Titania, and her moonlight Elves, were assembled under the canopy of a
huge oak, that served to shelter them from the moon’s radiance, which,
being now at her full noon, shot forth intolerable rays--intolerable, I
mean, to the subtil texture of their little shadowy bodies--but
dispensing an agreeable coolness to us grosser mortals. An air of
discomfort sate upon the Queen, and upon her Courtiers. Their tiny
friskings and gambols were forgot; and even Robin Goodfellow, for the
first time in his little airy life, looked grave. For the Queen had had
melancholy forebodings of late, founded upon an ancient Prophecy, laid
up in the records of Fairy Land, that the date of Fairy existence should
be _then_ extinct, when men should cease to believe in them. And she
knew how that the race of the Nymphs, which were her predecessors, and
had been the Guardians of the sacred floods, and of the silver
fountains, and of the consecrated hills and woods, had utterly
disappeared before the chilling touch of man’s incredulity; and she
sighed bitterly at the approaching fate of herself and of her subjects,
which was dependent upon so fickle a lease, as the capricious and ever
mutable faith of man. When, as if to realise her fears, a melancholy
shape came gliding in, and _that_ was--TIME, who with his intolerable
scythe mows down Kings and Kingdoms; at whose dread approach the Fays
huddled together, as a flock of timorous sheep, and the most courageous
among them crept into acorn cups, not enduring the sight of that
ancientest of Monarchs. Titania’s first impulse was to wish the presence
of her false Lord, King Oberon, who was far away, in the pursuit of a
strange Beauty, a Fay of Indian Land--that with his good lance and
sword, like a faithful knight and husband, he might defend her against
TIME. But she soon checked that thought as vain, for what could the
prowess of the mighty Oberon himself, albeit the stoutest Champion in
Fairy Land, have availed against so huge a Giant, whose bald top touched
the skies. So in the mildest tone she besought the Spectre, that in his
mercy he would overlook, and pass by, her small subjects, as too
diminutive and powerless to add any worthy trophy to his renown. And she
besought him to employ his resistless strength against the ambitious
Children of Men, and to lay waste their aspiring works, to tumble down
their towers and turrets, and the Babels of their pride, fit objects of
his devouring Scythe, but to spare her and her harmless race, who had no
existence beyond a dream; frail objects of a creed; that lived but in
the faith of the believer. And with her little arms, as well as she
could, she grasped the stern knees of TIME, and waxing speechless with
fear, she beckoned to her chief attendants, and Maids of Honour, to come
forth from their hiding places, and to plead the Plea of the Fairies.
And one of those small delicate creatures came forth at her bidding,
clad all in white like a Chorister, and in a low melodious tone, not
louder than the hum of a pretty bee--when it seems to be demurring
whether it shall settle upon this sweet flower or that, before it
settles--set forth her humble Petition. “We Fairies,” she said, “are the
most inoffensive race that live, and least deserving to perish. It is we
that have the care of all sweet melodies, that no discords may offend
the Sun, who is the great Soul of Music. We rouse the lark at morn; and
the pretty Echos, which respond to all the twittering quire, are of our
making. Wherefore, great King of Years, as ever you have loved the music
which is raining from a morning cloud, sent from the messenger of day,
the Lark, as he mounts to Heaven’s gate, beyond the ken of mortals; or
if ever you have listened with a charmed ear to the Night Bird, that
in the flowery spring,
Amidst the leaves set makes the thickets ring
Of her sour sorrows, sweeten’d with her song:
spare our tender tribes; and we will muffle up the sheep-bell for thee,
that thy pleasure take no interruption, whenever thou shall listen unto
Philomel.”
And TIME answered, that “he had heard that song too long; and he was
even wearied with that ancient strain, that recorded the wrongs of
Tereus. But if she would know in what music TIME delighted, it was, when
sleep and darkness lay upon crowded cities, to hark to the midnight
chime, which is tolling from a hundred clocks, like the last knell over
the soul of a dead world; or to the crush of the fall of some age-worn
edifice, which is as the voice of himself when he disparteth kingdoms.”
