These make our girls their sluttery rue, By pinching them both black and blue, And put a penny in their shoe. The house for cleanly sweeping; And in their courses make that round, In meadows and in marshes found, Of them so call'd the fairy ground, Of which they have the keeping. These, when a child haps to be got, That after proves an idiot, When folk perceive it thriveth not, The fault therein to smother, Some silly, doating, brainless calf, That understands things by the half, Says that the fairy left this aulf, And took away the other. And in these:-- Scarce set on shore but therewithal He meeteth Puck, whom most men call Hobgoblin, and on him doth fall With words from frenzy spoken; "Ho! ho!" quoth Puck, "God save your Grace! Who drest you in this piteous case? He thus that spoiled my sovereign's face, I would his neck were broken. This Puck seems but a dreaming dolt. Still walking like a ragged colt, And oft out of a bush doth bolt, Of purpose to deceive us; And leading us, makes us to stray Long winter nights out of the way; And when we stick in mire and clay, He doth with laughter leave us. In his Poet's Elysium there is some beautiful Fairy poetry, which we do not recollect to have seen noticed any where. This work is divided into ten Nymphals, or pastoral dialogues. The Poet's Elysium is, we are told, a paradise upon earth, inhabited by Poets, Nymphs, and the Muses. The poet's paradise this is, To which but few can come, The Muses' only bower of bliss, Their dear Elysium. In the eighth Nymphal, A nymph is married to a fay, Great preparations for the day, All rites of nuptials they recite you To the bridal, and invite you. The dialogue commences between the nymphs Mertilla and Claia:-- _M._ But will our Tita wed this fay? _C._ Yes, and to-morrow is the day. _M._ But why should she bestow herself Upon this dwarfish fairy elf? _C._ Why, by her smallness, you may find That she is of the fairy kind; And therefore apt to choose her make Whence she did her beginning take; Besides he's deft and wondrous airy, And of the noblest of the fairy,[407] Chief of the Crickets,[408] of much fame, In Fairy a most ancient name. The nymphs now proceed to describe the bridal array of Tita: her jewels are to be dew-drops; her head-dress the "yellows in the full-blown rose;" her gown Of pansy, pink, and primrose leaves, Most curiously laid on in threaves; her train the "cast slough of a snake;" her canopy composed of "moons from the peacock's tail," and "feathers from the pheasant's head;"