At Lammastide and Hallowe'en,
By forest glade and haunted green,
Gleaming in the silver sheen,
What does all the moaning mean?
All the moaning and the sighing,
Little voices calling, crying,
Bitterly, oh! bitterly?
" Where is she? where is she?
Where is she, the Fairy Queen?"

" She is gone beyond our ken,
Gone among the world of men; —
Busy, talking, thinking men:
Where no fairy foot has been,
Where they mock the fairy powers:
Where the smoky heaven lowers:
Wall and roof for fairy bowers:
Streets and stones for trees and flowers:
There is she: there is she:
There is she, the Fairy Queen.

" Will she think of us, I wonder,
When along the clouds, in thunder,
Rolls the beat of fairy drums?
When the fairy message comes,
Wafted by the carrier-breeze,
To the flowers and the trees?

" Will her fairy heart rejoice
When she hears the fairy voice?
Will she know and understand?
Will she think of fairyland?

" Yes, she will remember yet:
Fairyland will not forget:
Still will be what she has been:
Still will be the Fairy Queen.

" They neither see nor hear us:
They know us not: they fear us.
Strange and terrible are we: —
Fairy feet upon the lea,
Fairy boats upon the sea:
Crown of fairy filigree,

Robe of dew and gossamer.
They neither see nor hear us:
They know us not: they fear us:
She knows us and she loves us, she:
And we — love — her .

" And far away, far away
Across the seas, across the years:
Will there dawn a fairy day,
With fairy laughter, fairy tears?
Will there be a fairy child,
Daughter of the fairy brood?
Will she smile as she has smiled?
Will the fire be in her blood?
In her blood the fairy fire?
In her eyes the fairy light?
Soul's delight and heart's desire,
Fairy-good and fairy-bright?"