"For these are kindly ministers of nature,
To soothe all covert hurts and dumb distress;
Pretty they be, and very small of stature,--
For mercy still consorts with littleness;--
Wherefore the sum of good is still the less,
And mischief grossest in this world of wrong;--
So do these charitable dwarfs redress
The tenfold ravages of giants strong,
To whom great malice and great might belong."


CXII.

"Likewise to them are Poets much beholden
For secret favors in the midnight glooms;
Brave Spenser quaff'd out of their goblets golden,
And saw their tables spread of prompt mushrooms,
And heard their horns of honeysuckle blooms
Sounding upon the air most soothing soft,
Like humming bees busy about the brooms,--
And glanced this fair queen's witchery full oft,
And in her magic wain soar'd far aloft."


CXIII.

"Nay I myself, though mortal, once was nursed
By fairy gossips, friendly at my birth,
And in my childish ear glib Mab rehearsed
Her breezy travels round our planet's girth,