The Elf’s Song

written by


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I.

  Where thronged poppies with globed shields
  Of fierce red
  Warrior all the harvest fields
  Is my bed.
  Here I tumble with the bee,
  Robber bee of low degree
  Gay with dust:
  Wit ye of a bracelet bold
  Broadly belting him with gold?
  It was I who bound it on
  When a-gambol on the lawn--
  It can never rust.


  II.

  Where the glow-worm lights his lamp
  There am I;
  Where within the grasses damp
  Crickets cry.
  Cheer'ly, cheer'ly in the burne
  Where the lins the torrents churn
  Into foam,
  Leap I on a whisp of broom,--
  Cheer'ly, cheer'ly through the gloom,--
  All aneath a round-cheeked moon,
  Treading on her silver shoon
  Lightly o'er the gloam,


  III.

  Or the cowslip on the bent
  Lift her head,
  Or the glow-worm's lamp be spent,
  Whitely dead:
  'Neath lank ferns I laughing lie,
  'Neath the ferns full warily
  Hid away,
  Where the drowsy musk-rose blows
  And a fussy runnel flows,
  Sleeping with the Faëry
  Under leafy canopy
  All the holyday.

© Madison Julius Cawein