Explore "The Elf Bride" by Thomas James Wise on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
There was a youthful swain one day / Did ted the new mown grass; / There came a gay and lovely may / From out the nigh morass. / Clad in a dress of silk was she, / Green as the leaves which deck the tree, / Her head so winsomely to see / With bulrush plaited was.
That lass he wooed, his suit she heeds, / And married are the pair; / To bridal bed his wife he leads- / But what befell him there? / He found, fear-stricken and amaz'd, / That he a rough oak trunk embrac'd, / Instead of the enchanting waist / Of his mysterious fair.
Then straight abroad a voice he heard, / Which sang the window through; / These were the words the voice proffer'd / If my report be true: / "Come out to her whom thou didst wed! / Upon my mead thy couch is spread." / From this he guessed with some elf maid / That he had had to do.