Page:All quiet along the Potomac and other poems.djvu/186

 180 THE FAIRIE FERN.

Twas a wondrous world which I entered then ; I shall never tell where it lies, to men, For the Fairie Queen, ere she left me, said Revengeful pinions would beat me dead If I their haunts to the world betrayed, Or a gun should enter the sylvan shade ; But all they whistled, or said, or sung I might translate into human tongue.

A kindred city it seemed to ours,

For all its dwellings were leafy bowers,

For all its bipeds were minus boots,

Guiltless of trains or Sunday suits ;

For all they build in the selfsame way

As the birds who sang in the world s first May;

For all this, strangely familiar seemed

The wild birds chatter of which I dreamed.

Flitting in haste through the leafy street,

I heard them talk about &quot;Bills to meet;&quot;

Of the new &quot;air-line that was up to par,&quot;

And the debt which came through the &quot;Magpie

war;&quot; Of the &quot;Brook-line bridge,&quot; which they did not

need ;

Of the fearful price of canary-seed ; Who should be envoy, and what the terms For the great &quot; New Diet&quot; that of Worms.

Sounds as of Babel filled the glen (In Bird-land banks all close at ten) :

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