I
Dizzily round
On the elf-hills white in the yellow moonlight
To a sweet, unholy, ravishing sound
Of wizard voices from underground,
Their mazy dance the Elle-maids wound
On St. John's Eve.
II
Beautiful white,
Like a wreath of mist by the starbeams kissed;
And frail, sweet faces bloomed out on the night
From floating tresses of glow-worm light,
That puffed like foam to the left and the right
On St. John's Eve.
III
Warily there
They flashed like a rill which the moonbeams fill,
But I saw what a mockery all of them were
With their hollow bodies, when the moonlit air
Rayed out through their eyes with a sudden glare
On St. John's Eve.
IV
Solemnly sweet,
By the river's banks in the rushes' ranks,
The Necks their sorrowful songs repeat:
A music of winds over dipping wheat,
Of moss-dulled cascades seemed to meet
On St. John's Eve.
V
Drowsily swam
The fire-flies fleet in eddies of heat;
Through the willows a glimmer of gold harps came,
And I saw their hair like a misty flame
Bunched over white brows, too white to name,
On St. John's Eve.
VI
Beggarly torn,
A wizen chap in a red-peaked cap,
All gray with the chaff and dust of the corn,
And strong with the pungent scent of the barn,
The Nis scowled under the flowering thorn
On St. John's Eve.
VII
Merrily call
The singing crickets in the twinkling thickets,
And the Troll hill rose on pillars tall,
Crimson pillars that ranked a hall
Where the beak-nosed Trolls were holding a ball
On St. John's Eve.
VIII
Reveling flew
From beakers of gold the wassail old;
And she reached me a goblet brimmed bright with dew -
But her wily witcheries well I knew,
And the philtre over my shoulder threw
On St. John's Eve.