The Fairy Flower

When lad into the lonely, hermit ways
 Or he upon the pad of peas had fell...
To dream a lonesome night of trial away;
 He heard the tinkling of a tiny bell.

A sputtering candle glowed late in the night,
 And shadows danced upon the curtained wall;
A cumulus of wax filled candlestick
 Which flickers--fantasied the coaxing call.

He rose and donned his garb of dotty down,
 And flew in a pod to the Woods of Dour,
Where fairies great, immense he did espy
 Who sat upon a lonely, desperate flower.

He heard the tiny voices call to him
 As if to say, "Come hither to my play";
He saw their mighty wings beat in the air
 And saw them as they flew about the way.

They wheeled and turned a dainty pirouette
 As if to say, "Hello," and more to him,
But he did not full-sensed give them sight;
 For he was not a fairy on a limb.

He heard the bird-song of a trilling troll--
 His sound was old--a hundred years of age,
And heard the sounding of the black-backed  wolves
 Now seven hundred miles from home--this stage.

No sound made he but wheeled to fly the  sights,
 Went stealthily to rustic pads of straw
To sleep and dream of sailing through the  sky,
 A silver flower held beneath his jaw.

The candle, low by now, had spent its wax,
 Yet still was burning in a hollow cone;
And may the folk who made it make it right,
 Without their clang-a-lang chant to intone.

Now pricks are all around the pea-green  pods,
 And it is only dawning light that's come,
But as they sail twice-foamy waves through  heavens,
 They take away concerns with the humdrum.