ST. JOHN'S EVE.

Dizzily round

On the elf-hills white in the yellow moonlight

To a sweet, unholy, ravishing sound

Of wizard voices from underground,

Their mazy dance the Elle-maids wound

On St. John's Eve.

Beautiful white,

Like a wreath of mist by the starbeams kissed;

And frail, sweet faces bloomed out on the night

From floating tresses of glow-worm light,

That puffed like foam to the left and the right

On St. John's Eve.

Warily there

They flashed like a rill which the moonbeams fill,

But I saw what a mockery all of them were

With their hollow bodies, when the moonlit air

Rayed out through their eyes with a sudden glare

On St. John's Eve.

Solemnly sweet,

By the river's banks in the rushes’ ranks,

The Necks their sorrowful songs repeat:

A music of winds over dipping wheat,

Of moss-dulled cascades seemed to meet

On St. John's Eve.

Drowsily swam

The fire-flies fleet in eddies of heat;

Through the willows a glimmer of gold harps came,

And I saw their hair like a misty flame

Bunched over white brows, too white to name,

On St. John's Eve.

Beggarly torn,

A wizen chap in a red-peaked cap,

All gray with the chaff and dust of the corn,

And strong with the pungent scent of the barn,

The Nis scowled under the flowering thorn

On St. John's Eve.

Merrily call

The singing crickets in the twinkling thickets,

And the Troll hill rose on pillars tall,

Crimson pillars that ranked a hall

Where the beak-nosed Trolls were holding a ball

On St. John's Eve.

Reveling flew

From beakers of gold the wassail old;

And she reached me a goblet brimmed bright with dew —

But her wily witcheries well I knew,

And the philtre over my shoulder threw

On St. John's Eve.