"
Lady, he cries, I have sworn to-night
On the word of a fairy knight
To do my sentence task aright
The queen, therefore, contents herself with bidding the Fay an
affectionate farewell- having first directed him carefully to that
particular portion of the sky where a star is about to fall. He
reaches this point in safety, and in despite of the "fiends of the
cloud," who "bellow very loud," succeeds finally in catching a
"glimmering spark" with which he returns triumphantly to Fairy-land.
The poem closes with an Io Paean chaunted by the elves in honor of
these glorious adventures.
It is more than probable that from ten readers of the Culprit Fay,
nine would immediately pronounce it a poem betokening the most
extraordinary powers of imagination, and of these nine, perhaps five
or six, poets themselves, and fully impressed with the truth of what
we have already assumed, that Ideality is indeed the soul of the
Poetic Sentiment, would feel embarrassed between a
half-consciousness that they ought to admire the production, and a
wonder that they do not. This embarrassment would then arise from an
indistinct conception of the results in which Ideality is rendered
manifest. Of these results some few are seen in the Culprit Fay, but
the greater part of it is utterly destitute of any evidence of
imagination whatever.
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