Tag Archives: Arthur Rackam

The Fairies Have Never a Penny to Spend

'Bear the Changeling Child to my Bower.' (A Midsummer Night's Dream.) Arthur Rackham.

 

The Fairies Have Never a Penny to Spend

Rose Fyleman

 

The fairies have never a penny to spend,

They haven’t a thing put by,

But theirs is the dower of bird and of flower

And theirs are the earth and sky.

And though you should live in a palace of gold

Or sleep in a dried-up ditch,

You could never be poor as the fairies are,

And never as rich.

 

Since ever and ever the world began

They have danced like a ribbon of flame,

They have sung their song through the centuries long

And yet it is never the same.

And though you be foolish and though you be wise,

With hair of silver or gold,

You could never be young as the fairies are,

And never as old.

The Starlight Night

"The stars that nature hung in Heav'n, and fill'd their lamps with everlasting oil, to give due light to the misled and lonely Traveller." (Comus) Arthur Rackham.

 

The Starlight Night

Gerard Manley Hopkins

 

Look at the stars! look, look up at the skies!

O look at all the fire-folk sitting in the air!

The bright boroughs, the circle-citadels there!

Down in dim woods the diamond delves! the elves’-eyes!

The grey lawns cold where gold, where quickgold lies!

Wind-beat whitebeam! airy abeles set on a flare!

Flake-doves sent floating forth at a farmyard scare!

Ah well! it is all a purchase, all is a prize.

 

Buy then! bid then!—What?—Prayer, patience, alms, vows.

Look, look: a May-mess, like on orchard boughs!

Look! March-bloom, like on mealed-with-yellow sallows!

These are indeed the barn, withindoors house

The shocks. This piece-bright paling shuts the spouse

Christ home, Christ and his mother and all his hallows.

 

An abele is a white poplar.