St. John's Eve.

I          Dizzily round     On the elf-hills white in the yellow moonlight     To a sweet, unholy, ravishing sound     Of wizard voices from underground,     Their mazy dance the Elle-maids wound          On St. John's Eve.     II          Beautiful white,     Like a wreath of mist by the starbeams kissed;     And frail, sweet faces bloomed out on the night     From floating tresses of glow-worm light,     That puffed like foam to the left and the right          On St. John's Eve.     III          Warily there     They flashed like a rill which the moonbeams fill,     But I saw what a mockery all of them were     With their hollow bodies, when the moonlit air     Rayed out through their eyes with a sudden glare          On St. John's Eve.     IV          Solemnly sweet,     By the river's banks in the rushes' ranks,     The Necks their sorrowful songs repeat:     A music of winds over dipping wheat,     Of moss-dulled cascades seemed to meet          On St. John's Eve.     V          Drowsily swam     The fire-flies fleet in eddies of heat;     Through the willows a glimmer of gold harps came,     And I saw their hair like a misty flame     Bunched over white brows, too white to name,          On St. John's Eve.     VI          Beggarly torn,     A wizen chap in a red-peaked cap,     All gray with the chaff and dust of the corn,     And strong with the pungent scent of the barn,     The Nis scowled under the flowering thorn          On St. John's Eve.     VII          Merrily call     The singing crickets in the twinkling thickets,     And the Troll hill rose on pillars tall,     Crimson pillars that ranked a hall     Where the beak-nosed Trolls were holding a ball          On St. John's Eve.     VIII          Reveling flew     From beakers of gold the wassail old;     And she reached me a goblet brimmed bright with dew -     But her wily witcheries well I knew,     And the philtre over my shoulder threw          On St. John's Eve.