C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838)
The Fairy Queen Sleeping
W
Seeking lovely dreams for thee,—
Where is there we have not been
Gathering gifts for our sweet queen?
We are come with sound and sight
Fit for fairy’s sleep to-night:
First around thy couch shall sweep
Odors such as roses weep
When the earliest spring rain
Calls them into life again;
Next upon thine ear shall float
Many a low and silver note
Stolen from a dark-eyed maid,
When her lover’s serenade,
Rising as the stars grew dim,
Wakened from her thoughts of him;
There shall steal o’er lip and cheek
Gales, but all too light to break
Thy soft rest,—such gales as hide
All day orange-flowers inside,
Or that, through hot noontide, dwell
In the purple hyacinth bell;
And before thy sleeping eyes
Shall come glorious pageantries,—
Palaces of gems and gold
Such as dazzle to behold,
Gardens in which every tree
Seems a world of bloom to be,
Fountains whose clear waters show
The white pearls that lie below.
Other times shall live again:
First thou shalt be young and free
In thy days of liberty,
Then again be wooed and won
By thy stately Oberon;
Or thou shalt descend to earth,
And see all of mortal birth—
No, that world’s too full of care
For e’en dreams to linger there.—
But behold, the sun is set,
And the diamond coronet
Of the young moon is on high
Waiting for our revelry;
And the dew is on the flower,
And the stars proclaim our hour:
Long enough thy rest has been,—
Wake, Titania, wake, our queen!