THE ENCHANTED FOREST.
I DO not know how long I was in King Oberon’s library, as, being very much interested in the books, I took no notice of the flight of time. But reading becomes wearisome even in Faeryland, so, feeling rather tired with study, I lay down beside the marble-encircled pool, and fell fast asleep on the soft green carpet. The delightful stories I had been reading still ran in my head, for my slumber was filled with the most charming dreams. I seemed to see beautiful faces smiling at me from amid masses of golden clouds, long ranges of marble colonnades stretching far away in dazzling whiteness against a dark blue sky, mighty ranges of mountains with snowy summits roseate with the flush of sunsets, and sombre Egyptian temples, wherein lovely priestesses danced their mystic dances before the unseen fane of the sacred Isis. All these wonderful pictures passed through my visionary brain, blending one into the other in inextricable confusion, while strains of the most delicious music kept rising and falling at intervals during this strange phantasmagoria of dreamland.
At length the music grew louder and louder, until I slowly opened my eyes to find myself once more in the enchanted forest, lying on the cool green grass, with the dark blue sky silvered with stars above me, and the thin pale moonlight shining down on the solemn trees and glimmering pool. The music had now words to its melody, for a choir of faery voices, clear and distinct as the sound of tiny silver bells, sang as follows:
“In the moonshine cold and chill,
Nightingale
To the woods so calm and still
Tells her tale.
Dance the fairies one and all
Lightly at the elfin ball,