She that pinches country wenches, If they rub not clean their benches, And with sharper nails remembers When they rake not up their embers: But if so they chance to feast her, In a shoe she drops a tester. This is she that empties cradles, Takes out children, puts in ladles: Trains forth midwives in their slumber, With a sieve the holes to number; And then leads them from her burrows, Home through ponds and water-furrows. She can start our Franklin’s daughters, In their sleep, with shrieks and laughters; And on sweet St. Anna’s night, Feed them with a promised sight, Some of husbands, some of lovers, Which an empty dream discovers. BEN JONSON. THE FAIRY QUEEN. Come, follow, follow me, You, fairy elves that be; Which circle on the greene, Come follow Mab, your queene. Hand in hand let’s dance around, For this place is fairy ground. When mortals are at rest And snoring in their nest, Unheard and unespy’d, Through key-holes we do glide; Over tables, stools, and shelves, We trip it with our fairy elves. And, if the house be foul With platter, dish, or bowl, Upstairs we nimbly creep, And find the sluts asleep; Then we pinch their arms and thighs; None escapes, nor none espies. But if the house be swept, And from uncleanness kept, We praise the household maid, And duely she is paid: For we use before we goe To drop a tester in her shoe. Upon a mushroomes head Our table-cloth we spread; A grain of rye, or wheat, Is manchet, which we eat; Pearly drops of dew we drink In acorn cups fill’d to the brink. The brains of nightingales, With unctuous fat of snailes, Between two cockles stew’d, Is meat that’s easily chew’d; Tails of wormes and marrow of mice, Do make a dish that’s wonderous nice. The grasshopper, gnat, and fly Serve for our minstrelsie; Grace said, we dance awhile, And so the time beguile; And if the moon doth hide her head, The gloe-worm lights us home to bed. On tops of dewie grasse So nimbly do we passe The young and tender stalk Ne’er bends when we do walk; Yet in the morning may be seen Where we the night before have been. OLD POEM. QUEEN MAB.