It is only lately that we have read _The Culprit Fay_. This is a poem of six hundred and forty irregular lines, generally iambic, and divided into thirty six stanzas, of {329} unequal length. The scene of the narrative, as we ascertain from the single line, The moon looks down on old _Cronest_, is principally in the vicinity of West Point on the Hudson. The plot is as follows. An Ouphe, one of the race of Fairies, has "broken his vestal vow," He has loved an earthly maid And left for her his woodland shade; He has lain upon her lip of dew, And sunned him in her eye of blue, Fann'd her cheek with his wing of air, Play'd with the ringlets of her hair, And, nestling on her snowy breast, Forgot the lily-king's behest-- in short, he has broken Fairy-law in becoming enamored of a mortal. The result of this misdemeanor we could not express so well as the poet, and will therefore make use of the language put into the mouth of the Fairy-King who reprimands the criminal. Fairy! Fairy! list and mark, Thou hast broke thine elfin chain, Thy flame-wood lamp is quench'd and dark And thy wings are dyed with a deadly stain. The Ouphe being in this predicament, it has become necessary that his case and crime should be investigated by a jury of his fellows, and to this end the "shadowy tribes of air" are summoned by the "sentry elve" who has been awakened by the "wood-tick"--are summoned we say to the "elfin-court" at midnight to hear the doom of the _Culprit Fay_. "Had a stain been found on the earthly fair" whose blandishments so bewildered the litle Ouphe, his punishment had been severe indeed. In such case he would have been (as we learn from the Fairy judge's exposition of the criminal code,) Tied to the hornet's shardy wings; Tossed on the pricks of nettles' stings; Or seven long ages doomed to dwell With the lazy worm in the walnut shell; Or every night to writhe and bleed Beneath the tread of the centipede; Or bound in a cobweb dungeon dim, His jailer a spider huge and grim, Amid the carrion bodies to lie Of the worm and the bug and the murdered fly-- Fortunately, however, for the Culprit, his mistress is proved to be of "sinless mind" and under such redeeming circumstances the sentence is, mildly, as follows-- Thou shalt seek the beach of sand Where the water bounds the elfin land, Thou shalt watch the oozy brine Till the sturgeon leaps in the bright moonshine, Then dart the glistening arch below, And catch a drop from his silver bow. * * * * *