COMPLIMENT TO QUEEN ELIZABETH.

Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues, Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted

FROM "MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM."

are:

remember'st

Since once I sat upon a promontory,
And heard a mermaid, on a dolphin's back,
Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath,
That the rude sea grew civil at her song,
And certain stars shot madly from their spheres,

To hear the sea-maid's music.

PUCK.

I remember.

And then dreams he of smelling out a suit;
And sometime comes she with a tithe-pig's tail,
Tickling a parson's nose as 'a lies asleep,
Then dreams he of another benefice :
Sometime she driveth o'er a soldier's neck,
And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats,
Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades,
Of healths five fathom deep; and then anon

not),

Flying between the cold moon and the earth,
Cupid all armed: a certain aim he took
At a fair vestal throned by the west,
And loosed his love-shaft smartly from his bow,
As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts:
But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft
Quenched in the chaste beams of the watery moon,
And the imperial vot'ress passed on,
In maiden meditation, fancy free.

Yet marked I where the bolt of Cupid fell :

It fell upon a little western flower

Before milk-white, now purple with love's wound, And maidens call it, Love-in-idleness.

FROM "ROMEO AND JULIET."

O THEN I see, Queen Mab hath been with you.

She is the fairies' midwife; and she comes
In shape no bigger than an agate-stone
On the fore-finger of an alderman,
Drawn with a team of little atomies
Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep :
Her wagon-spokes made of long spinners' legs;
The cover, of the wings of grasshoppers;
The traces, of the smallest spider's web;
The collars, of the moonshine's watery beams;
Her whip, of cricket's bone; the lash, of film;
Her wagoner, a small gray-coated gnat,
Not half so big as a round little worm
Pricked from the lazy finger of a maid :
Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut,
Made by the joiner squirrel, or old grub,
Time out of mind the fairies' coach-makers.
And in this state she gallops night by night
Through lovers' brains, and then they dream of

love;

On courtiers' knees, that dream on court'sies straight;

O'er lawyers' fingers, who straight dream on fees; O'er ladies' lips, who straight on kisses dream,

And, being thus frighted, swears a prayer or two,
And sleeps again. This is that very Mab,
That plats the manes of horses in the night;
And bakes the elf-locks in foul sluttish hairs,

Which, once untangled, much misfortune bodes :
This is the hag, when maids lie on their backs,
That presses them, and learns them first to bear,
Making them women of good carriage.

SHAKESPEARE.

BONNY Kilmeny gaed up the glen; But it wasna to meet Duneira's men, Nor the rosy monk of the isle to see, For Kilmeny was pure as pure could be. It was only to hear the yorlin sing, And pu' the cress-flower round the spring, The scarlet hypp, and the hindberrye, And the nut that hung frae the hazel-tree; For Kilmeny was pure as pure could be. But lang may her minny look o'er the wa', And lang may she seek i' the green-wood shaw; Lang the laird of Duneira blame,

And lang, lang greet or Kilmeny come hame.

When many a day had come and fled,

When grief grew calm, and hope was dead, When mass for Kilmeny's soul had been sung, When the bedesman had prayed, and the dead

bell rung;

Late, late in a gloamin, when all was still, When the fringe was red on the westlin hill, The wood was sear, the moon i' the wane,

The reek o' the cot hung over the plain,
Like a little wee cloud in the world its lane;
When the ingle lowed with an eiry leme,
Late, late in the gloamin Kilmeny came hame!

"Kilmeny, Kilmeny, where have you been?
Lang hae we sought baith holt and den,
By linn, by ford, and green-wood tree;
Yet you are halesome and fair to see.
Where got you that joup o' the lily sheen?
That bonny snood of the birk sae green?
And these roses, the fairest that ever was seen?
Kilmeny, Kilmeny, where have you been?"

Kilmeny looked up with a lovely grace, But nae smile was seen on Kilmeny's face; As still was her look, and as still was her ee, As the stillness that lay on the emerant lea, Or the mist that sleeps on a waveless sea. For Kilmeny had been she knew not where, And Kilmeny had seen what she could not declare. Kilmeny had been where the cock never crew, Where the rain never fell, and the wind never blew ;

But it seemed as the harp of the sky had rung,
And the airs of heaven played round her tongue,
When she spake of the lovely forms she had seen,
And a land where sin had never been,
A land of love, and a land of light,
Withouten sun or moon or night;
Where the river swa'd a living stream,
And the light a pure celestial beam:
The land of vision it would seem,
A still, an everlasting dream.

