Helena in
those happy times when she was beloved by Demetrius. However that
might be, when Puck returned with the little purple flower, Oberon
said to his favorite, "Take a part of this flower; there has been a
sweet Athenian lady here, who is in love with a disdainful youth; if
you find him sleeping, drop some of the love-juice in his eyes, but
contrive to do it when she is near him, that the first thing he sees
when he awakes may be this despised lady. You will know the man by the
Athenian garments which he wears." Puck promised to manage this matter
very dexterously: and then Oberon went, unperceived by Titania, to her
bower, where she was preparing to go to rest. Her fairy bower was a
bank, where grew wild thyme, cowslips, and sweet violets, under a
canopy of woodbine, musk-roses, and eglantine. There Titania always
slept some part of the night; her coverlet the enameled skin of a
snake, which, though a small mantle, was wide enough to wrap a fairy
in.

He found Titania giving orders to her fairies, how they were to employ
themselves while she slept. "Some of you," said her majesty, "must
kill cankers in the musk-rose buds, and some wage war with the bats
for their leathern wings, to make my small elves coats; and some of
you keep watch that the clamorous owl, that nightly hoots, come not
near me: but first sing me to sleep. Then they began to sing this
song:

"You spotted snakes with double tongue,
Thorny hedgehogs, be not seen;
Newts and blindworms do no wrong,
Come not near our Fairy Queen.
Philomel, with melody,
Sing in our sweet lullaby,
Lulla, lulla, lullaby; lulla, lulla, lullaby;
Never harm, nor spell, nor charm,
Come our lovely lady nigh;
So good night with lullaby."

When the fairies had sung their queen asleep with this pretty lullaby,
they left her to perform the important services she had enjoined them.
Oberon then softly drew near his Titania, and dropped some of the
love-juice on her eyelids, saying,

"What thou seest when them dost wake,
Do it for thy true-love take."

But to return to Hermia, who made her escape out of her father's house
that night, to avoid the death she was doomed to for refusing to marry
Demetrius. When she entered the wood, she found her dear Lysander
waiting for her, to conduct her to his aunt's house; but before they
had passed half through the wood, Hermia was so much fatigued, that
Lysander, who was very careful of this dear lady, who had