Fairy-Either I mistake your shape and making quite, Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite Called Robin Goodfellow. Are you not he That frights the maidens of the villagery, Skims milk, and sometimes labors in the quern, And bootless makes the breathless housewife churn, And sometimes makes the drink to bear no barm, Misleads night wanderers, laughing at their harm? Those that Hobgoblin call you, and sweet Puck, You do their work, and they shall have good luck. Are you not he? Puck Fairy, thou speak'st aright: Fairy-And here my mistress!-Would that he were gone! William Shakespeare. FOR PREPARATION.-I. From the "Midsummer-Night's Dream," Act II., Scene 1. Puck serves the king, and the Fairy serves the queen of fairies. The king and queen are quarreling, and separate; Puck and the Fairy meet suddenly, as they are on errands for their superiors. "Cowslip's ear" (cow's-lip). The English cowslip differs how from the American? II. Wan'-der, spån'-gled (spång'-gld). III. Note the old English thorough for through, moonés for moon's. (Here is an example of the use of the es denoting possession, which we always write 's, omitting the e.) Note, the meter requires two syllables in moon-es, and also in lov-ed (és and éd marked with' to show that they are to be pronounced as separate syllables). IV. Pensioners, rubies, savors, "lob of spirits" (clown of spirits), 'passing fell" (surpassingly malicious). V. "Cowslips tall"-are cowslips tall flowers? One editor of Shakespeare has suggested that we read all for tall. "Gold coats"-an editor suggests, "In their gold cups spots you see." The original words that Shakespeare wrote are doubtful in many places; it is so easy for mistakes to be made in copying manuscripts, or in printing them. "They do square" (i. e., draw up in opposite lines to quarrel). "Labors in the quern" (in the hand mill, when it does not grind well). "No barm" (no yeast; i. e., does not ferment well). C. THE WONDERS OF ASTRONOMY. 1. The great object of all knowledge is to enlarge and purify the soul, to fill the mind with noble contemplations, and to furnish a refined pleasure. Considering this as the ultimate end of science, no branch of it can surely claim precedence of astronomy. No other science furnishes such a palpable embodiment of the abstractions which lie at the foundation of our intellectual system— the great ideas of time, and space, and extension, and magnitude, and number, and motion, and power. How grand the conception of the ages on ages required for several of the secular equations of the solar system; of distances from which the light of a fixed star will not reach us in twenty millions of years; of magnitudes, compared with which the earth is but a football; of starry hosts, suns like our own, numberless as the sands on the shore; of worlds and systems shooting through the infinite spaces, with a velocity compared with which the cannon ball is a wayworn, heavy-paced traveler! 2. I had occasion, a few weeks since, to take the early train from Providence to Boston, and for this purpose rose at two o'clock in the morning. Everything around was wrapped in darkness and hushed in silence, broken only by what seemed at that hour the unearthly clank and rush of the train. It was a mild, serene midsummer's night; the sky was without a cloud; the winds were whist. The moon, then in the last quarter, had just risen, and the stars shone with a spectral luster but little affected by her presence. Jupiter, two hours high, was the herald of the day; the Pleiades, just above the horizon, shed their sweet influence in the east; Lyra sparkled near the zenith; Andromeda veiled her newly discovered glories from the naked eye, in the south; the steady pointers, far beneath the pole, looked meekly up from the depths of the north to their sovereign. 3. Such was the glorious spectacle as I entered the train. As we proceeded, the timid approach of twilight became more perceptible; the intense blue of the sky began to soften; the smaller stars, like little children, went first to rest; the sister beams of the Pleiades soon melted together; but the bright constellations of the west and north remained unchanged. Steadily the wondrous transfiguration went on. Hands of angels, hidden from mortal eyes, shifted the scenery of the heavens; the glories of night dissolved into the glories of dawn. 4. The blue sky now turned more softly gray; the great watch stars shut up their holy eyes; the east began to kindle. Faint streaks of purple soon blushed along the sky; the whole celestial concave was filled with the inflowing tides of the morning light, which came pouring down from above in one great ocean of radiance; till at length, as we reached the Blue Hills, a flash of purple fire blazed out from above the horizon, and turned the dewy tear-drops of flower and leaf into rubies and diamonds. In a few seconds the everlasting gates of the morning were thrown wide open, and the lord of day, arrayed in glories too severe for the gaze of man, began his state. 5. I do not wonder at the superstition of the ancient Magians, who in the morning of the world went up to the hilltops of Central Asia, and, ignorant of the true God, adored the most glorious work of his hand. But I am filled with amazement when I am told that, in this enlightened age and in the heart of the Christian world, there are persons who can witness this daily manifestation of the power and wisdom of the Creator, and yet say in their hearts, "There is no God." |