Culprit Fay and Other Poems | Page 3

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The Culprit Fay and Other Poems - Joseph Rodman Drake
Scanned and proofed by David Price, email [email protected]

Contents
The Culprit Fay
To a Friend
Leon
Niagara
Song
Song
Lines
written in a Lady's Album
Lines to a Lady
Lines on leaving New
Rochelle
Hope
Fragment
To -
Lines
To Eva
To a Lady with
a Violet
Bronx
Song
To Sarah
The American Flag
THE CULPRIT FAY.
"My visual orbs are purged from film, and lo!
"Instead of Anster's
turnip-bearing vales
"I see old fairy land's miraculous show!
"Her
trees of tinsel kissed by freakish gales,
"Her Ouphs that, cloaked in
leaf-gold, skim the breeze,
"And fairies, swarming ----- "
TENNANT'S ANSTER FAIR.
I.
'TIS the middle watch of a summer's night -
The earth is dark, but the
heavens are bright;
Nought 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 Cronest,
She mellows the shades on his shaggy breast,

And seems his huge gray form to throw
In a sliver 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.
II.
The stars are on the moving stream,

And fling, as its ripples gently
flow,
A burnished length of wavy beam
In an eel-like, spiral line
below;
The winds are whist, and the owl is still,
The bat in the

shelvy rock is hid,
And nought is heard on the lonely hill
But the
cricket's chirp, and the answer shrill
Of the gauze-winged katy-did;

And the plaint of the wailing whip-poor-will,
Who moans unseen,
and ceaseless sings,
Ever a note of wail and wo,
Till morning
spreads her rosy wings,
And earth and sky in her glances glow.
III.
'Tis the hour of fairy ban and spell:
The wood-tick has kept the
minutes well;
He has counted them all with click and stroke,
Deep
in the heart of the mountain oak,
And he has awakened the sentry
elve
Who sleeps with him in the haunted tree,
To bid him ring the
hour of twelve,
And call the fays to their revelry;
Twelve small
strokes on his tinkling bell -
('Twas made of the white snail's pearly
shell:- )
"Midnight comes, and all is well!
Hither, hither, wing your
way!
'Tis the dawn of the fairy day."
IV.
They come from beds of lichen green,
They creep from the mullen's
velvet screen;
Some on the backs of beetles fly
From the silver tops
of moon-touched trees,
Where they swung in their cobweb hammocks
high,
And rock'd about in the evening breeze;
Some from the
hum-bird's downy nest -
They had driven him out by elfin power,

And pillowed on plumes of his rainbow breast,
Had slumbered there
till the charmed hour;
Some had lain in the scoop of the rock,
With
glittering ising-stars inlaid;
And some had opened the four-o'clock,

And stole within its purple shade.
And now they throng the
moonlight glade,
Above - below - on every side,
Their little minim
forms arrayed
In the tricksy pomp of fairy pride!
V.
They come not now to print the lea,

In freak and dance around the

tree,
Or at the mushroom board to sup,
And drink the dew from the
buttercup; -
A scene of sorrow waits them now,
For an Ouphe has
broken his vestal vow;
He has loved an earthly maid,
And left for
her his woodland shade;
He has lain upon her lip of dew,
And
sunned him in her eye of blue,
Fann'd her cheek with his wing of air,

Played in the ringlets of her hair,
And, nestling on her snowy
breast,
Forgot the lily-king's behest.
For this the shadowy tribes of
air
To the elfin court must haste away:-
And now they stand
expectant there,
To hear the doom of the Culprit Fay.
VI.
The throne was reared upon the grass
Of spice-wood and of sassafras;

On pillars of mottled tortoise-shell
Hung the burnished canopy -

And o'er it gorgeous curtains fell
Of the tulip's crimson drapery.

The monarch sat on his judgment-seat,
On his brow the crown
imperial shone,
The prisoner Fay was at his feet,
And his peers
were ranged around the throne.
He waved his sceptre in the air,
He
looked around and calmly spoke;
His brow was grave and his eye
severe,
But his voice in a softened accent broke:
VII.
"Fairy! Fairy! list and mark,
Thou hast broke thine elfin chain,
Thy
flame-wood lamp is quenched and dark,
And thy wings are dyed with
a deadly stain -
Thou hast sullied thine elfin purity
In the glance of
a mortal maiden's eye,
Thou hast scorned our dread decree,
And
thou shouldst pay the forfeit high,
But well I know her sinless mind

Is pure as the angel forms above,
Gentle and meek, and chaste and
kind,

Such as a spirit well might love;
Fairy! had she spot or taint,

Bitter had been thy punishment.
Tied to the hornet's shardy wings;

Tossed on the pricks of nettles' stings;
Or seven long ages doomed
to dwell
With the lazy worm in the walnut-shell;
Or every night to
writhe and bleed
Beneath the tread of the centipede;
Or bound in a

cobweb dungeon dim,
Your jailer a spider huge and grim,
Amid the
carrion bodies