| Arthur Quiller-Couch, comp. The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse. 1922. | | | | The Last Fairy | | By Rosamund Marriott Watson (1860–1911) |
| | | UNDER the yellow moon, when the young men and maidens pass in the lanes, | |
| Outcast I flit, looking down through the leaves of the elm-trees, | |
| Peering out over the fields as their voices grow fainter; | |
| Furtive and lone | |
| Sometimes I steal through the green rushes down by the river, | 5 |
| Hearing shrill laughter and song while the rosy-limb’d bathers | |
| Gleam in the dusk. | |
| Seen, they would pass me disdainful, or stone me unwitting; | |
| No room is left in their hearts for my kinsfolk or me. | |
| Fain would I, too, fading out like a moth in the twilight, | 10 |
| Follow my kin, | |
| Whither I know not, and ever I seek but I find not— | |
| Whither I know not, nor knoweth the wandering swallow; | |
| ‘Where are they, where?’ | |
| Oft-times I cry; but I hearken in vain for their footsteps, | 15 |
| Always in vain. | |
| |
| High in a last year’s nest, in the boughs of the pine-tree, | |
| Musing I sit, looking up to the deeps of the sky, | |
| Clasping my knees as I watch there and wonder, forsaken; | |
| Ever the hollow sky | 20 |
| Voiceless and vast, and the golden moon silently sailing, | |
| Look on my pain and they care not, | |
| There is none that remembers: | |
| Only the nightingale knows me—she knows and remembers— | |
| Deep in the dusk of the thicket she sorrows for me. | 25 |
| Yet, on the wings of the wind sweeping over the uplands, | |
| Fitfully borne, | |
| Murmuring echoes remember’d—the ghosts of old voices | |
| Faint as a dream, and uncertain as cloud-shadow’d sunlight, | |
| Fall on mine ear. | 30 |
| Whence do they call me? From golden-dew’d valleys forgotten? | |
| Or from the strongholds of eld, where red banners of sunset | |
| Flame o’er the sea? | |
| Or from anear, on the dim airy slopes of the dawn-world, | |
| Over light-flowering meads between daybreak and sunrise | 35 |
| Level and grey? | |
| Truly I know not, but steadfast and longing I listen, | |
| Straining mine ears for the lilt of their tinkling laughter | |
| Sweeter than sheep-bells at even;—I watch and I hearken. | |
| O for the summons to sound!—for the pipes plaining shrilly, | 40 |
| Calling me home! | | | | |
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