Elfin Song
I.
Far in the western ocean’s breast
The summer fairies have found a nest;
The heavens ever unclouded smile
Over the breadth of their beautiful isle;
Through it a hundred streamlets flow,
In spangled paths, to the sea below,
And woo the vales that beside them lie
With a low and tremulous minstrelsy.
The elfin brood have homes they love
In the earth below and skies above;
But the haunt which of all they love the best
Is the palm-crowned isle, in the ocean’s breast,
That mortals call Canary;
And many an Ariel, blithesome, airy,
And each laughing fay and lithesome fairy,
Know well the mystical way in the West
To the sweet isle of Canary.
II.
With an ever-sounding choral chant,
And a clear, cerulean, wild desire
To clasp that fairy island nigher,
The sinuous waves of ocean pant;
For here all natural things are free
To mingle in passionate harmony.
The light from their mirror turns away
With a golden splendour, in the day,
But nightly, when coroneted Even
Marshals the shining queen of heaven,
There gleams a silvery scenery,
From the rim of the great prismatic sea
Around the isle of Canary
To the central crags of Pisgatiri,
Where the crested eagle builds his eyry,
Scanning the shores of sweet Canary.
III.
Lustrously sailing here and there,
Afloat in the beatific air,
Birds, of purple and blue and gold,
Pour out their music manifold;
All day long in the leas they sing,
While the sun-kissed flowers are blossoming;
At eve, when the dew-drop feeds the rose,
And the fragrant water-lilies close,
The marvellous-throated nightingale
With a dying music floods each vale,
Till the seaward breezes, listening, stay
To catch the harmony of his lay
And cool the air of Canary;
And thus the melodies ever vary,
In the vales of the ocean aviary,
In the blissful valleys of sweet Canary.
IV.
The Elle-King’s palace was builded there
By elves of water and earth and air;
Lovingly worked each loyal sprite,
And it grew to life in a summer night.
Over the sheen of its limpid moat,
Wafted along, in a magic boat,
By fairy wings that fan the sails,
And eddying through enchanted vales,
Through walls of amber and crystal gates,
We come where a fairy warder waits;
And so, by many a winding way
Where sweet bells jingle and fountains play,
To the inmost, royalest room of all,—
The elfin monarch’s reception-hall,
The pearl and pride of Canary!
To guard its fastness the elves are wary,
And no weird thing, of pleasure chary,
Can enter with evil in sweet Canary!
V.
All that saddens, and care and pain,
Are banished far from that fair domain;
There forever, by day and night,
Is naught but pleasance and love’s delight;
Daily, the Genii of the flowers
Shade with beauty a hundred bowers;
Nightly, the Gnomes of precious stones
Emblazon and light a hundred thrones;
And the Elves of the field, so swift and mute,
Bring wine and honey and luscious fruit;
And the Sylphs of the air, at noontide, cool
The depths of each bower and vestibule;
And all are gay,—from the tricksome Fay
Who flutters in woodlands far away,
To the best-beloved attendant Elf,
And the royal heart of the king himself,
Who rules in bright Canary;
And the labouring Fairies are blithe and merry,
Who press the juice from the swollen berry
That reddens the vines of sweet Canary.
VI.
What if there be a fated day
When the Faëry Isle shall pass away,
And its beautiful groves and fountains seem
The myths of a long, delicious dream!
A century’s joys shall first repay
Our hearts, for the evil of that day;
And the Elfin-King has sworn to wed
A daughter of Earth, whose child shall be,
By cross and water hallowéd,
From the fairies’ doom forever free.
What if there be a fated day!
It is far away! it is far away!
Maiden, fair Maiden, I, who sing
Of this summer isle, am the island king.
I come from its joys to make thee mine:
Half of my kingdom shall be thine;
Our horses of air and ocean wait—
Then hasten, and share the Elle-King’s state
In the sweet isle of Canary;
And many an Ariel, blithsome, airy,
And each laughing fay and lithesome fairy,
Shall rovingly hover around and over thee,
And the love of a king shall evermore cover thee,
Nightly and daily in sweet Canary.
Edmund Clarence Stedman.