SONG

Bear her along
Keep ye your song
Tender and sweet and low:
Fairies must die!
Ask ye not why
Ye that have hurt her so.

_Passing away--flower from the spray! Colour and light from the leaf!
Soon, soon will the year shed its bloom on her bier, and the dust
of its dreams on our grief._

Men upon earth
Bring us to birth
Gently at even and morn!
When as brother and brother
They greet one another
And smile--then a fairy is born!

But at each cruel word
Upon earth that is heard,
Each deed of unkindness or hate,
Some fairy must pass
From the games in the grass
And steal thro' the terrible Gate.

_Passing away--flower from the spray! Colour and light from the leaf!
Soon, soon will the year shed its bloom on her bier, and the
dust of its dreams on our grief._

If ye knew, if ye knew
All the wrong that ye do
By the thought that ye harbour alone,
How the face of some fairy
Grows wistful and weary
And the heart in her cold as a stone!
Ah, she was born
Blithe as the morn
Under an April sky,
Born of the greeting
Of two lovers meeting.
They parted, and so she must die.

_Passing away--flower from the spray! Colour and light from the leaf!
Soon, soon will the year shed its bloom on her bier, and the dust of
its dreams on our grief._

Cradled in blisses,
Yea, born of your kisses,
Oh, ye lovers that met by the moon,
She would not have cried
In the darkness and died
If ye had not forgotten so soon.

Cruel mortals, they say,
Live for ever and aye,
And they pray in the dark on their knees.
But the flowers that are fled
And the loves that are dead,
What heaven takes pity on these?

_Bear her along--singing your song--tender and sweet and low!
Fairies must die! Ask ye not why--ye that have hurt her so._

Passing away--
Flower from the spray!
Colour and light from the leaf!
Soon, soon will the year
Shed its bloom on her bier
And the dust of its dreams on our grief.

* * * *

Then we came through a glittering crystal grot
By a path like, a pale moonbeam,
And a broad blue bridge of Forget-me-not
Over a shimmering stream,
To where, through the deep blue dusk,