The fairy king, who was always friendly to true lovers, felt great compassion for Helena; and perhaps, as Lysander said they used to walk by moonlight in this pleasant wood, Oberon might have seen Helena in those happy times when she was beloved by Demetrius.  However that might be, when Puck returned with the little purple flower, Oberon said to his favourite, “Take a part of this flower:  there has been a sweet Athenian lady here, who is in love with a disdainful youth; if you find him sleeping, drop some of the love-juice in his eyes, but contrive to do it when she is near him, that the first thing he sees when he awakes may be this despised lady.  You will know the man by the Athenian garments which he wears.”  Puck promised to manage this matter very dextrously; and then Oberon went, unperceived by Titania, to her bower, where she was preparing to go to rest.  Her fairy bower was a bank, where grew wild thyme, cowslips, and sweet violets, under a canopy of woodbine, musk-roses, and eglantine.  There Titania always slept some part of the night; her coverlet the enamelled skin of a snake, which, though a small mantle, was wide enough to wrap a fairy in.

He found Titania giving orders to her fairies, how they were to employ themselves while she slept.  “Some of you,” said her majesty, “must kill cankers in the musk-rose-buds, and some wage war with the bats for their leathern wings, to make my small elves coats; and some of you keep watch that the clamorous owl, that nightly hoots, come not near me:  but first sing me to sleep.”  Then they began to sing this song:—­

  You spotted snakes with double tongue,
  Thorny hedgehogs, be not seen;
  Newts and blind-worms do no wrong,
  Come not near our Fairy Queen. 
  Philomel, with melody,
  Sing in our sweet lullaby,
  Lulla, lulla, lullaby; lulla, lulla, lullaby: 
  Never harm, nor spell, nor charm,
  Come our lovely lady nigh;
  So good night with lullaby.

When the fairies had sung their queen asleep with this pretty lullaby, they left her, to perform the important services she had enjoined them.  Oberon then softly drew near his Titania, and dropt some of the love-juice on her eye-lids, saying,

  What thou seest when thou dost wake,
  Do it for thy true-love take.

But to return to Hermia, who made her escape out of her father’s house that night, to avoid the death she was doomed to for refusing to marry Demetrius.  When she entered the wood, she found her dear Lysander waiting for her, to conduct her to his aunt’s house; but before they had passed half through the wood, Hermia was so much fatigued, that Lysander, who was very careful of this dear lady, that had proved her affection for him even by hazarding her life for his sake, persuaded her to rest till morning on a bank of soft moss, and lying down himself on the ground at some little distance, they soon fell fast asleep.  Here they were found by Puck, who seeing a handsome