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PYRUS JAPONICA.
THE FAIRIES' FIRE.
The flowers, which cold in prison kept,
Now laugh the frost to scorn,
Richard Edwards, 1523.
See, where the first pale sunbeams of the year
Fall faintly, fearfully, upon the snow,
That rests in wreathed flakes on every twig,
Trained with neat care around the window-frame.
So icy cold is every thing around,
That even sunshine trembles to alight,
Lest it be frozen too.
Ha! are they out?
My summer friends, the fairies? Surely not;
Yet who but they have lit these tiny fires,
That gleam and glow amid the wintry scene?
Yes, here they are, aweary of the storms,
And wrecking winds, and pinching frosts, that keep
Within their darksome prison-house of earth[1]
The gay and spendthrift flowers; here they are,
Lighting their ruddy beacons at the sun
- ↑ I may here be charged with purloining an idea from the lines of my motto. I can only say such charge were unjust, as "The Fairies' Fire" had been written many months, when in reading some old poems, the lines in Edwards struck me as appropriate to the subject.
