THE color-fairy in sorrow sat,
With her brushes all awry ;
Her palette, made of a tulip-leaf,
Beside her laid, with its colors dry.
An order, straight from the Fairy Queen,
Had come on a hum-bird's wing
For a thousand elfin parasols,
To be finished late in spring–
Some snowy-white, some azure-ribbed,
Some of the rose's hue;
But for the Queen the artist-elf
Must make the color new.
Thus ran the scroll : "Red as the rose,
Yet blue as Gentian s tender eyes;
Red as the sunset s parting glow,
Blue as a mountain-shadow lies."