The Priest and the Fairy
Unto the heart of the woodland straying,
Where the shaking leaf with the beam was playing,
Musingly wandered the village priest.
As the summer voice of the daytime ceased,
He came to the home of the forest people
From where the old ivy crawls round the old steeple,
And under a shady oak-tree sat,
Where the moss was spread like his own doormat.
The tangled thoughts of the finished day
Fled from his brow where the hair was grey;
And as the time to darkness plodded,
He thought wise things as his grey head nodded.
How “the only good is musing mild,
And evil still is action’s child.
“With action all the world is vexed,”
He’d find for this some holy text.
He’d slept among the singing trees,
Among the murmurs of the bees,
A full hour long, when rose a feather
Out of a neighbouring bunch of heather;
And then a pointed face was seen
Beneath a pointed cap of green;
And straight before the sleeping priest
There stood a man, of men the least—
Three spans high as he rose to his feet,
And his hair was as yellow as waving wheat.
Now, what has a fairy to do with a priest
Who is six feet high in his socks at least?
He drew from his cap a feather grey,
On the nose of the sleeper he made it play;
The sleeper awoke with a sudden start,
With open mouth and beating heart.
He had dreamed the cow had got within
His garden ringed with jessamine,
And many a purple gillyflower eaten,
And under her hoofs the marigolds beaten.
Then ’gan to speak that goblin rare,
Brushing back his yellow hair:
“Man of wisdom, from thy sleeping
I have roused thee; for the weeping
“Of our great queen is ever heard
Among the haunts of bee and bird.
“We buried late in a hazel dell
A fairy whom we loved full well;
“The swiftest he to dance or fly,
And his hair was as dark as a plover’s eye.
“Man of wisdom, dost thou know
Where the souls of fairies go?”
This priest looked neither to right nor left,
Nigh of his wits by fear bereft.
“Ave Marie,” muttered he
Over the beads of his rosary.
The fairies’ herald spake once more:
“Say and thrice anigh thy door
“Every summer wilt thou see
Wild bees’ honey laid for thee.”
The father dropt his rosary—
“They are lost, they are lost, each one,” cried he.
And then his heart grew well-nigh dead
Because of the thing his tongue had said.
As a wreath of smoke in wind-blown flight
The fairy vanished from his sight,
And came to where his brethren stood,
Away in the heart of the antique wood;
And when they heard that tale of his
They grew so very still, I wis
Were you a fairy you’d have heard
The breathing of the smallest bird,
The beating of a lev’ret’s heart;
And then the fay queen sobbed apart,
And all the sad fay chivalry
Upraised their voices bitterly.
A woodman on his homeward way
Heard the voice of their dismay,
And said, “Yon bittern cries, in truth,
As though his days were full of ruth.
“If I were free to do as little
As dance upon the spear-grass brittle,
“Or seek where sweetest water bubbles,
Remote from all the hard earth troubles,
“And cut no wood the whole day long,
I’d glad folks’ hearts with blither song.”