On Midsummer Night

I.     All the poppies in their beds     Nodding crumpled crimson heads;     And the larkspurs, in whose ears     Twilight hangs, like twinkling tears,     Sleepy jewels of the rain;     All the violets, that strain     Eyes of amethystine gleam;     And the clover-blooms that dream     With pink baby fists closed tight,     They can hear upon this night,     Noiseless as the moon's white light,     Footsteps and the glimmering flight,     Shimmering flight,     Of the Fairies II.     Every sturdy four-o'clock,     In its variegated frock;     Every slender sweet-pea, too,     In its hood of pearly hue;     Every primrose pale that dozes     By the wall and slow uncloses     A sweet mouth of dewy dawn     In a little silken yawn,     On this night of silvery sheen,     They can see the Fairy Queen,     On her palfrey white, I ween,     Tread dim cirques of haunted green,     Moonlit green,     With her Fairies. III.     Never a foxglove bell, you see,     That's a cradle for a bee;     Never a lily, that 's a house     Where the butterfly may drowse;     Never a rosebud or a blossom,     That unfolds its honeyed bosom     To the moth, that nestles deep     And there sucks itself to sleep,     But can hear and also see,     On this night of witchery,     All that world of Faery,     All that world where airily,     Merrily,     Dance the Fairies. IV.     It was last Midsummer Night,     In the moon's uncertain light,     That I stood among the flowers,     And in language unlike ours     Heard them speaking of the Pixies,     Trolls and Gnomes and Water-Nixies;     How in this flow'r's ear a Fay     Hung a gem of rainy ray;     And 'round that flow'r's throat had set     Dim a dewdrop carcanet;     Then among the mignonette     Stretched a cobweb-hammock wet,     Dewy wet,     For the Fairies. V.     Long I watched; but never a one,     Ariel, Puck, or Oberon,     Mab or Queen Titania     Fairest of them all they say     Clad in morning-glory hues,     Did I glimpse among the dews.     Only once I thought the torch     Of that elfin-rogue and arch,     Robin Goodfellow, afar     Flashed along a woodland bar     Bright, a jack-o'-lantern star,     A green lamp of firefly spar,     Glow-worm spar,     Loved of Fairies.