A second female Fay took up the Plea, and said, “We be the handmaids of
the Spring, and tend upon the birth of all sweet buds; and the pastoral
cowslips are our friends, and the pansies; and the violets, like nuns;
and the quaking hare-bell is in our wardship; and the Hyacinth, once a
fair youth, and dear to Phœbus.”
Then TIME made answer, in his wrath striking the harmless ground with
his hurtful scythe, that “they must not think that he was one that cared
for flowers, except to see them wither, and to take her beauty from the
rose.”
And a third Fairy took up the Plea, and said, “We are kindly Things; and
it is we that sit at evening, and shake rich odours from sweet bowers
upon discoursing lovers, that seem to each other to be their own sighs;
and we keep off the bat, and the owl, from their privacy, and the
ill-boding whistler; and we flit in sweet dreams across the brains of
infancy, and conjure up a smile upon its soft lips to beguile the
careful mother, while its little soul is fled for a brief minute or two
to sport with our youngest Fairies.”
Then SATURN (which is TIME) made answer, that “they should not think
that he delighted in tender Babes, that had devoured his own, till
foolish Rhea cheated him with a Stone, which he swallowed, thinking it
to be the infant Jupiter.” And thereat in token he disclosed to view his
enormous tooth, in which appeared monstrous dints, left by that
unnatural meal; and his great throat, that seemed capable of devouring
up the earth and all its inhabitants at one meal. “And for Lovers,” he
continued, “my delight is, with a hurrying hand to snatch them away from
their love-meetings by stealth at nights, and to ravish away hours from
them like minutes whilst they are together, and in absence to stand like
a motionless statue, or their leaden Planet of mishap (whence I had my
name), till I make their minutes seem ages.”
Next stood up a male fairy, clad all in green, like a forester, or one
of Robin Hood’s mates, and doffing his tiny cap, said, “We are small
foresters, that live in woods, training the young boughs in graceful
intricacies, with blue snatches of the sky between; we frame all shady
roofs and arches rude; and sometimes, when we are plying our tender
hatches, men say, that the tapping woodpecker is nigh: and it is we that
scoop the hollow cell of the squirrel; and carve quaint letters upon the
rinds of trees, which in sylvan solitudes sweetly recall to the mind of
the heat-oppressed swain, ere he lies down to slumber, the name of his
Fair One, Dainty Aminta, Gentle Rosalind, or Chastest Laura, as it may
happen.”
SATURN, nothing moved with this courteous address, bade him be gone, or
“if he would be a woodman, to go forth, and fell oak for the Fairies’
coffins, which would forthwith be wanting. For himself, he took no
delight in haunting the woods, till their golden plumage (the yellow
leaves) were beginning to fall, and leave the brown black limbs bare,
like Nature in her skeleton dress.”
Then stood up one of those gentle Fairies, that are good to Man, and
blushed red as any rose, while he told a modest story of one of his own
good deeds. “It chanced upon a time,” he said, “that while we were
looking cowslips in the meads, while yet the dew was hanging on the
buds, like beads, we found a babe left in its swathing clothes--a little
sorrowful deserted Thing; begot of Love, but begetting no love in
others; guiltless of shame, but doomed to shame for its parents’ offence
in bringing it by indirect courses into the world. It was pity to see
the abandoned little orphan, left to the world’s care by an unnatural
mother, how the cold dew kept wetting its childish coats; and its little
hair, how it was bedabbled, that was like gossamer. Its pouting mouth,
unknowing how to speak, lay half opened like a rose-lipt shell, and its
cheek was softer than any peach, upon which the tears, for very
roundness, could not long dwell, but fell off, in clearness like pearls,
some on the grass, and some on his little hand, and some haply wandered
to the little dimpled well under his mouth, which Love himself seemed to
have planned out, but less for tears than for smilings. Pity it was,
too, to see how the burning sun scorched its helpless limbs, for it lay
without shade, or shelter, or mother’s breast, for foul weather or fair.
