Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, ROBIN GOODFELLOW, by ANONYMOUS


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

ROBIN GOODFELLOW, by                    
First Line: From oberon in fairyland
Last Line: "so vale, vale; ho, ho, ho!"
Subject(s): Fairies; Elves


FROM Oberon in fairyland,
The king of ghosts and shadows there,
Mad Robin I, at his command,
Am sent to view the night sports here.
What revel rout
Is kept about,
In every corner where I go,
I will o'ersee
And merry be
And make good sport, with ho, ho, ho!

More swift than lightning can I fly
About the airy welkin soon,
And in a minute's space descry
Each thing that's done below the moon.
There's not a hag
Or ghost shall wag,
Cry, ware goblins, where I go;
But Robin I
Their seats will spy,
And send them home, with ho, ho, ho!

Where'er such wanderers I meet,
As from their night sports they trudge home
With counterfeiting voice I greet
And call them on with me to roam
Through woods, through brakes,
Through bogs, through lakes,
Or else unseen with them I go,
And in the nick
To play some trick,
And frolic it, with ho, ho, ho!

Sometimes I meet them like a man;
Sometimes an oxe, sometimes a hound;
And to a horse I turn me can,
To trip and trot about them round.
But if to ride,
My back they stride,
More swift than wind away I go,
O'er hedge and lands,
Through pools and ponds
I whirry, laughing, ho, ho, ho!

When lazy queans have nought to do;
But study how to cog and lie;
To make debate and mischief too
'Twixt one another secretly:
I mark their glose
And it disclose
To them whom they have wronged so;
When I have done
I get me gone,
And leave them scolding, ho, ho, ho!

When men do traps and engines set
In loop-holes where the vermin creep,
Who from their folds and houses get
Their ducks and geese and lambs asleep:
I spy the gin,
And enter in,
And seem a vermin taken so.
But when they there
Approach me near,
I leap out laughing, ho, ho, ho!

By wells and rills in meadows green,
We nightly dance our heydeguise,
And to our fairy king and queen
We chant our moonlight harmonies.
When larks gin sing,
Away we fling,
And babes new-born steal as we go;
An elf in bed
We leave instead,
And wend us laughing, ho, ho, ho!

From hag-bred Merlin's time have I
Thus nightly revelled to and fro,
And for my pranks men call me by
The name of Robin Good-fellow.
Fiends, ghosts and sprites,
Who haunt the nights,
The hags and goblins do me know;
And beldames old
My feats have told,
So vale, vale; ho, ho, ho!





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