last updated on 05/31/99
a collection of Faerie poems--
A Faery Song
by
William Butler Yeats
We
who are old, old and gay,
O so old!
Thousands of years, thousands of years,
If all were told:
Give to these children, new from the world,
Silence and love;
And the long dew-dropping hours of the night,
And the stars above:
Give to these children, new from the world,
Rest far from men.
Is anything better, anything better?
Tell us it then:
Us who are old, old and gay,
O so old!
Thousands of years, thousands of years,
If all were told.
come, ye join the Faerie round,
watch us dance and sing.
Join the Faefolk with joy in yon heart,
Merriment dancing doth bring.
Take a pinch of Faerie dust,
sprinkle in hair and eyes.
The mystery of Pixie dust
Ah, what a glorious surprise
Join hands with the Nymphs,
the Sprites and Gnomes,
Dance all through the night,
Man and Fae,
under the Moon
Oh what a beautiful site.
Dance! Dance! Dance the Round,
Make your steps in time,
Strum on the lyre, and panflute blow,
Lyrics in prose and rhyme.
awing98`
The
Fairies Dancing
by
Walter de la Mare
I
heard along the early hills,
Ere yet the lark was risen up,
Ere yet the dawn with firelight fills
The night-dew of the bramble-cup,--
I heard the fairies in a ring
Sing as they tripped a lilting round
Soft as the moon on wavering wing.
The startlight shook as if with sound,
As if with echoing, and the stars
Pranked their bright eyes with trembling gleams;
While red with war the gusty Mars
Rained upon earth his ruddy beams.
He shone alone, low down the West,
While I, behind a hawthorn-bush,
Watched on the fairies flaxen-tressed
The fires of the morning flush.
Till, as a mist, their beauty died,
Their singing shrill and fainter grew;
And daylight tremulous and wide
Flooded the moorland through and through;
Till Urdon's copper weathercock
Was reared in golden flame afar,
And dim from moonlit dreams awoke
The towers and groves or Arroar.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you understand.
Child of the pure unclouded brow
And dreaming eyes of wonder,
Though time be fleet, and I and thou
Are half a life asunder,
Thy loving smile will surely hail
The love-gift of a fairy-tale.
Lewis Carroll
artwork by Cicely M. Barker
The
Road to Fairyland
by
Ernest Thompson Seton
Do you seek the road to Fairyland
I'll tell; it's easy, quite.
Wait till a yellow moon gets up
O'er purple seas by night,
And gilds a shining pathway
That is sparkling diamond bright
Then, if no evil power be nigh
To thwart you, out of spite,
And if you know the very words
To cast a spell of might,
You get upon a thistledown,
And, if the breeze is right,
You sail away to Fairyland
Along this track of light.
O then, I see Queenn Mab hath been with you. . .
She is the fairie's midwife; and she comes,
In shape no bigger than an agate-stone
On the forefinger of an alderman,
Drawn with a team of little atomies,
Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep.
William Shakespeare