| Yells of rage and shrieks of fear Come screaming on his startled ear. |
Still our adventurer is nothing daunted.
| He thrusts before, and he strikes behind, Till he pierces the cloudy bodies through And gashes the shadowy limbs of wind, |
and the Elfin makes no stop, until he reaches the "bank of the milky way." He there checks his courser, and watches "for the glimpse of the planet shoot." While thus engaged, however, an unexpected adventure befalls him. He is approached by a company of the "sylphs of Heaven attired in sunset's crimson pall." They dance around him, and "skip before him on the plain." One receiving his "wasp-sting lance," and another taking his bridle-rein,
| With warblings wild they lead him on, To where, through clouds of amber seen, Studded with stars resplendent shone The palace of the sylphid queen. |
A glowing description of the queen's beauty follows; and as the form of an earthly Fay had never been seen before in the bowers of light, she is represented as falling desperately in love at first sight with our adventurous Ouphe. He returns the compliment in some measure, of course; but, although "his heart bent fitfully," the "earthly form imprinted there" was a security against a too vivid impression. He declines, consequently, the invitation of the queen to remain with her and amuse himself by "lying within the fleecy drift," "hanging upon the rainbow's rim," having his "brow adorned with all the jewels of the sky," "sitting within the Pleiad ring," "resting upon Orion's belt," "riding upon the lightning's gleam," "dancing upon the orbed moon," and "swimming within the milky way."
| Lady, he cries, I have sworn to-night On the word of a fairy knight To do my sentence task aright. |
The queen, therefore, contents herself with bidding the Fay an affectionate farewell—having first directed him carefully to that particular portion of the sky where a star is about to fall. He reaches this point in safety, and in despite of the "fiends of the cloud" who "bellow very loud," succeeds finally in catching a "glimmering spark" with which he returns triumphantly to Fairy-land. The poem closes with an Io Pæan chaunted by the elves in honor of these glorious adventures.
It is more than probable that from among ten readers of the Culprit Fay, nine would immediately pronounce it a poem betokening the most extraordinary powers of imagination, and of these nine, perhaps five or six, poets themselves, and fully impressed with the truth of what we have already assumed, that Ideality is indeed the soul of the Poetic Sentiment, would feel embarrassed between a half-consciousness that they ought to admire the production, and a wonder that they do not. This embarrassment would then arise from an indistinct conception of the results in which Ideality is rendered manifest. Of these results some few are seen in the Culprit Fay, but the greater part of it is utterly destitute of any evidence of imagination whatever. The general character of the poem will, we think, be sufficiently understood by any one who may have taken the trouble to read our foregoing compendium of the narrative. It will be there seen that what is so frequently termed the imaginative power of this story, lies especially—we should have rather said is thought to lie—in the passages we have quoted, or in others of a precisely similar nature. These passages embody, principally, mere specifications of qualities, of habiliments, of punishments, of occupations, of circumstances &c., which the poet has believed in unison with the size, firstly, and secondly with the nature of his Fairies. To all which may be added specifications of other animal existences (such as the toad, the beetle, the lance-fly, the fire-fly and the like) supposed also to be in accordance. An example will best illustrate our meaning upon this point—we take it from page 20.
| He put his acorn helmet on; It was plumed of the silk of the thistle down: The corslet plate that guarded his breast Was once the wild bee's golden vest; His cloak of a thousand mingled dyes, Was formed of the wings of butterflies; His shield was the shell of a lady-bug queen, Studs of gold on a ground of green;6 And the quivering lance which he brandished bright Was the sting of a wasp he had slain in fight. |