In yon green-wood there is a waik,

And in that waik there is a wene,
And in that wene there is a maike,
That neither has flesh, blood, nor bane;
And down in yon green-wood he walks his lane.
In that green wene Kilmeny lay,
Her bosom happed wi' the flowerets gay;
But the air was soft, and the silence deep,
And bonny Kilmeny fell sound asleep;
She kend nae mair, nor opened her ee,
Till waked by the hymns of a far countrye.

She awaked on a couch of the silk sae slim, All striped wi' the bars of the rainbow's rim; And lovely beings around were rife, Who erst had traveled mortal life; And aye they smiled, and 'gan to speer: "What spirit has brought this mortal here?"

"Lang have I journeyed the world wide," A meek and reverend fere replied ; Baith night and day I have watched the fair Eident a thousand years and mair. Yes, I have watched o'er ilk degree,

They bore her far to a mountain green, To see what mortal never had seen; And they seated her high on a purple sward, And bade her heed what she saw and heard, And note the changes the spirits wrought; For now she lived in the land of thought. She looked, and she saw nor sun nor skies, But a crystal dome of a thousand dyes; She looked, and she saw nae land aright, But an endless whirl of glory and light; And radiant beings went and came, Far swifter than wind or the linked flame; She hid her een frae the dazzling view; She looked again, and the scene was new.

She saw a sun on a summer sky,
And clouds of amber sailing by ;
A lovely land beneath her lay,

And that land had glens and mountains gray;

And that land had valleys and hoary piles,
And marlèd seas, and a thousand isles;
Its fields were speckled, its forests green,
And its lakes were all of the dazzling sheen,
Like magic mirrors, where slumbering lay
The sun and the sky and the cloudlet gray,
Which heaved and trembled, and gently swung;
On every shore they seemed to be hung;
For there they were seen on their downward plain
A thousand times and a thousand again ;
In winding lake and placid firth,
Little peaceful heavens in the bosom of earth.

With distant music, soft and deep,
They lulled Kilmeny sound asleep;
And when she awakened, she lay her lane,
All happed with flowers in the green-wood wene.
When seven long years had come and fled;
When grief was calm, and hope was dead;
When scarce was remembered Kilmeny's name,
Late, late in a gloamin, Kilmeny came hame!
And O, her beauty was fair to see,
But still and steadfast was her ee!
Such beauty bard may never declare,
For there was no pride nor passion there;
And the soft desire of maidens' een
In that mild face could never be seen.
Her seymar was the lily flower,

And her cheek the moss-rose in the shower;
And her voice like the distant melodye
That floats along the twilight sea.
But she loved to raike the lanely glen,
And keeped afar frae the haunts of men;
Her holy hymns unheard to sing,
To suck the flowers and drink the spring.
But wherever her peaceful form appeared,
The wild beasts of the hills were cheered;
The wolf played blythely round the field;
The lordly byson lowed and kneeled ;
The dun deer wooed with manner bland,
And cowered aneath her lily hand.

And when at even the woodlands rung,
When hymns of other worlds she sung
In ecstasy of sweet devotion,

O, then the glen was all in motion !
The wild beasts of the forest came,
Broke from their bughts and faulds the tame,
And goved around, charmed and amazed;
Even the dull cattle crooned, and gazed,
And murmured, and looked with anxious pain
For something the mystery to explain.
The buzzard came with the throstle-cock,
The corby left her houf in the rock;
The blackbird alang wi' the eagle flew ;
The hind came tripping o'er the dew ;
The wolf and the kid their raike began;
And the tod, and the lamb, and the leveret ran;
The hawk and the hern attour them hung,
And the merl and the mavis forhooyed their
young;

And all in a peaceful ring were hurled :
It was like an eve in a sinless world!

When a month and day had come and gane, Kilmeny sought the green-wood wene ; There laid her down on the leaves sae green, And Kilmeny on earth was never mair seen. But O the words that fell from her mouth Were words of wonder, and words of truth! But all the land were in fear and dread, For they kend na whether she was living or dead. It wasna her hame, and she couldna remain; She left this world of sorrow and pain, And returned to the land of thought again. JAMES HOGG.

THE CULPRIT FAY.

"T is 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 coue 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 firefly's spark,
Like starry twinkles that momently break

Through the rifts of the gathering tempest's rack.

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 naught is heard on the lonely hill
But the cricket's chirp, and the answer shrill
Of the gauze-winged katydid;
And the plaint of the wailing whippoorwill,
Who moans unseen, and ceaseless sings
Ever a note of wail and woe,

Till morning spreads her rosy wings,
And earth and sky in her glances glow.

'T is 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

('T was made of the white snail's pearly shell):

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,
Fanned 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.

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 judginent-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 scepter 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 :

"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: