They pinched her fingers, and they pulled her ears,
Or sometimes, when her blue eyes dreamed of tears,
Half smothered her with showers of four-leafed clover,--
Then fled for refuge to some sweet-fern cover;
But she pursued them through their tangled lair
And caught them, and put fire-flies in their hair;
And then they all joined hands, and round and round
They danced a morris on the moonlit ground.

The years went by, and Elfinhart outgrew
The madcap antics of the younger crew,
(For fairies age but slowly: don't forget
That at two hundred they are children yet!)
But still she frolicked with them, though scarce _of_ them,
And learned each year more tenderly to love them.
But most of all she loved with all her heart
On quiet summer nights to walk apart
And hold close converse with the fairies' queen,--
A radiant maiden princess who had seen
Some twenty centuries of revolving suns
Pass over Fairyland,--all golden ones!
Sometimes they sat still in the mild moon's light,
Where chestnut blooms made sweet the breath of night,
And talked of the great world beyond the wood,--
Of death, or sin, or sorrow, understood
Of neither,--till the twinkling stars were gone,
And bustling Chanticleer proclaimed the dawn.
And Elfinhart grew wise in fairy learning;
But by degrees a half unconscious yearning
For humankind stirred in her gentle heart,