The Magic Casement : an Anthology of Fairy Poetry
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THE MAGIC CASEMENT A BOOK OF FAERY POEMS GIVING GLIMPSES OF THE WORLD BEYOND THE CASEMENT: SELECTED AND ARRANGED WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY ALFRED NOYES Of THE UNIVERSITY/ or / sgALjf^ PHn REVO tyai/TTTO JM! KH l"| V'^^^W^IW\^5% 'V A Midsummer's Night: The Quarrel ANTHOLOGY P PAIRY POETRY DITED-WTnAflMDUCTIOH- ALFRED /10YES NOTE Ti/TY thanks are due to the authors and publishers whose !** kindness has permitted the use of copyright poems in this book: to Mr. Swinburne, Mr. Watts-Dunton, Mr. G. K. Chesterton (and Messrs. Dent), Mr. Rudyard Kipling, Mr. R. C. Lehmann (and the proprietors of Punch], Sir Theodore Martin (and Messrs. William Black- wood and Sons), Mrs. William Sharp (for extracts from " the poems of Fiona Macleod "), Mr. W. B. Yeats, and Dr. John Todhunter. ALFRED NOYES VII " AND IF THAT THE BOWLE OF CURDS AND CREAME WERE NOT DULY SET OUT FOR ROBIN GOOD-FELLOW, WHY, THEN, 'WARE OF BULL-BEGGARS, SPIRITS," ETC. " FROM GHOULIES AND GHOOSTIES, LONG- LEGGETY BfrASTIKS, AND THINGS THAT GO BUMP IN THE NIGHT, " GOOD LORD, DELIVER us ! Quaint Old Litany Vlll CONTENTS THE FAIRY LIFE PAGE I KNOW A BANK Wit/lam Shakespeare 3 THE URCHINS' DANCE John Ly/y 4 WHERE THE BEE SUCKS William Shakespeare 5 NURSLINGS OF IMMORTALITY "Percy Bysshe Shelley 6 NIMPHIDIA Michael Dray ton 7 MORGANA George Darky 3 1 PUCK'S SONG Rudyard Kipling 33 MODERN ELFLAND G. K. Chesterton 35 A FAIRY TALE Tom Hood 37 A FAIRY MUSTER George Darley 41 THE ELF-KING'S VICTORY R. C. Lehmann 53 THE FAIRY WEDDING Michael Dray ton 56 _ A FAIRY FUNERAL Alfred Noyes 63 THE FAIRY CAMP George Darley 66 A FAIRY FAMILY Sydney Dobell 67 SHAKESPEARE'S FINAL RETURN TO THE AVON Theodore Watts- Dunton 70 ON A MlDSUMMER-NlGHT William Shakespeare 7 1 THE PLEA OF THE MIDSUMMER FAIRIES Tom Hood 91 SHERWOOD 1 Alfred Noyes 3 J_ ROBIN GOODFELLOW Anonymous 138 THE FAIRY'S WARNING George Darley 1 42 THE ELF-KING'S HUNTING R. C. Lehmann 146 QUEEN MAS William Shakespeare 149 A HOLYDAY NIGHT John Milton 1 5 I FALSTAFF AND THE FAIRIES William Shakespeare 152 ix PAGE FAIRY REVELS John Ly/y 1 5 5 THE HAUNTED CHAMBER Sir Walter Scott 156 WITCHES' CAULDRONS AND BLASTED HEATHS THE THREE WITCHES William Shakespeare i 7 1 THE BANSHEE John Todhunter 187 THE WITCHES' DANCE OF DEATH, 1815 Sir Walter Scott 190 A CHARM-SONG Thomas Middleton 196 THE WITCHES' SABBATH Benjonson 197 THE KELPY Sir Walter Scott 199 HECATE AND THE WITCHES Thomas Middleton 202 TAM O'SHANTER Robert Burns 204 TWIST YE, TWINE YE Sir Walter Scott 2 1 2 COME UNTO THESE YELLOW SANDS UNDER THE EVENING STAR John Milton 215 CORALS Robert Browning 216 A FAIRY REVEL Alfred, Lord Tennyson 2 1 7 ARIEL'S SONG William Shakespeare 219 A FAIRY DIRGE George Darley 221 THE MOON-CHILD Fiona Macleod 222 THE SEA-FAIRIES Alfred, Lord Tennyson 223 THE FORSAKEN MERMAN Matthew Arnold 225 SONG OF THE SIRENS William Browne 230 FLOWER-FAIRIES THE WAVING FERNS AlfredNoyes 233 AN ELFIN LEGEND Thomas Lovell Beddoes 236 x FLOWER-FAIRIES Philip Bourke Marston 237 BEFORE AND AFTER FLOWERING Philip Bourke Marston 239 THE ROSE AND THE WIND Philip Bourke Marston 243 THE BROKEN-HEARTED BEE Thomas Lovell Beddoes 246 THE COWSLIPS Sydney Dobell 247 THE GREEN LADY Fiona Macleod 248 THE Two SWANS Tom Hood 249 DAFFADILL Michael Drayton ^ 260 WINTER IN NORTHUMBER- LAND Algernon Charles Swinburne 262 ENCHANTED WOODS A MAGIC CASEMENT Sydney Dobell 273 To PIERROT IN LOVE Theodore Watts-Dunton 275 A TREE SONG Rudyard Kipling 278 THOMAS THE RHYMER Sir Walter Scott 280 LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI John Keats 296 CHRISTABEL S. T. Coleridge 298 RAPUNZEL William Morris 3 1 1 THE LADY OF SHALOTT Alfred, Lord Tennyson 326 THE DEAD PRINCESS Christina Rossetti 328 THE DAY-DREAM Alfred, Lord Tennyson 329 AIRY MOUNTAIN AND RUSHY GLEN THE FAIRIES William Allingham 339 THE FAIRY THORN Sir Samuel Ferguson 34 i THE HILLS OF RUEL Fiona Macleod 344 GOBLIN MARKET Christina Rossetti 346 THE STOLEN CHILD W. B. Teats 365 xi THE FAERY VOYAGER BY THE BABE UNBORN G. K. Chesterton 369 BACK AGAIN R. C. Lehmann 370 ECKART THE TRUSTY Sir Theodore Martin 372 THE BUGLES OF DREAMLAND Fiona Macleod 374 SONG Tom Hood 375 THE DREAM-FAIR Alfred Noyes 376 THE PRINCE OF FAIRIES Anonymous 38 5" LAST ECHOES THE HORNS OF ELFLAND Alfred, Lord Tennyson 389 EPILOGUE William Shakespeare 390 xn INTRODUCTION. " Magic Casement," through which the THEreader of this volume is invited to look, is, of course, that same casement which was enchanted by the nightingale of Keats. The foam of perilous seas has been blown it and a against ; many princess has leaned down from it at dead midnight to be kissed by some knight that has come adventuring " through forests towards her face." The Mid- summer fairies of Shakespeare hold their revels in the woods that whisper round it those peculiarly English woods which he had the audacity to " " describe as near Athens and it has even been rumoured that a nine-fifteen express has been driven thundering through the haunted valleys below it, by a romantic engine-driver taking tired week-enders to paddle on the yellow sands of those faery lands forlorn. Most poets affirm that if we only kept our own eyes open we should discover that the true fairy-land is really our own world, or a part of it. As many views, under as many atmospheric conditions as possible, are offered to the reader in this book, which, it is hoped, may be found worthily and completely representative of the Fairyland of English Poetry. In an age that is gradually coming! to regard the hailstone as a messenger from God, and the grass-blade as bearing the universe on its point, such an anthology xiii would hardly be complete if it did not admit of " the view that even fairies may be nurslings of immortality." Here and there accordingly in some of the following poems we may detect " " something like a definite criticism of life as in " Mr. Chesterton's Modern Elfland," which is an attempt to draw magic from its natural source, the real world around us, and to shatter our " materialism at one blow. Or again (as in The Elf-King's Victory/* by Mr. R. C. Lehmann), we have a pungent, but delightful, satire upon such futilities as modern warfare. Or again, we have the archetype of the fairy-tale, as in Tennyson's "Day-dream," the fairy-tale of all fairy-tales in excelsis, and at the same time the love-story of all true lovers in the world. Some exquisite work by some well-nigh for- gotten poets like George Darley has been included, and the test for inclusion (over and above the requirement that they shall give us a glimpse of the faery world beyond the casement) in all cases has been simply the test for poetry, the question whether, in the editor's fallible judgment, the verses helped to beget again that golden time when the earth appeared "an insubstantial faery place" and a fit home for song. A somewhat broad use it is that we perhaps " make of the " world for phrase faery ; glimpses xiv are certainly given in this book of something more than the world of Cobweb, Moth and Mustard- seed, something darker than the exquisite world of Thistle-down and Pease-blossom, Moon-blue and Star-mist, something more dreadful even than the world of Dragon's-blood and Bat's-tongue : glimpses in fact of those terrible and cruel things which are perhaps the necessary shadows of the for did not himself of picture ; Shakespeare speak the fairies that do run by the triple Hecate s team : " From the presence of the sun, " Following darkness like a dream ? And that last line, by the way, is perhaps the most beautiful in all fairy literature. We have then sug- gestions of the Witches, in the dark shadows, with their cauldrons and incantations ; and out in the perilous seas beyond their blasted heaths we may occasionally get a glimpse of some glittering mermaid tossing her white arms to the moon. Yet this many-coloured and variously enchanted world has a certain unity, and we have tried to preserve the sense of this by including no poem that is not in some way linked to its neighbours. " " One or two pieces like Hood's Fairy-tale and " " Scott's Owlspiegle (or as it has been entitled here " The Haunted Chamber") were added for the humorous relief they afford to a book which if xv incur arranged on too strict lines might easily the charge of monotony. Yet they occupy niches which certainly ought in any: case to be filled, standing, as they do, in the same comic relation to their more serious brethren as the Windsor Forest fairies, the belabourers of Falstaff, bear to the more ethereal fays of the Midsummer Night's Dream. Of that little known serious poem by " Hood, entitled The Two Swans," we may perhaps say here that we are strongly tempted to " it almost on a. level with his Plea of the place " of as Midsummer Fairies (full remarkable beauty that has longer poem is). "The Two Swans'* the rich obscurity of the very place it describes, a midnight lake thickly shadowed by trees and overgrown by great floating water-lily leaves. There are few poems which so vividly give one the impression that their author has really looked upon a fairy with his living eyes as does this one when as a wild swan sings somewhere in the midst of that tangled gloom a little casement opens, And forth into the light, small and remote, A creature, like the fair son ofa king, Draws to the lattice in his jewelled coat Against the silver moonlight glistening, And leans upon his white hand listening.