Music to the Fairy’s Song

I drink the dew from the cup of the flow’r,
I sport in the sunbeam that follows the show’r:
My soft couch is purple with violets bespread,
A wild-rose the canopy over my head.
When sweet-breathing zephyr announces the spring,
I roam thro’ the gardens and fields on his wing:
At noontide if Phoebus too ardently glows,
My shelter I seek in the breast of the rose.

When the curfew bell has rung
And dusky shadows round are flung:
When the humming beetle flies,
And her wing the owlet tries,
When flow’rets close their little bells,
And bees are in their waxen cells
Then I haunt the whisp’ring grove,
And hear the tales of mortal love.
There I hear the flatt’ring youth
(Cupid knows with how much truth!)
Tell the maid that her bright eyes
Vie with stars of summer skies;
That she’s fair as yonder moon,
And her cheek like rose of June!
What pity! what pity men deceive!
O what pity men deceive!
And that mortal maids believe!
Men deceive, Men deceive,
Mortal maids believe!

But I drink the dew from the cup of the flow’r,
I sport in the sunbeam that follows the show’r:
My soft couch is purple with violets bespread,
A wild-rose the canopy over my head:
At noontide if Phoebus too ardently glows,
My shelter I seek in the breast of the rose,
The breast of the rose!

Gossipia