The serious world will scold and ban, In clamor loud and hard, To hear Meigs[A] called a Congressman, And Paulding called a bard: But come what may, the man's in luck Who turns it all to glee, And laughing, cries with honest Puck, "Good Lord! what fools ye be!" [A] Henry Meigs of New York, a Congressman from 1819 to 1821 in the Sixteenth Congress. THE CULPRIT FAY My visual orbs are purged from film, and lo! Instead of Anster's turnip-bearing vales, I see old Fairyland's miraculous show! Her trees of tinsel kissed by freakish gales, Her ouphs that, cloaked in leaf-gold, skim the breeze, And fairies, swarming.... --TENNANT'S 'ANSTER FAIR' 'Tis the middle watch of a summer's night-- The earth is dark, but the heavens are bright; Naught is seen in the vault on high But the moon, and the stars, and the cloudless sky, And the flood which rolls its milky hue, A river of light on the welkin blue. The moon looks down on old Cronest; She mellows the shades on his shaggy breast, And seems his huge gray form to throw In a silver cone on the wave below; His sides are broken by spots of shade, By the walnut bough and the cedar made, And through their clustering branches dark Glimmers and dies the firefly's spark-- Like starry twinkles that momently break Through the rifts of the gathering tempest's rack. The stars are on the moving stream, And fling, as its ripples gently flow, A burnished length of wavy beam In an eel-like, spiral line below; The winds are whist, and the owl is still; The bat in the shelvy rock is hid; And naught is heard on the lonely hill But the cricket's chirp, and the answer shrill Of the gauze-winged katydid; And the plaint of the wailing whippoorwill, Who moans unseen, and ceaseless sings. Ever a note of wail and woe, Till morning spreads her rosy wings, And earth and sky in her glances glow. 'Tis the hour of fairy ban and spell: The wood-tick has kept the minutes well; He has counted them all with click and stroke Deep in the heart of the mountain oak, And he has awakened the sentry elve Who sleeps with him in the haunted tree, To bid him ring the hour of twelve, And call the fays to their revelry; Twelve small strokes on his tinkling bell-- ('Twas made of the white snail's pearly shell) "Midnight comes, and all is well! Hither, hither, wing your way! 'Tis the dawn of the fairy day."