"Pity it was to hear the Elfins' wail Rise up in concert from their mingled dread, Pity it was to see them all so pale Gaze on the grass as for a dying bed. But Puck was seated on a spider's thread That hung between two branches of a brier, And 'gan to swing and gambol, heels o'er head, Like any Southwark tumbler on a wire, For him no present grief could long inspire." _Plea of the Midsummer Fairies._] [Footnote 35: Witness the terror of Aram _after_ his victim lies dead before him--(we quote from memory.) "Nothing but lifeless flesh and bone That could not do me ill! And yet I fear'd him all the more For lying there so still; _There was a manhood in his look_ _That murder could not kill._" _Dream of Eugene Aram._] [Footnote 36: "For Guilt was my grim chamberlain Who lighted me to bed, And drew my midnight curtains round With fingers bloody red." _Dream of Eugene Aram._] [Footnote 37: See his impressive poem on _The Elm-Tree_. It appeared, a couple of years back, in _The New Monthly Magazine_.] [Footnote 38: "Before I lived to sigh, Thou wert in Avon, and a thousand rills, Beautiful Orb! and so, _whene'er I lie_ _Trodden_, thou wilt be gazing from thy hills. Blest be thy loving light, where'er it spills, And blessed be thy face, O Mother Mild!" _Ode to the Moon, published likewise in Blackwood_, 1829.] NORTH'S SPECIMENS OF THE BRITISH CRITICS. NO. V. DRYDEN ON CHAUCER.--_Concluded._