a team of little atomies appear, proving that they were never out of England since Shakespeare wrote, but “unheard and unespy’d”, were gliding through Puritan key-holes and spreading their feasts while the Bishop was composing his lament,
“Farewell, rewards and fairies!”
Yet these, like Robin Goodfellow, are spirits of Earth; they eat more than fairy bread. A mortal surely suggested the details of their feast, but they dance a fairy measure:
“The grasshopper, gnat and fly,
Serve for our minstrelsy;
Grace said, we dance awhile,
And so the time beguile;
And if the moon doth hide her head,
The gloe-worm lights us home to bed.
“On tops of dewie grasse