This brown bride had a little penknife,
That was both long and sharp,
And betwixt the short ribs and the long,
Prick'd fair Ellinor to the heart.
'Now Heaven save thee,' Lord Thomas he said,
'Methinks thou look'st wondrous wan:
Thou used to look with as fresh a colour,
As ever the sun shined on.'
'O, art thou blind, Lord Thomas?' she said,
'Or canst thou not very well see?
O, dost thou not see my own heart's blood
Run trickling down my knee?'
Lord Thomas he had a sword by his side;
As he walked about the hall,
He cut off his bride's head from her shoulders,
And threw it against the wall.
He set the hilt against the ground,
And the point against his heart;
There never were three lovers met,
That sooner did depart.
Old Ballad
CXXXII
QUEEN MAB
O then, I see, Queen Mab hath been with you.
She is the fairies' midwife, and she comes
In shape no bigger than an agate stone
On the fore-finger of an alderman;
Drawn with a team of little atomies
Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep:
Her wagon spokes made of long spinner's legs:
The cover, of the wings of grasshoppers;
The traces, of the smallest spider's web;
The collars of the moonshine's watery beams;
Her whip of cricket's bone, the lash, of film;
Her wagoner, a small grey-coated gnat,
Not half so big as a round little worm,
Pricked from the lazy finger of a maid:
Her chariot is an empty hazel nut,
Made by the joiner squirrel, or old grub,
Time out of mind the fairies' coachmakers.
And in this state she gallops night by night,
Through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love;
On courtiers' knees that dream on court'sies straight;
O'er lawyers' fingers, who straight dream on fees;
O'er ladies' lips, who straight on kisses dream.
W. Shakespeare