him,
Love--with the madness and the melody?

10.

_He, after a pause, lightly._

An elf there is who stables the hot
Red wasp that stings o' the apricot;
An elf who rowels his spiteful bay,
Like a mote on a ray, away, away;
An elf who saddles the hornet lean
To din i' the ear o' the swinging bean;
Who hunts with a hat cocked half awry
The bottle-blue o' the dragon-fly:--
O ho, O hi! Oh, well know I.

An elf there is where the clover tips
A horn whence the summer leaks and drips,
Where lanthorns of mustard-flowers bloom,
In the dusk awaits the bee's dull boom;
Gay gold brocade from head to knee,
Who robs the caravan bumble-bee;
Big bags of honey bee-merchants pay
To the bandit elf of the Fairy way,--
O ho, O hey! I have heard them say.

Another ouphen the butterflies know,
Who paints their wings like the buds that blow;
Flowers, staining the dew-drops through,
Seals their colors in tubes of dew;
Colors to dazzle the butterflies' wing--
The evening moth is another thing:
The butterfly's glory he got at dawn,
The moon-moth's got when the moon was wan;
He it is, that the hollyhocks hear,
Who dangles a brilliant i' each one's ear;
Teases at noon the pane's green fly,
And lights at night the glow-worm's eye:--
O ho, O hi! Oh, well know I.

But the dearest elf, so the poets say,
Is the elf who hides in an eye of gray;
Who curls in a dimple and slips along
The strings of a lute or a lover's song;
Shines in a scent, or wings a rhyme,
And laughs in the bells of a wedding chime;
Hides unhidden, where none may know,
In her bosom's blossom or throat's blue bow--
O ho, O ho!--a friend or foe?

11.

_She, seriously._

Who the loser, who the winner,
If the Fancy fail as preacher?--
None who loved was yet beginner
Though another's love-beseecher;
Love's revealment 's of the inner
Life and deity, the teacher.

Who may falsify the feeling
To the lover who is loser?
Has she felt:--the mere revealing
Of the passion 's his accuser;
She conceals it; the concealing
Is her own love's self-abuser.

One hath said, no flower knoweth
Of the fragrance it revealeth;
Song, its soul that overfloweth,
Never nightingale's heart feeleth--
Such the love the spirit groweth,