And stole within its purple shade.
And now they throng the moonlight glade,
Above—below—on every side,
Their little minim forms arrayed
In the tricksy pomp of fairy pride!”
It is not, however, to the dance or revel that we are invited. No wild gambol is to rivet our attention. We are summoned to the trial of an erring ouphe. Before us stands the throne of judgment, supported on its pillars of the “mottled tortoise shell,” and covered by a curtain of the “tulip’s crimson drapery.” Upon it sits the fairy monarch, surrounded by the nobles of his realm—before him is the culprit Fay. Weighty is the crime alledged against the prisoner. Unmindful of his vestal vow, he has dared to love an earthly maiden. He has
—“left for her his woodland shade;
He has lain upon her lip of dew,
And sunned him in her eye of blue,
Fanned her cheek with his wing of air,