“Fairy king, attend and mark,
I do hear the morning lark.
Obe. Then, my queen, in silence sad,
Trip we after the night’s shade—
We the globe can compass soon,
Swifter than the wand’ring moon.”
In another place Puck says—
“My fairy lord this must be done in haste;
For night’s swift dragons cut the clouds full fast,
And yonder shines Aurora’s harbinger,
At whose approach ghosts, wandering here and there,
Troop home to churchyards,” etc.
To which Oberon replies—
“But we are spirits of another sort:
I with the morning’s love have oft made sport;
And, like a forester, the groves may tread,
Even till the eastern gate, all fiery-red,
Opening on Neptune with fair blessed beams,
Turns into yellow gold his salt-green streams.”
Compare, likewise, what Robin himself says on this subject in the old song of his exploits.
They never ate—
“But that it eats our victuals, I should think,
Here were a fairy,”