Categories
1850s Poem

The Snow Fairies

The Snow Fairies

By Anonymous
Annotations by Abby Army/JB
Frederic Edwin Church. Winter Landscape at Moonlight. Brush and oil paint on
paperboard, 1870, Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, New York, NY.
Bright the winter moon was beaming
   O’er the snowy plain and hill,
And in steady radiance streaming,
   Silvered o’er the frozen rill.

As I wandered, my slow footsteps
   Seemed alone the calm to break,
Save the sound of distant laughter
   From the skaters on the lake.

Where the little copse-wood groweth,
   —Used the rivulet to shade,—
Every spray bent down with snow-flakes, 
   Thither, carelessly, I strayed.

Hark! a strain of tiny music
   Ringeth through the thicket white,
With a sound of merry voices
   And a tread of footsteps light.

Forth advancing from the covert,
   Bounding o’er the unyielding snow, 
Lo! a train of fur-clad fairies
   Dancing gaily as they go!

Of rich furs their graceful raiment
   Bright with many a varied hue,
While beneath each small fur head-dress
   Sparkled forth their eyes of blue.

One among them moved superior,—
   White her robe as lady’s hand;
And a slender spear, ice-jewelled,
   Seemed her sceptre of command.

Graceful round their queen encircling,
   Swiftly moved each little foot, 
To the dance this song responding, 
   And the notes of fairy flute:—

“Round we go o’er the sparkling snow,
   Bright the stars are glancing!
Merrily sound, as we go round,
   To lively music dancing. 

“Still the air, the moon shines fair,
   In light the landscape steeping, 
The trees shine bright through the lovely night,
   Too fair a night for sleeping.

“Forth we come from our crystal home,
   Our home with ice-gems gleaming,
To dance a round on the fleecy ground,
   And sport in the moonlight beaming.

“And when the day drives night away, 
   When the watching stars grow weary,
Then swift we’ll fly where the shadows lie,
   And creep to our grottoes cheery!

“Round we go o’er the sparkling snow,
   Bright the stars are glancing!
Merrily sound, as we go round,
   To lively music dancing.
Author Unknown. “The Snow Fairies.” The Child’s Friend and youth’s Magazine 24 (1855): 121-22.
Contexts

The Child’s Friend and Youth’s Magazine appeared under several titles during its publication history from 1843 to 1858, including The Child’s Friend and The Child’s Friend and Family Magazine. It was edited by Eliza Lee Cabot Follen from 1843 to 1850 and was later published with no editor listed.

Definitions from Oxford English Dictionary:

raiment: Clothing, dress, apparel.

rill: A small stream; a brook; a rivulet.

thither: To or towards that place (with verb of motion expressed or implied).

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