Between the Storm King and old Cro' Nest is the deep and beautiful
Vale of Tempe, with wild ravines furrowed through it, forming channels
for clear mountain streams, and the trees conceal many a delicious
dell. In this picturesque nook among the mountains is laid the scene
of Joseph Rodman Drake's charming poem of "The Culprit Fay":
"'Tis the middle watch of a summer's night,
The earth is dark but the heavens are bright;
Naught is seen in the vault on high
But the moon and the stars and the cloudless sky,
And the flood which rolls its milky hue,
A river of light on the welkin blue.
The moon looks down on old Cro' Nest,
She mellows the shades on his shaggy breast,
And seems his huge gray form to throw
In a silver cone on the wave below;
His sides are broken by spots of shade,
By the walnut bough and the cedar made,
And through their clustering branches dark
Glimmers and dies the fire-fly's spark,
Like starry twinkles that momently break
Through the rifts of the gathering tempest's rack."
The story is told that Drake, then about twenty-one years of age, and
James Fenimore Cooper and Fitz-Greene Halleck, who were his close
friends, in August, 1816, were strolling through these Highlands. His
companions got into a discussion, holding that our American rivers
gave no such rare opportunities for poetic fancy as the streams of
older lands. Drake disputed this, and, to prove the contrary, composed
within three days this exquisite poem, which has largely made his
fame. It is a simple yet interesting story. The fairies living in this
beautiful valley are called together at midnight to punish one who has
broken his vow, and they sentence him to a difficult penance, with all
the evil spirits of air and water opposing. The genius of the poet
interweaves the poem with every natural attraction the locality
affords. Thus are the fairies summoned to the dance:
"Ouphe and goblin! imp and sprite!
Elf of eve and starry fay!
Ye that love the moon's soft light,
Hither, hither, wend your way.
Twine ye in a jocund ring;
Sing and trip it merrily;
Hand to hand and wing to wing,
Round the wild witch-hazel tree."
These Cro' Nest fairies are a dainty race. Owlet's eyes are their
lanterns; they repose in cobweb hammocks swung on tufted spears of
grass and rocked by midsummer night zephyrs; some lie on beds of
lichen, with pillows of the breast-plumes of the humming-bird; others
nestle in the purple shade of the four-o'clock, or in rock-niches
lined with dazzling mica. Velvet-like mushrooms are their tables,
where they quaff the dew from the buttercup. Their king's throne is of
spicewood and sassafras, supported on tortoise-shell pillars and
draped with crimson tulip-leaves. The "culprit" himself, however, in
his beautiful outfit and quaint adventures, gives the best imagery of
the poem. At the opening of his journey, chagrined and fatigued, he
captures a spotted toad for a steed, and bridles her with silk-weed
twist, spurring her onward with an osier whip. Arriving at the water's
edge, he plunges in, but leeches, fish and other watery foes drive him
back with bruised limbs. The use of cobweb lint and the balsam dews of
sorrel and henbane relieve his wounds, and being refreshed by the
juices of calamus, he embarks in a mussel-shell boat, painted
brilliantly without and tinged with pearl within. He gathers a
colen-bell for a cup, and sculls into the middle of the stream,
laughing at the foes who chatter and grin in the water. There he sits
in the moonlight, until a sturgeon, coming by, leaps glistening into
the silvery light; and then, like a liliputian Mercury, balancing upon
one foot, he lifts the flowery cup and catches the sparkling drop that
washes the stain from his wing. He returns to the shore, having sweet
nymphs grasping the sides of the boat with their tiny hands and
urging it onward. The next enterprise of the "culprit" is more
knightly. He is arrayed as a fairy cavalier, in acorn helmet, plumed
with thistle-down, corselet made of a bee's nest, and cloak of
butterfly wings. His shield is a lady-bug's shell; his lance a
wasp-sting; his spurs of cockle-seed; his bow of vine-twig strung with
corn-silk; and his arrows, nettle-shafts. He mounts a fire-fly steed,
and waving a blade of blue grass, speeds upward to catch a flying
meteor's spark. Again the spirits of evil are let loose, those of air
being as bad as those of water. A sylphid queen tries to enchant him
with her beauty and kindness; she toys with the butterfly cloak as he
tells the dangers he has passed. But he never forgets the object of
his pilgrimage, and triumphing over the foes of air, he is escorted
with honor by the sylph's lovely retinue; his career is resumed, his
flame-wood lamp rekindled, and before a streak of dawn is proclaimed
in the eastern sky by the sentry elf, the "Culprit Fay" has made his
full penance and been welcomed back to all his original glory. Drake
died at the early age of twenty-five, a victim of consumption, and his
grave is beside the little river Bronx in New York. To his memory his
friend Halleck wrote the noted poem, thus beginning:
"Green be the turf above thee,
Friend of my better days!
None knew thee but to love thee,
Nor named thee but to praise."