FAIRIES

Related Subjects: Imagination, Superstition, Tale, Vision

1. Up the airy mountain,
   Down the rushy glen,
   We daren't go a-hunting
   For fear of little men;
   Wee folk, good folk,
   Trooping all together;
   Green jacket, red cap,
   And white owl's feather!—WILLIAM ALLINGHAM, The Fairies

2. When the first baby laughed for the first time, his laugh broke into a million pieces, and they all went skipping about. That was the beginning of fairies.—J. M. BARRIE, Little White Bird
   

3. Whenever a child says "I don't believe in fairies" there's a little fairy somewhere that falls right down dead.—J. M. BARRIE, Peter Pan
   

4. Children born of fairy stock
   Never need for shirt or frock,
   Never want for food or fire,
   Always get their heart's desire.—ROBERT GRAVES, I'd Love to Be a Fairy's Child
   

5. A little fairy comes at night,
   Her eyes are blue, her hair is brown,
   With silver spots upon her wings,
   And from the moon she flutters down.—THOMAS HOOD, Queen Mab
   

6. I took it for a faery vision
   Of some gay creatures of the element,
   That in the colours of the rainbow live,
   And play i' th' plighted clouds.—MILTON, Comus
   

7. Faery elves,
   Whose midnight revels by a forest-side,
   Or fountain, some belated peasant sees,
   Or dreams he sees, while overhead the Moon
   Sits arbitress.—MILTON, Paradise Lost
   

8. There never was a merry world since the fairies left dancing and the parson left conjuring.—JOHN SELDEN, Table-Talk
   

9. This is the fairy land; O spite of spites!
   We talk with goblins, owls and sprites.—SHAKESPEARE, The Comedy of Errors
   

10. They are fairies;  he that speaks to them shall die:
    I'll wink and couch: no man their works must eye.—SHAKESPEARE, The Merry Wives of Windsor
    

11. Over hill, over dale,
    Through brush, through brier,
    Over park, over pale,
    Through flood, through fire.—SHAKESPEARE, A Midsummer-Night's Dream
    

12. O, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you.
    She is the fairies' midwife, and she comes
    In shape no bigger than an agate-stone
    On the forefinger of an alderman,
    Drawn with a team of little atomies
    Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep . . .
    Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut
    Made by the joiner squirrel, or old grub,
    Time out o' mind the fairies' coach-makers.—SHAKESPEARE, Romeo and Juliet
    

13. Where the bee sucks, there suck I: In a cowslip's bell I lie;
    There I couch when owls do cry. On the bat's back I do fly
    After summer merrily.—SHAKESPEARE, The Tempest
    

14. Or like a fairy trip upon the green.—SHAKESPEARE, Venus and Adonis

15. The horns of Elfland faintly blowing.—TENNYSON, The Princess
    

16. Ye fairies, from all evil keep her!—WORDSWORTH, Peter Bell