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ON FAIRIES.
They were amazingly expeditious in their journies: Puck, or Robin Good-fellow, answers Oberon, who was about to send him on a secret expedition:
"I'll put a girdle round about the earthIn forty minutes."
Again, the same goblin addresses him thus:
"Fairy king, attend and mark,I do hear the morning lark. Obe. Then, my queen, in silence sad,Trip we after the nights shade,We the globe can compass soon,Swifter than the wand'ring moon."
In another place Puck says:
"My fairy lord this must be done in haste;For Nights swift dragons cut the clouds full fast,And yonder shines Auroras harbinger;At whose approach, ghosts, wandering here and there,Troop home to church-yards, &c."
To which Oberon replies:
"But we are spirits of another sort:I with the mornings love have oft made sport;And, like a forester, the groves may tread.Even till the eastern gate, all fiery-red,Opening on Neptune with fair blessed beams,Turns into yellow gold his salt-green streams."
Compare, likewise, what Robin himself says on this subject in the old song of his exploits.
