gleam, as of a silver buckler, held sunwards
over some croucher's head; which gleam, experience in like cases taught,
must come from a roof newly shingled. This, to me, made pretty sure the
recent occupancy of that far cot in fairy land.

Day after day, now, full of interest in my discovery, what time I could
spare from reading the Midsummer's Night Dream, and all about Titania,
wishfully I gazed off towards the hills; but in vain. Either troops of
shadows, an imperial guard, with slow pace and solemn, defiled along the
steeps; or, routed by pursuing light, fled broadcast from east to
west--old wars of Lucifer and Michael; or the mountains, though unvexed
by these mirrored sham fights in the sky, had an atmosphere otherwise
unfavorable for fairy views. I was sorry; the more so, because I had to
keep my chamber for some time after--which chamber did not face those
hills.

At length, when pretty well again, and sitting out, in the September
morning, upon the piazza, and thinking to myself, when, just after a
little flock of sheep, the farmer's banded children passed, a-nutting,
and said, "How sweet a day"--it was, after all, but what their fathers
call a weather-breeder--and, indeed, was become go sensitive through my
illness, as that I could not bear to look upon a Chinese creeper of my
adoption, and which, to my delight, climbing a post of the piazza, had
burst out in starry bloom, but now, if you removed the leaves a little,
showed millions of strange, cankerous worms, which, feeding upon those
blossoms, so shared their blessed hue, as to make it unblessed
evermore--worms, whose germs had doubtless lurked in the very bulb
which, so hopefully, I had planted: in this ingrate peevishness of my
weary convalescence, was I sitting there; when, suddenly looking off, I
saw the golden mountain-window, dazzling like a deep-sea dolphin.
Fairies there, thought I, once more; the queen of fairies at her
fairy-window; at any rate, some glad mountain-girl; it will do me good,
it will cure this weariness, to look on her. No more; I'll launch my
yawl--ho, cheerly, heart! and push away for fairy-land--for rainbow's
end, in fairy-land.

How to get to fairy-land, by what road, I did not know; nor could any
one inform me; not even one Edmund Spenser, who had been there--so he
wrote me--further than that to reach fairy-land, it must be voyaged to,
and with faith. I took the fairy-mountain's bearings, and the first fine
day, when strength