Jane Barlow

“ High heaven blurred out with riftless smoke,
Where men ground down ’neath labour’s yoke
Toil to the mad wheel’s thunder;
World weeded o’er from prime to prime
With want, and woe, and care, and crime,
Unmeet to tell in Faery rime,
That halts such burden under.
Howbeit, the Elves in eager crowd
Made haste to raze those mansions proud;
Anon the rill-cliffs echoed loud
To crash of timbers falling,
As toppling towers at onslaught rude
Reeled down in wrack, and street-rows strewed{70}
Their swift-wrought ruin, whence captives shrewd
Slipped homeward, warily crawling. ”

“ As air that arrow cleaveth:
“Lo, Elfrain’s guess, and Elfdore’s dread,
I long have known for truth” (he said) ;
“No mortal guile the snare hath spread
Where Oberon lies entangled;
Nor lives who thus awry could twitch
His sense, or fool to such a pitch,
Save one alone, the Bad Brown Witch.
Aye plotting ills new-fangled.{46}
“And, wot ye well, if aught avail
To countercharm her magic’s bale,
Whose mischief sore we so bewail,
Plunged in this dire quandáry,
’Tis aid no mortal power can lend ”

“ With shells’ jagged splints some sawed at sticks,
Some delved the soil with brier-thorn picks
To helves of flax-haulm fitted;
On business more than one can name
From dawn to dusk they went and came ”

“ Loose Elfdom’s chains, and crush his sprite,
In truth ’twere hard to speak it.{44}
“But for the cause that Elfrain deems
Hath crazed the King with waking dreams,
A Wizard, who our ruin schemes
With arts beyond our foiling ”