Thou art building towers of pebbles, Genie, Pile them up brave and high,

And leave them to follow a bee, Genie,

As he wandereth singing by:

But if thy towers fall down, Genie,

And if the brown bee is lost,

Never weep, for thou must learn, Genie,
How soon life's schemes are crost.

Thy hand is in a bright boy's, Genie,
And he calls thee his sweet wee wife,
But let not thy little heart think, Genie,
Childhood the prophet of life;

It may be life's minstrel, Genie,

And sing sweet songs and clear, But minstrel and prophet now, Genie, Are not united here.

What will thy future fate be, Genie,
Alas! shall I live to see!

For thou art scarcely a sapling, Genie,
And I am a moss-grown tree!
I am shedding life's leaves fast, Genie,
Thou art in blossom sweet;

But think of the grave betimes, Genie,
and old oft meet.

Where young

From mortals safe the livelong night,
There countless feats the Fays delight;
Where burns the glow-worm's lamp so blue,
One gives each flower its proper hue;
While, near, his busy housewife weaves
Ribbons of grass and mantling leaves;
Some teach young plants with grace to move,
Some lead the woodbine to her love,
Some strew the shores with shells and sand,
While others pilot weeds to land:

By moonlight these their labours free,

Then follow me, follow me!

And the chafer's bugle our guide shall be."

LEFTLY.

Come, reader, leave for awhile this work-day world; forget the dull realities of life, and wander with us through the portals of the real, into the realms of ideality. See, what a glorious landscape lies stretched before us! green meads and hoary forests, low-lying vales and heaven-aspiring mountains, within whose bowels the swarthy Gnomes are plying the anvil, and upon whose misty summits the king of the storm sits throned in awful grandeur; but with these dark and malignant beings we have nought to do, our business is with,

"The Fays, that haunt the moonlight dell,
The Elves, that sleep in the cowslip's bell,
The tricksy Sprites, that come and go,
Swifter than a gleam of light,
Where the murmuring waters flow,
And the zephyrs of the night,
Bending to the flowers, that grow
Basking in the silver sheen,
With their voices soft and low,
Sing about the rings of green,

Which the Faries' twinkling feet

In their nightly revels beat."-H. G. A.

Lo! now, the golden hues of sunset are investing with glory-crowns those tall mountains in the distance, and the shadows of twilight are stealing over the valleys; the rising gale rustles the long grass upon the hills, and sighs amid the willows that fringe the meadow stream; the forest trees seem shaking off their slumbers, and whispering to each other of the coming moon, which soon will bathe their hoary tops in silver, and hark! hear ye not a low sweet sound, like a chime of bells afar off?

I.

"Have ye ever heard, in the twilight dim,
A soft low strain

That ye fancied a distant vesper hymn,
Borne o'er the plain,

By the zephyrs that rise on perfumed wing
When the sun's last glances are glimmering?

II.

"Have ye heard that music with cadence sweet
And merry peal,

Ring out like the echoes of Fairy feet

O'er flowers that steal?

And did you deem that each breathing tone
Was the distant vesper-chime alone?

III.

"The source of that whispering strain I'll tell-
For I've listened oft

To the music faint of the blue Harebell
In the gloaming soft:

'Tis the gay Fairy-folk that peal who ring,

At even-time for their banqueting."

MISS TWAMLEY.

Is not this sweetly poetical, and worthy of the subject?
None the less so is an invocation which we have lately
read in "A Vision of Fair Spirits;" it runs thus :-
"Robed in the silken gossamer that flows
Woven in lustre from your elfin loom!
Couched in the ruby chambers of the rose,
Fed by its dew, and curtained by its bloom!
Hither ye Elves! the sunbeam fainter glows,

And the loved twilight gathers with its gloom—
Fly from the grassy mount's untrodden brow,
Drop from the scented blossoms of the bough.
"Steal from the lily's dew-bespangled bell,

That rings its fairy curfew to the night,-
Haste from the lowly vi'let's hidden cell,

Whose beauty shrinketh, widow-like, from sight,-
Creep from the truant snail's deserted shell,

Come from the cowslip's golden halls of light-
Wake from each blossom of the apple tree,
That ope's its bright pavilion to the bee.

JOHN GRAHAM.

Come, let us hasten to view the revels of the tiny folk, and who knows but we may even obtain a sight of their king and queen; rarely indeed are mortals permitted to do this, except it be such as are gifted with a keener perception of things divine and spiritual, than the generality of mankind; or such as, having thoroughly purged their minds of aught which is gross and sensual, approach nearer to the nature of the spotless beings with whom it is their privilege to hold communion; of such an one it may be said :

"Close, close your eyes in holy dread,

And draw a circle round him thrice,

For he on honey dew hath fed,

And drank the milk of Paradise."-SHELLEY.

:

But stay, we have a precious unguent prepared according
to the receipt of a celebrated alchymist, which applied
to your visual orbs, will enable you to behold without
difficulty or danger, the most potent Fairy or Spirit you
may encounter. This is the form of the preparation :-
"R. A pint of sallet-oyle, and put it into a vial-
glasse; but first wash it with rose-water, and mary-
golde water: the flowers to be gathered towards the
east. Wash it till the oyle come white; then put it
into the glasse, ut supra: and then put thereto the
budds of hollyhocke, the flowers of marygolde, the
flowers or toppers of wild thime, the budds of young
hazle: and the thyme must be gathered neare the side
of a hill where Fayries use to be: and take the grasse
of a fayrie throne; then, all these put into the oyle,
into the glasse: and sette it to dissolve three dayes in
the sunne, and then keep it for thy use; ut supra.'
Now let us onward, for the moon has already risen, and
the mists and shadows of twilight are flying before her
to hide themselves in the hollows and woodland
depths :-

"I know a bank whereon the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows :
Quite over-canopied with lush woodbine,
With sweet musk roses and with eglantine;
There sleeps Titania, some time of the night,
Lulled in these flowers with dances and delight."
SHAKSPERE.

Listen to that unseen singer! Let us follow the voice, and we shall doubtless shortly arrive at the scene of the Fairy revels. If we mistake not this is Midsummer

* Ashmolean MSS.,