“And we’ll distil thee aromatic dews,
To charm thy sense, when there shall be no flow’rs;
And flavor’d syrups in thy drinks infuse,
And teach the nightingale to haunt thy bow’rs,
And with our games divert thy weariest hours,
With all that elfin wits can e’er devise. 
And, this churl dead, there’ll be no hasting hours
To rob thee of thy joys, as now joy flies":—­
Here she was stopp’d by Saturn’s furious cries.

CVIII.

Whom, therefore, the kind Shade rebukes anew,
Saying, “Thou haggard Sin, go forth, and scoop
Thy hollow coffin in some churchyard yew,
Or make th’ autumnal flow’rs turn pale, and droop;
Or fell the bearded corn, till gleaners stoop
Under fat sheaves,—­or blast the piny grove;—­
But here thou shall not harm this pretty group,
Whose lives are not so frail and feebly wove,
But leased on Nature’s loveliness and love.”

CIX.

“’Tis these that free the small entangled fly,
Caught in the venom’d spider’s crafty snare;—­
These be the petty surgeons that apply
The healing balsams to the wounded hare,
Bedded in bloody fern, no creature’s care!—­
These be providers for the orphan brood,
Whose tender mother hath been slain in air,
Quitting with gaping bill her darling’s food,
Hard by the verge of her domestic wood.”

CX.

“’Tis these befriend the timid trembling stag,
When, with a bursting heart beset with fears,
He feels his saving speed begin to flag;
For then they quench the fatal taint with tears,
And prompt fresh shifts in his alarum’d ears,
So piteously they view all bloody morts;
Or if the gunner, with his arms, appears,
Like noisy pyes and jays, with harsh reports,
They warn the wild fowl of his deadly sports.”

CXI.

“For these are kindly ministers of nature,
To soothe all covert hurts and dumb distress;
Pretty they be, and very small of stature,—­
For mercy still consorts with littleness;—­
Wherefore the sum of good is still the less,
And mischief grossest in this world of wrong;—­
So do these charitable dwarfs redress
The tenfold ravages of giants strong,
To whom great malice and great might belong.”

CXII.

“Likewise to them are Poets much beholden
For secret favors in the midnight glooms;
Brave Spenser quaff’d out of their goblets golden,
And saw their tables spread of prompt mushrooms,
And heard their horns of honeysuckle blooms
Sounding upon the air most soothing soft,
Like humming bees busy about the brooms,—­
And glanced this fair queen’s witchery full oft,
And in her magic wain soar’d far aloft.”