THE CRICKET’S SONG.
You can only hear my voice;
But you cannot see me.
Oh, would not your heart rejoice,
If you could but be me!
Thro’ the sultry summer hours
My shrill voice was ringing;
Now, when cold has killed the flowers,
By the fire I’m singing.
You don’t understand my song,
Tho’ so bright and airy;
For to mortals you belong,
You are not a faery.
Living now the earth upon,
Oft my life’s imperilled;
But at court of Oberon,
I’m the faeries’ herald.
If you caught me you would say,
“In the fire stick it;
In the house it shall not stay,
Noisy, noisy cricket.”
Therefore by the Faery King,
I to hide am bidden,
And you only hear me sing
When I’m closely hidden
First of all, it sounded as if only one cricket was singing, then a second seemed to join in, afterwards a third and fourth, until the whole forest appeared to be full of crickets.
Forest?—yes!—I was now in an old, old forest, for, as I listened to the cricket’s song, the twigs on the logs became fresh and green, then seemed to grow larger and larger, until they hid the red light of the fire, and branched out with great leafy boughs into the room. I looked up in surprise, and saw the green branches, high above my head, waving in the soft wind, and I could hear the singing of unseen birds sound through the chirping of the crickets. Under my feet, instead of a carpet, there was now fresh green turf covered with daisies, and my arm-chair was a chair no longer, but the mossy trunk of a fallen tree. The red light glimmered behind the leaves, as though the fire was still there, but I knew in some strange way that it was not the fire, but the crimson glare of the sunset. A great wave of phantasy seemed to roll through the forest, and I started to my feet, as the crickets finished singing, with a curious sense of wonderful knowledge and vague longings.
“Dear me!” I said to myself; “this must be Faeryland.”
“Yes, it is Faeryland,” piped a shrill voice, which seemed to come from the ground. “This is the Forest of Enchantment.”
“YES, IT IS FAERYLAND,” PIPED A SHRILL VOICE
I looked down without astonishment, for in Faeryland no one is astonished at the strange things which take place, and saw an old, old little man, with a long white beard, sitting astride the stem of a flower, which kept swaying up and down like a rocking-horse. He was dressed in bright green, with the inverted purple cup of a Canterbury bell on his head, and if he had not spoken I would not have known he was there, so much did his clothes and cap resemble the surrounding green grass and coloured flowers.
“Goblin?” I asked quickly; for, you see, he looked so old and ugly that I thought he must be one of the underground faeries.
“I’m not a goblin,” he replied in an angry, shrill voice, like the wind whistling through a keyhole. “It is very rude of you to call me a goblin—a nasty thing who lives under the earth, and only cares for gold and silver. I’m a faery—a very celebrated faery indeed.”
“But you wear a beard,” I said doubtfully; “faeries don’t wear beards.”
“Not all faeries,” he answered, with dignity, jumping down from his swaying flower stem; “but I do, because I am the librarian of King Oberon.”
“Dear me! I did not know he had a library. Do let me see it!”
“You see it now,” said the librarian, waving his hand; “look at all the books.”
I looked round, but saw nothing except a circle of trees, whose great boughs, meeting overhead, made a kind of leafy roof, through which could be seen the faint, rosy flush of the sunset sky. The ground, as I said before, was covered with daisy-sprinkled turf, and there was a still pool of shining water in the centre, upon the bosom of which floated large white lilies.
“I must say I don’t see anything except leaves,” I said, after a pause.
“Well—those are the books.”
“Oh, are they! Well, I know books have leaves, but I didn’t know leaves were books.”
The faery looked puzzled.
“You must have some faery blood in you,” he said at length, “or you would never have found your way into this forest; but you don’t seem to have enough of the elfin nature to see all the wonders of Faeryland.”
“Oh, do let me see the wonders of Faeryland!” I asked eagerly; “now that I am here, I want to see everything.”
“No doubt you do,” retorted the faery, with a provoking smile; “but I don’t know if the King will let you—however, I’ll ask him when he wakes.”
“Is he asleep?” I said in astonishment; “why, it’s day-time.”
“It’s day-time with you, not with us,” answered the librarian; “the night is the day of the faeries—and see, there’s the sun rising.”
Looking up through the fretwork of boughs and leaves, I saw the great silver shield of the moon trembling in the dark blue sky, from whence all the sunset colours had died away.
“But that’s the moon,” I cried, laughing.
“The moon is our sun, stupid,” he said tartly. “I think the King will be awake now, so I’ll ask him if you can see the books.”
He vanished,—I don’t know how; for, though I did not take my eyes off him, he seemed to fade away, and in his place I saw the green leaves and slender stem of a flower, with the Canterbury bell nodding on the top.
The only thing I could do was to wait, so I sat down again on the fallen tree, and amused myself with looking round to see what kind of creatures lived in Faeryland.
The night was very still,—no sound of cricket or bird, not even the whisper of the wind, or the splash of water,—all was silent, and the moon, looking down through the leaves, flooded the glade with a cold, pale light, turning the still waters of the pool to a silver mirror, upon which slept the great white lilies.
Suddenly, a bat, whirring through the glade, disappeared in the soft dusk of the trees, then I heard the distant “Tu whit, tu whoo” of an owl, which seemed to break the spell of the night, and awaken the sleeping faeries; for all at once, on every side, I heard a confused murmur, the glow-worms lighted their glimmering lamps on the soft mossy banks, and brilliant fireflies flashed like sparkling stars through the perfumed air.
Then a nightingale began to sing; I could not see the bird, but only heard the lovely music gushing from amid the dim gloom of the leaves, filling the whole forest with exquisite strains. I understood the nightingale’s song just as well as I did that of the cricket, but what it sang was much more beautiful.