V.
They come not now to print the lea,
In freak and dance around the tree,
Or at the mushroom board to sup,
And drink the dew from the buttercup;—
A scene of sorrow waits them now.
For an Ouphe 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 eyes of blue,
Fanned her cheek with his wing of air,
Played in the ringlets of her hair,
And, nestling on her snowy breast,
Forgot the Lily-King’s behest,—
For this the shadowy tribes of air
To the Elfin
Court must haste away!—
And now they stand expectant there,
To hear the doom
of the Culprit Fay.
VI.
The throne was reared upon the grass,
Of spice-wood
and of sassafras;
On pillars of mottled tortoise-shell
Hung
the burnished canopy,
And o’er it gorgeous curtains fell
Of the tulip’s
crimson drapery.
The monarch sat on his judgment-seat,
On his brow
the crown imperial shone,
The prisoner Fay was at his feet,
And his
Peers were ranged around the throne.
Joseph Rodman Drake.
The song of the rain.
Lo! the long, slender spears, bow they quiver and
flash
Where the clouds send their
cavalry down!
Rank and file by the million the rain-lancers dash
Over mountain and river and
town:
Thick the battle-drops fall—but they drip
not in blood;
The trophy of war is the green
fresh bud:
Oh, the rain, the plentiful rain!
II.
The pastures lie baked, and the furrow is bare,
The wells they yawn empty
and dry;
But a rushing of waters is heard in the air,
And a rainbow leaps out in
the sky.
Hark! the heavy drops pelting the sycamore leaves,
How they wash tha wide pavement, and sweep from
the
eaves!
Oh,
the rain, the plentiful rain!
III.
See, the weaver throws wide his own swinging pane,
The kind drops dance in on
the floor;
And his wife brings her flower-pots to drink the sweet
rain
On the step by her half-open door;
At the tune on the skylight, far over his head,
Smiles their poor crippled lad on his hospital bed.
Oh,
the rain, the plentiful rain!
IV.
And away, far from men, where high mountains tower,
The little green mosses rejoice,
And the bud-heated heather nods to the shower,
And the hill-torrents lift
up their voice:
And the pools in the hollows mimic the fight
Of the rain, as their thousand points dart up in the
light;
Oh,
the rain, the plentiful rain!