So having compassion on its sad plight, my fellows and I turned
ourselves into grasshoppers, and swarmed about the babe, making such
shrill cries, as that pretty little chirping creature makes in its
mirth, till with our noise we attracted the attention of a passing
rustic, a tenderhearted hind, who wondering at our small but loud
concert, strayed aside curiously, and found the babe, where it lay on
the remote grass, and taking it up, lapt it in his russet coat, and bore
it to his cottage, where his wife kindly nurtured it, till it grew up a
goodly personage. How this Babe prospered afterwards, let proud London
tell. This was that famous Sir Thomas Gresham, who was the chiefest of
her Merchants, the richest, the wisest. Witness his many goodly vessels
on the Thames, freighted with costly merchandise, jewels from Ind, and
pearls for courtly dames, and silks of Samarcand. And witness more than
all, that stately Bourse (or Exchange) which he caused to be built, a
mart for merchants from East and West, whose graceful summit still
bears, in token of the Fairies’ favours, his chosen crest, the
Grasshopper. And, like the Grasshopper, may it please you, great King,
to suffer us also to live, partakers of the green earth!”
The Fairy had scarce ended his Plea, when a shrill cry, not unlike the
Grasshopper’s, was heard. Poor Puck--or Robin Goodfellow, as he is
sometimes called--had recovered a little from his first fright, and in
one of his mad freaks had perched upon the beard of old TIME, which was
flowing, ample, and majestic, and was amusing himself with plucking at a
hair, which was indeed so massy, that it seemed to him that he was
removing some huge beam of timber rather than a hair; which TIME by some
ill chance perceiving, snatched up the Impish Mischief with his great
hand, and asked “What it was?”
“Alas!” quoth Puck, “A little random Elf am I, born in one of Nature’s
sports, a very weed, created for the simple sweet enjoyment of myself,
but for no other purpose, worth, or need, that ever I could learn. ’Tis
I, that bob the Angler’s idle cork, till the patient man is ready to
breathe a curse. I steal the morsel from the Gossip’s fork, or stop the
sneezing Chanter in mid Psalm; and when an infant has been born with
hard or homely features, mothers say, that I changed the child at nurse;
but to fulfil any graver purpose I have not wit enough, and hardly the
will. I am a pinch of lively dust to frisk upon the wind, a tear would
make a puddle of me, and so I tickle myself with the lightest straw, and
shun all griefs that might make me stagnant. This is my small
philosophy.”
Then TIME, dropping him on the ground, as a thing too inconsiderable for
his vengeance, grasped fast his mighty Scythe; and now not Puck alone,
but the whole State of Fairies had gone to inevitable wreck and
destruction, had not a timely Apparition interposed, at whose boldness
TIME was astounded, for he came not with the habit, or the forces, of a
Deity, who alone might cope with TIME, but as a simple Mortal, clad as
you might see a Forester, that hunts after wild coneys by the cold
moonshine; or a Stalker of stray deer, stealthy and bold. But by the
golden lustre in his eye, and the passionate wanness in his cheek, and
by the fair and ample space of his forehood, which seemed a palace
framed for the habitation of all glorious thoughts, he knew that this
was his great Rival, who had power given him to rescue whatsoever
victims TIME should clutch, and to cause them to live for ever in his
immortal verse. And muttering the name of SHAKSPEARE, TIME spread his
Roc-like wings, and fled the controuling presence. And the liberated
Court of the Fairies, with Titania at their head, flocked around the
gentle Ghost, giving him thanks, nodding to him, and doing him
curtesies, who had crowned them henceforth with a permanent existence,
to live in the minds of men, while verse shall have power to charm, or
Midsummer moons shall brighten.
* * * * *
What particular endearments passed between the Fairies and their Poet,
passes my pencil to delineate; but if you are curious to be informed, I
must refer you, gentle reader, to the “Plea of the Fairies,” a most
agreeable Poem, lately put forth by my friend, Thomas Hood: of the first
half of which the above is nothing but a meagre, and a harsh,
prose-abstract. Farewell.