Lie still, my love, lie still and sleep— Hope lingers o’er thy slumber; What though thy years beneath the steep Should all its stones outnumber? Though moons steal o’er an’ seasons fly On time’s swift wing unstaying, Yet there’s a spirit in the sky, That lives o’er thy decaying. In domes beneath the water-springs, No end hath my sojourning; An’ to this land of fading things Far hence be my returning; For spirits now have left the deep, Their long last farewell taken: Lie still, my love, lie still an’ sleep, The day is near the breaking! When my loved flood from fading day No more its gleam shall borrow, Nor heath-fowl from the moorland grey Bid the blue dawn good-morrow; The Mermaid o’er thy grave shall weep, Without one breath of scorning: Lie still, my love, lie still an’ sleep, And fare thee well till morning! JAMES HOGG. SONG OF THE WATER NIXIES. By the ripple, ripple of the shallow sea, By the rocky sea, By the hollow sea, We have built a giant windmill, with its long arms free, And it grinds, that we May not hungry be. With a rumble and a roar, sounding all along the shore, We should vanish and should perish if our wheel were heard no more. Little hopes of fisher maidens in the far-off town, In our wheel go down, Evermore go down, For the fisher lads that hold them in the deep sea drown, By our grinding drown, For our pleasures drown. Rend the garment from the soul; let it go, we care not where; What do mortals want with spirit? ’Tis the bodies that are fair. Out beyond the green horizon lurks the vengeful day, Lurks the fateful day, Lurks the hateful day. When the winds shall cease to help us in our shark-like play, When our calm cold sway Shall have passed away, When the wreckers and the wrecked both at peace shall be,— When the threat shall be fulfilled, and there be no more sea. SARAH WILLIAMS. FLOWER FAIRIES. Flower Fairies have you found them, When the summer dusk is falling, With the glow-worms all around them, Have you heard them softly calling? Calling through your garden spaces Notes like fairy bells set ringing, Heard from out enchanted places Whence the fairy bees come winging? Silent stand they through the noonlight In their flower shapes fair and quiet, But they quit them in the moonlight, In its beams to sing and riot. _I_ have heard them, _I_ have seen them, From their petals light-like raying, And the trees would fain have been them, The great trees too old for playing.