Quotemail: Annual Midsummer Eve Issue -- 2024!

Hello everyone –

It’s time once again for our annual Midsummer edition of Quotemail, featuring our ever-popular celebration of the Fair Folk, whose midnight revels on Midsummer Eve (tonight!) have been the stuff of legends for hundreds (if not thousands) of years.

My cousin Sophie writes:

"On this blessed Midsummer Eve, the Fair Folk are said to come out of hiding and revel under the stars until dawn. They gather in wooded glades and meadows, celebrating the longest day of the year with music, dance, and faery magic. It is a night of merriment and mischief, when the veil between the worlds is at its thinnest, and mortals may glimpse the elusive faery folk at play in the shimmering moonlight."

Today, we have some classic poems from yesteryear to celebrate this auspicious occasion – enjoy! 😊

 

A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act II, Scene I [“Over Hill, Over Dale”]

By William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

A wood near Athens. A Fairy speaks.

Over hill, over dale,

Thorough bush, thorough brier,

Over park, over pale,

Thorough flood, thorough fire,

I do wander everywhere,

Swifter than the moon's sphere;

And I serve the fairy queen,

To dew her orbs upon the green:

The cowslips tall her pensioners be;

In their gold coats spots you see;

Those be rubies, fairy favors,

In those freckles live their savors:

I must go seek some dew-drops here

And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear.

Farewell, thou lob of spirits: I'll be gone;

Our queen and all her elves come here anon.

 

“On a Midsummer Eve”

By Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)

 

I idly cut a parsley stalk,

And blew therein towards the moon;

I had not thought what ghosts would walk

With shivering footsteps to my tune.

 

I went, and knelt, and scooped my hand

As if to drink, into the brook,

And a faint figure seemed to stand

Above me, with the bygone look.

 

I lipped rough rhymes of chance, not choice,

I thought not what my words might be;

There came into my ear a voice

That turned a tenderer verse for me.

 

“The Fairy Host”

By Alfred Percival Graves (1846-1931)

 

Pure white the shields their arms upbear,

With silver emblems rare overcast;

Amid blue glittering blades they go,

The horns they blow are loud of blast.

 

In well-instructed ranks of war

Before their Chief they proudly pace;

Cerulean spears o’er every crest—

A curly-tressed, pale-visaged race.

 

Beneath the flame of their attack,

Bare and black turns every coast;

With such a terror to the fight

Flashes that mighty vengeful host.

 

Small wonder that their strength is great,

Since royal in estate are all,

Each hero’s head a lion’s fell—

A golden yellow mane lets fall.

 

Comely and smooth their bodies are,

Their eyes the starry blue eclipse,

The pure white crystal of their teeth

Laughs out beneath their thin red lips.

 

Good are they at man-slaying feats,

Melodious over meats and ale;

Of woven verse they wield the spell,

At chess-craft they excel the Gael.

 

“Midsummer Eve” by Edward Robert Hughes (1908)

 

As always, the Midsummer Eve edition of Quotemail is dedicated to all the wonderful people at the Center for Children’s Books at the University of Illinois. Please visit their website at https://ccb.ischool.illinois.edu to learn more about all the latest and greatest news from the world of children’s and young adult literature!

Merry Midsummer Eve to one and all!

Rob & Sophie :)