Buzzes, fuzzes, Trailing briers, Red wood-fires, Squirrels, jackdaws, Things with black claws, Legs, horns, eyes, Blythe butterflies, Rush-knot shoe-tie, Peeps of blue sky, Distant steeple, Bee and beetle, Fairy people, Small legs fleetest, Echoes sweetest, Joy completest— _Twangle tee!_ _Ri-rigdum, dingle shade-laugh, tingle dee!_” Each look’d at the other—none knew what to say. “This won’t do for me!” said Grandmama Grey; “None of your hoaxing about white witches, Nettles and nonsense, and hedges and ditches; I never before heard so clever a blade At an answer in genuine rhodomontade. Why do you prattle of woodland and stream? What do I care how your small heels you kick up? You know you came here to steal _cake_ and drink _cream_; And, besides, you have broken a china tea-cup!” Hereat the Elf gazed up on high, Through the cage-top bars with rueful gloom, And then he gave a little sigh, Fixing his eyes on Martha’s broom; And meditated thoughtfully. But presently he cast a glance At Toody, who was winking nigh; And now this Elf with nonchalance Look’d round and shouted pleasantly, “I vow, by the tom-tit’s foolish ways, By the mole’s front claws and his pin-hole eye, The woodpecker’s thorn-tongue and groundless dismays, I have told my biography faithfully.” Again at Toody a look he stole, Then coolly resumed his rigmarole. “Loitering once in a wood,” he said, Cocking his nose with a side-bent head,— “A wood full of rabbit-runs, spaces, and turns, And crowded regiments of feathery ferns, With all sorts of groundlings pleasant to see, Such as cup-moss and wild anemone,— I sat me down in a silent nook, By a rill that pearl’d from a grassy dell, And being in want of an excellent book, I took up a pebble, which did as well. I pondered much on its class and merit; Its natural secrets my heart did ferret,— I consider’d it in a learned spirit; And while I was thus at study, I heard near at hand a fussing and spirting, And a ruffling sound of dipping and flirting, ’Neath a morning sky all ruddy. On tiptoe I trip—o’er the bushes I look— And close at the red-gravell’d edge of the brook, There stood a robin bathing! He ruffled his feathers with a spattering sound, And made himself look like a fussy round, Or some fairy’s curious plaything, With a spangly shower all flying and splashing, In a circle of water-drops showering and flashing! But presently— His eye—his eye!——”