And yet one further virtue,--not the least Of those that make life lovable,--increased In Elfinhart's sweet nature from her birth By fairy tutelage; and that was mirth. For fairy natures are compounded all Of whimsies and of freaks fantastical, And what the best of fairies loves the best (Except pure kindness) is an artless jest. And so wise men have argued, on the whole, That the misguided creatures have no soul; But as for me, if the bright fairy elf Has none, I'll get along without, myself! These fairies laughed and danced and sang sweet songs, And did all else that to their craft belongs,-- All tricks and pranks of whole-souled jollity That make life merry 'neath the greenwood tree. The youngest of them childishly beguiled The time when Elfinhart was still a child; They pinched her fingers, and they pulled her ears, Or sometimes, when her blue eyes dreamed of tears, Half smothered her with showers of four-leafed clover,-- Then fled for refuge to some sweet-fern cover; But she pursued them through their tangled lair And caught them, and put fire-flies in their hair; And then they all joined hands, and round and round They danced a morris on the moonlit ground. The years went by, and Elfinhart outgrew The madcap antics of the younger crew, (For fairies age but slowly: don't forget That at two hundred they are children yet!) But still she frolicked with them, though scarce _of_ them, And learned each year more tenderly to love them. But most of all she loved with all her heart On quiet summer nights to walk apart And hold close converse with the fairies' queen,-- A radiant maiden princess who had seen Some twenty centuries of revolving suns Pass over Fairyland,--all golden ones! Sometimes they sat still in the mild moon's light, Where chestnut blooms made sweet the breath of night, And talked of the great world beyond the wood,-- Of death, or sin, or sorrow, understood Of neither,--till the twinkling stars were gone, And bustling Chanticleer proclaimed the dawn. And Elfinhart grew wise in fairy learning; But by degrees a half unconscious yearning For humankind stirred in her gentle heart, And woke a deep desire to bear her part Of love and sorrow in the larger life As sister, helper,--nay, perhaps as wife;-- For such vague instincts, after all, are human, And Elfinhart herself was but a woman. And yet, for all this new desire, I doubt If Elfinhart would e'er have spoken out, And told the fairies of her wish to leave them, (A wish her conscious heart well knew would grieve them), If in the ripening of her silent thought A still voice had not whispered that she ought To leave that world of love and mirth and beauty, To share man's burden in this world of duty. (There's anticlimax for you! Most provoking, Just when you thought that I was only joking, Or idly fingering the poet's laurel, To find my story threatens to be moral! But as for morals, though in verse we scout them, In life we somehow can't get on without them;