THE FAIRY RAIDERS
Reading edition
“With hazel wands and singing.”—Old Song.
As old as little birds the Fairy babies As old, and wise, and quaint, with tearless eyes Grave with the solemn lore of Fairy splendour, But O, the little human child is tender, And silly soft, and weak, and oft it cries. The Spinning Spiders tend the Fairy babies, Content to weave them silken cradles hung In lonely moor, or fen, or shadowy heather, But O, the human child is housed from weather In inglenooks, and warm, where songs are sung. Through dreams of strange dominion, known to Merlin, Or craving for small fingering hands it seems, The Fairy Raiders haunt our cradles, bringing Exquisite pointed faces and soft singing To lure away the child that hears in dreams.
The Fairy Raiders bear away the children, Unseen, to Elfin pasture lands they pass, And deep in nodding daisy nests they place them Where by the low, red, rosy glow you trace them, And rings of singing larks down in the grass. There they are one with long heart-breaking sunsets In gay, unearthly lands, and radiant dawns, Till good they grow, and great, and have no sorrow— But O, the mothers’ mortal woe the morrow To find the changeling left, the true child gone!
