

In forest glades how free I roamed,
Where happy beasts and fairies homed!
The sprites, the stags with antlered head,
Drew close to me with fearless tread.

They did not pause, divining danger,
They knew me friendly, though a stranger;
The does felt safe from huntsmen's treason,
The fairies, from man's vaunted reason.

Of favours by the fairies shown
None boast but fools, and yet I own
That, in the woods, the noblest born
Were far from treating me with scorn.

The winsome elves, the airy things,
Gossiped and chattered and danced in rings,
Their gaze, perhaps, more keen than coy,
Promising sweet but deadly joy.

I watched their May-day dance and sports,
And they told me tales of various courts,
The scandalous chronicle — nothing supprest —
Of Queen Titania's among the rest.

When I sat by the stream and marked its flow,
The nixies would rise from the pools below,
The water bacchantes, slim and fair,
With silvery veils and floating hair.

The cithern and viol they played for my pleasure,
And danced the famous nixie measure.
Ah, the melody strange and the rhythmic feet!
What a ringing and springing and frenzy sweet!

There were also times when I have known
The pretty things, their wildness flown,
Sit on the grass and sing to me,
Leaning their heads against my knee.

Italian romances they'd hum and trill;
The Oranges Three I remember still.
They also composed and sang with grace
A hymn on me and my noble face.

Then, laughing loud, they would pause in their task,
And sometimes the queerest of questions ask;
For example, one of their questions odd
Was, why were we men created by God?

Had we all got souls? And if so, whether
They were fashioned of linen stout, or leather.
They inquired of me, too, if I chanced to know
Why mortals were mostly so stupid and slow.

And my answer? — Enough if the nixies heard,
To have taken offence were, of course, absurd
At anything said by a nixie droll,
About me or my precious immortal soul.

Malicious and gay are the elves and nixies,
But faithful and true the gnomes and pixies.
They serve us, and work with unflagging zest.
The dwarfs and the manikins pleased me best.

Their cloaks are of scarlet, baggy and deep;
They are honest, though timid; they pry and peep;
And I always behaved as if quite unaware
Why they cover their feet with such sedulous care.

They have feet like ducks, yet all suppose
The fact is a secret nobody knows,
'Tis a rankling wound: the pain is immense.
I never could laugh at the dwarfs' expense.

Great heavens! In this we are all the same;
There is something that all of us hide with shame;
We have each our webbed feet, pose as we please,
And every one fancies that nobody sees.

Salamanders I never chanced to meet,
And the woodland folk were most discreet
In discussing their doings; but to and fro
They would steal through the dark like shadows aglow.

They're as dry as a bone and like children in height;
In doublet and hose of scarlet bright,
Embroidered with gold, they are neatly clad;
Their faces are sickly and yellow and sad.

A crown of gold and rubies red
Each wears upon his little head;
And all to the fancy fondly cling
That each alone is an absolute king.

'Tis a wonderful art these sprites have learned,
To live in the fire and not be burnt;
Yet, never to kindle, I think on the whole,
Is hardly the sign of an ardent soul.

But of all the folk, the cleverest sort,
With their beards so long and their legs so short,
Were the mandrakes — finger-long, queer old men,
Born, nobody seems to know where or when.

On moonlight nights, when they tumble and spin,
They seem, indeed, to the rupture-wort kin;
But, since they were always kind to me,
I have no concern with their pedigree.

They taught me spells and magic words —
How to exorcise fire, and lure the birds,
And on midsummer eve to pluck aright
The herb that hides you in broad daylight.

They taught me the stars and their signs to read,
And to sit the wind like a bare-backed steed,
And the Runic tongue, that calls from their bed
Of deep-dug clay the shrouded dead.

They taught me the whistle by which one tries
To fool and deceive the woodpecker wise,
And get him to give you the spurge that shows
Where treasure is hid of which no one knows.

The words that one murmurs low to one's self,
They taught me too, when one buries pelf;
They expounded it all — a useless measure:
I never could bury or store my treasure.

But for money, then, I did not fret;
My wants were few and easily met,
I had also my castles in Spain, of which
The revenues made me more than rich.

O happy days! To my ear entranced
The blue sky fiddled, while nixies danced;
And kobolds and elves by the flowery streams
Played round a heart that was drunk with dreams!

O happy times! when green above
The boughs triumphal arches wove;
And, crowned and glorious passing through,
I entered in as conquerors do.

Alas! that happy time is fled;
The things I loved are changed or dead.
And ah! some thief has stolen away
For evermore my garland gay.

They have stolen my garland to my grief:
I cannot tell you who the thief;
But since my radiant crown they stole,
My soul has hardly seemed a soul.

Shy and uncanny in their fear
Earth's larvae gaze; the heavens are drear:
A churchyard blue where gods lie dead.
I pace the grove with a drooping head.

The elves have left the woods forlorn;
I hear the hounds and the hunting-horn.
In the copse concealed lies the stricken doe;
She licks her wounds and weeps for woe.

And the dear little mandrakes, where are they?
In the clefts of the rock they are hid away.
I return, little friends, to your woodland bowers,
But without my joy and my crown of flowers.

Where is the fay with the locks of gold,
The first of the fair one's kind of old?
The great oak tree where her house she had
Is torn by the wind, and bare and sad.

The brook flows by with a Stygian tide,
And, silently perched by the waterside.
As pale as death, like a statue of stone,
A nixie sits and grieves alone.

But when, moved with pity, I venture near,
She starts, and gazing in horror and fear
For a moment wild, she turns and flies
Like one who has seen a ghost arise.