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Katherine Mansfield
The candle is a fairy house
That’s smooth and round and white,
And Mother carries it about
Whenever it is night.
Right at the top a fairy lives,
A lovely yellow one,
And if you blow a little bit
It has all sorts of fun.
It bows and dances by itself
In such a clever way,
And then it stretches very tall;
“Well, it grows fast,” you say.
The little chimney of the house
Is black and really sweet,
And there the candle fairy stands
Though you can’t see its feet.
One minute I laugh,
Another I cry..
I'm changing colours,
Like a disco light..
I'm not right,
I'm all wrong..
But I've been hurt,
So I'm singing this song..
You don't know me,
You will never find,
No chords attached,
That's how I like it.
I'm a fairy, with no wings
I'm flying in my sleep
You think I'm crazy,
You are thinking alright.
Shadow children, thin and small,
Now the day is left behind,
You are dancing on the wall,
On the curtains, on the blind.
On the ceiling, children, too,
Peeping round the nursery door,
Let me come and play with you,
As we always played before.
Let’s pretend that we have wings
And can really truly fly
Over every sort of things
Up and up into the sky,
Where the sweet star children play--
It does seem a dreadful rule,
They must stay inside all day.
I suppose they go to school.
In an opal dream cave I found a fairy:
Her wings were frailer than flower petals,
Frailer far than snowflakes.
She was not frightened, but poised on my finger,
Then delicately walked into my hand.
I shut the two palms of my hands together
And held her prisoner.
I carried her out of the opal cave,
Then opened my hands.
First she became thistledown,
Then a mote in a sunbeam,
Then--nothing at all.
Empty now is my opal dream cave.
In Cherry Valley the cherries blow:
The valley paths are white as snow.
And in their time with clusters red
The scented boughs are crimsoned.
Even now the moon is looking thro'
The glimmer of the honey dew.
A petal trembles to the grass,
The feet of fairies pass and pass.
By them, I know, all beauty comes
To me, a habitan of slums.
I sing no rune, I say no line:
The gift of second sight is mine!
Brigidin Ban of the lint-white locks,
What was it gave you that flaxen hair,
Long as the summer heath in the rocks?
What was it gave you those eyes of fire,
Lip so waxen and cheek so wan?
Tell me, tell me, Brigidin Ban,
Little white bride of my heart's desire.
Was it the Good People stole you away,
Little white changeling, Brigidin Ban?
Carried you off in the ring of the dawn,
Laid like a queen on her purple car,
Carried you back 'twixt the night and the day;
Gave you that fortune of flaxen hair,
Gave you those eyes of wandering fire,
Lit at the wheel of the southern star;
Gave you that look so far away,
The millway path looks like a wraith,
The lock is black as ink,
And silently in stream and sky
The stars begin to blink.
I see them pass along the grass
With slow and solemn tread:
Aoibheall, their queen, is in between--
A corpse is at their head!
They wander on with faces wan,
And dirges sad as wind.
I know not, but it may be that
The dead's of human kind.
If by chance you look for me
Perhaps you'll not me find,
For I'll be in my castle--
Enquire for Reynardine!
Sun and dark he courted me--
His eyes were red as wine:
He took me for his leman,
Did my sweet Reynardine.
Sun and dark the gay horn blows,
The beagles run like wind:
They know not where he harbours,
The fairy Reynardine.
If by chance you look for me
Perhaps you'll not me find,
For I'll be in my castle--
Enquire for Reynardine!
Old lame Bridget doesn't hear
Fairy music in the grass
When the gloaming's on the mere
And the shadow people pass:
Never hears their slow grey feet
Coming from the village street
Just beyond the parson's wall,
Where the clover globes are sweet
And the mushroom's parasol
Opens in the moonlit rain.
Every night I hear them call
From their long and merry train.
Old lame Bridget says to me,
"It is just your fancy, child,"
She cannot believe I see
Laughing faces in the wild,
I saw you and I named a flower
That lights with blue a woodland space,
I named a bird of the red hour
And a hidden fairy place.
And then I saw you not, and knew
Dead leaves were whirling down the mist,
And something lost was crying through
An evening of amethyst.
Who would hear the fairy horn
Calling all the hounds of Finn
Must be in a lark's nest born
When the moon is very thin.
I who have the gift can hear
Hounds and horn and tally ho,
And the tongue of Bran as clear
As Christmas bells across the snow.
And beside my secret place
Hurries by the fairy fox,
With the moonrise on his face,
Up and down the mossy rocks.
Then the music of a horn
And the flash of scarlet men,
Thick as poppies in the corn
All across the dusky glen.
The rushes nod by the river
As the winds on the loud waves go,
And the things they nod of are many,
For it's many the secret they know.
And I think they are wise as the fairies
Who lived ere the hills were high,
They nod so grave by the river
To everyone passing by.
If they would tell me their secrets
I would go by a hidden way,
To the rath when the moon retiring
Dips dim horns into the gray.
And a fairy-girl out of Leinster
In a long dance I should meet,
My heart to her heart beating,
My feet in rhyme with her feet.