Fairy Lands
The world is wide. The shadowed night
with deepest murky darkness grows
in forests thickly sown with trees
or cavern-deeps where, inky black,
the liquid drips from lightless walls,
where echoed snigger, goblin-made,
may haunt your ear, or cackle borne
upon the wind from twisted hag,
or eye may catch a ghost of pale,
a fairy born beneath the moon,
or deeper shadow, shade on shade,
that tricks the eye with hidden form.
The world is wide. On meadow green
in forest far from human home,
by fountain lost in endless trees,
by rocky forms worn strange by winds,
beneath the starry lights above
may gather weirder stars below
to dance by firelight cold of flame
in revels wild and feasts of joy
that bites with sheer and savage edge,
in farandolic turn and line
that captures breath and gives it up
to winds that mediate the stars.
The world is wide. At times a horn
is blown to hunt a questing beast;
at times one sees in gaudy hue
the majesty of fairy court
as lords and ladies fay and strange
set out for hunt or tourney-joust
or solemn, noble magic feat
that never human mind conceives.
Beware! Such fatal beauty lures,
and when procession turns again,
you may, enchanted, walk enslaved,
thus nevermore to see your home.
