“Is each individual’s soul altogether
“Immortal? These souls, are they made all of leather,
“Or stiff linen only? How comes it to pass
“That almost every man is an ass?”
The answers I gave, I’ll conceal for the present,
And yet my immortal soul (which is pleasant)
Was not in the slightest degree ever hurt
By the prattling talk of a water-sprite pert.
While sportive and roguish are elfins and nixes,
Not so the truehearted earth-spirits and pixies,
Which love to help man. I prefer most of all
The race that they dwarfs or mannikins call.
They all wear a long and swelling red doublet,
Their face is noble, though care seems to trouble it;
I let them not see that I had descried
Why they their feet so carefully hide.
They all have ducks’ feet, but object much to show it;
And fancy that nobody else can know it;
Their sorrow’s so deep and hard to bear,
That to teaze them about it I never could dare.
Alas! we all, like those dwarfs full of feeling,
We all have something that needs concealing;
No Christians, we fancy, have ever descried
Where we our ducks’ feet so carefully hide.
Salamanders for me had never attractions,
I learnt very little respecting their actions
From other wood spirits. They pass’d me by night
Like fleeting shadows, mysteriously light.
They are thin as a spindle, and long as a baby,
With breeches and waistcoats tight-fitting as may be,
Of scarlet colours, embroider’d with gold;
Their faces are sickly and yellow and old.
A golden crown, with rubies all over,
The head of each of their number doth cover;
The whole of these vain conceited elves
Quite absolute monarchs consider themselves.
That they are not burnt in the fire is truly
A great piece of art, I acknowledge it duly;
And yet the uninflammable wight
Is far from being a true fire-sprite.