Thou the fearless, thou the mild,
Accept the boon thy worth hath earned,
Ascend the car with me.
SPIRIT.
Do I dream? Is this new feeling
a visioned ghost of slumber?
If indeed I am a soul,
A free, a disembodied soul,
Speak again to me.
FAIRY.
I am the Fairy Mab: to me 'tis given
The wonders of the human world to keep:
The secrets of the immeasurable past,
In the unfailing consciences of men,
Those stern, unflattering chroniclers, I find:
The future, from the causes which arise
In each event, I gather: not the sting
Which retributive memory implants
In the hard bosom of the selfish man;
Nor that extatic and exulting throb
Which virtue's votary feels when he sums up
The thoughts and actions of a well-spent day,
Are unforeseen, unregistered by me:
And it is yet permitted me, to rend
The veil of mortal frailty, that the spirit
Clothed in its changeless purity, may know
How soonest to accomplish the great end
