Page:Stories from Old English Poetry-1899.djvu/169

Rh While Oberon stood awaiting his return, Demetrius entered the wood in pursuit of the lovers, of whose flight Helena had told him. Close following him, struggling, with her delicate feet, to keep up with his striding pace, came the silly Helena. In vain she implored him to look back and see how her tired feet were bleeding from the rude thorn bushes. He answered her with anger, and flouted her for loving him. Then she reminded him how once he thought her blue eyes the sweetest ever seen, as now he praised the sparkling glances of Hermia.

So they passed by the listening Oberon into the deepening shadows of the forest.

When Puck returned, bearing the purple flower, Oberon divided it, and bade him seek two lovers in Athenian garb, and weave them in a magic web of slumber, and then, anointing with its juice the eyelids of the scornful lover, make him doat upon the maid who followed him. Then the king hid himself to witness Titania’s hour of retiring.

As twilight deepened, the fairy train came in. Titania rode in high state. “Her chariot was an empty hazel-nut; the cover, of the wings of grass-hoppers; the traces, of the smallest spider’s web; her whip, of cricket’s bone; the lash, of film;” and her coachman was a small gnat, in gray livery slashed with gold lace, who sat erect and