I, to reason lost, when I rode to meet a fay, a ghost, on Gifford's moor.

Back from the palace turns the parting fay, And with her beauteous damsels speeds away:

The woods of Leon now would shrilly sound Oft with his joyous shout and choral hound At length, one morn his disadventurous dart, Lanc'd, as the game was rous'd, at hind or hart, Wing'd through the yielding air its weetless way, And pierc'd unwares a metamorphos'd fay.

Half-hidden in the great hemlock-bough, this tiny, fantastic creature, so fair, so supercilious, seemed in her waywardness a veritable fay, mate for any of the little men in green, bibbers of dewdrops, lodgers in bean-blossoms, Green-Jacket, Red-Cap, and White-Owl's-Feather.