There is a fountain in the forest call’d The Fountain of the Fairies: when a child With a delightful wonder I have heard Tales of the elfin tribe who on its banks Hold midnight revelry. An ancient oak, The goodliest of the forest, grows beside; Alone it stands, upon a green grass plat, By the woods bounded like some little isle. It ever hath been deem’d their favourite tree, They love to lie and rock upon its leaves, And bask in moonshine. Here the woodman leads His boy, and showing him the green-sward mark’d With darker circlets, says the midnight dance Hath traced the rings, and bids him spare the tree. Fancy had cast a spell upon the place Which made it holy; and the villagers Would say that never evil thing approach’d Unpunish’d there. The strange and fearful pleasure Which fill’d me by that solitary spring, Ceased not in riper years; and now it wakes Deeper delight, and more mysterious awe. ROBERT SOUTHEY. SONGS OF THE PIXIES. [The Pixies, in the superstitions of Devonshire, are a race of beings invisibly small, and harmless or friendly to man. At a small distance from a village in that county, half-way up a wood-covered hill, is an excavation, called the Pixies’ parlour. The roots of old trees form its ceiling; and on its sides are innumerable ciphers, among which the author discovered his own cipher and those of his brothers, cut by the hand of their childhood. At the foot of the hill flows the river Otter. To this place the author conducted a party of young ladies, during the summer months of the year 1793; one of whom, of stature elegantly small, and of complexion colourless yet clear, was proclaimed the Fairy Queen: on which occasion, and at which time, the following irregular ode was written.] I. Whom the untaught shepherds call PIXIES in their madrigal, Fancy’s children, here we dwell: Welcome, ladies! to our cell. Here the wren of softest note Builds its nest and warbles well; Here the blackbird strains his throat; Welcome, ladies! to our cell. II. When fades the moon all shadowy-pale, And scuds the cloud before the gale, Ere morn with living gems bedight Streaks the East with purple light, We sip the furze flowers fragrant dews, Clad in robes of rainbow hues Richer than the deepened bloom That glows on summer’s scented plume: Or sport amid the rosy gleam, Soothed by the distant-tinkling team, While lusty labour, scouting sorrow, Bids the dame a glad good-morrow, Who jogs th’ accustomed road along, And paces cheery to her cheering song. III.