WALPURGIS NIGHT'S DREAM.

MANAGER.

Holiday to-day for once

For us, Mieding's* gallant sons;

Dewy vale and ancient hill,

Now is all the stage we fill.

HERALD.

Fifty years must all be passed,
That the Feast may Golden be;
Now the quarrel's o'er at last,

It makes it far more dear to me.

OBERON.

Spirits that about me soar,

Be your airy forms displayed,

Mieding was scene painter to the theatre of Weimar, of which Goethe's son was for a long time manager, (a government situation, the theatre being the property of the Grand Duke.)

The fiftieth anniversary of the wedding is called in Germany the 'golden wedding,' the twenty-fifth the 'silver.'

For your king and queen once more,
All their quarrels up have made.

PUCK.

Here comes Puck, and spins about,
His feet whisking in the dance,
After him a swarming rout,

All to share his joy advance.

ARIEL.

Song awakes in Ariel's voice,

In sweet tones of heaven pure ;

Many trifles it decoys,

Fair ones, too, doth it allure.

OBERON.

Wedded ones, that would agree,
Take the lessons we two give ;

If a pair would loving be,
Needs apart awhile they live.

TITANIA.

Husband sulks! and pouts the fair!

Seize them both and take them forth;

To the South the lady bear,

And the husband to the North.

ORCHESTRA TUTTI.

Fortissimo.

Snout of fly and midges' nose,
With their friends and family,
Frogs and grasshoppers compose
Our orchestral company.

SOLO.

Here the bagpipe, like unto

Bubble that of soap one blows; Schnek, schnik, schnak! but listen to Droning through his stumpy nose.

SPIRIT THAT IS FASHIONING ITSELF.

Spider's claw and toad's paunch take,
Little wings for little wight,
Though a creature 'twill not make,

A little poem makes it quite.

A PAIR.

Little step and lofty bound,

Through the mist and through the vapours,

You trip it featly on the ground,

But mount not air for all your capers.

INQUISITIVE TRAVELLER.

Masquerading mummery!

Shall I trust my sight,

Oberon the fair to see,

Here, indeed, to-night?

ORTHODOX.

Here no claws, no tail we see,

Yet it must be true;

Like unto the gods of Greece,*
He's a devil too.

* This does not refer to the Gotter Griechenlands' of Schiller, which, far from attributing any diabolical character to those personages, pathetically bewails their departure from the earth, which he calls 'ungodded' by their withdrawal. It refers to the opinion set forth in Paradise Lost, that the heathen divinities were really devils, permitted to remain, and in some degree rule on the earth, until the appearance of the Redeemer.

Milton thus gives the roll of the diabolical hierarchy alluded to.

The rest were long to tell, though far renowned,
The Ionian gods of Javan's issue; held
Gods, yet confessed later than Heaven and Earth,
Their boasted parents; Titan, Heaven's first-born,
With his enormous brood, and birthright seized
By younger Saturn: he from mightier Jove,
His own and Rhea's son, like measure found;
So Jove usurping reigned: there first in Crete
And Ida known, thence on the snowy top