Come now, a roundel and a fairy song, Then for the third part of a minute hence: Some to kill cankers in the musk-rose buds; Some war with rear-mice for their leathern wings, To make my small elves coats. And when enamoured of Bottom, she directs her Elves that they should Hop in his walks and gambol in his eyes; Feed him with apricocks and dewberries, With purple grapes, green figs, and mulberries. The honey-bags steal from the humble-bees, And for night-tapers crop their waxen thighs, And light them at the fiery glow-worm's eyes; To have my love to bed, and to arise And pluck the wings from painted butterflies, To fan the moon-beams from his sleeping eyes. Puck goes "swifter than arrow from the Tartar's bow;" he says, "he'll put a girdle round about the earth in forty minutes;" and "We," says Oberon-- We the globe can compass soon, Swifter than the wandering moon. They are either not mortal, or their date of life is indeterminately long; they are of a nature superior to man, and speak with contempt of human follies. By night they revel beneath the light of the moon and stars, retiring at the approach of "Aurora's harbinger,"[391] but not compulsively like ghosts and "damned spirits." But we (says Oberon) are spirits of another sort; I with the morning's love have oft made sport, And like a forester the groves may tread, Even till the eastern gate, all fiery red, Opening on Neptune with fair blessed beams, Turns into yellow gold his salt-green streams. In the Merry Wives of Windsor, we are introduced to mock-fairies, modelled, of course, after the real ones, but with such additions as the poet's fancy deemed itself authorised to adopt. Act IV., Scene IV., Mrs. Page, after communicating to Mrs. Ford her plan of making the fat knight disguise himself as the ghost of Herne the hunter, adds-- Nan Page, my daughter, and my little son, And three or four more of their growth, we'll dress Like urchins, ouphes,[392] and fairies, green and white, With rounds of waxen tapers on their heads, And rattles in their hands. * * * * * Then let them all encircle him about, And, _fairy-like_, _to-pinch_[393] the unclean knight, And ask him why that hour of fairy revel In their so sacred paths he dares to tread In shape profane. And My Nan shall be the queen of all the fairies, Finely attired in a robe of white. In Act V., Scene V., the plot being all arranged, the Fairy rout appears, headed by Sir Hugh, as a Satyr, by ancient Pistol as Hobgoblin, and by Dame Quickly. _Quick._ Fairies black, grey, green, and white, You moonshine revellers and shades of night, You orphan heirs of fixed destiny,[394] Attend your office and your quality. Crier Hob-goblin, make the fairy O-yes.