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And reptile wallowings in the dark and dust, And the crouch and ignominy of creeping life. A trepidant and motley multitude, A strange pell-mell of magic artisans, Was seen moulding the plastic clay of life, An elfin brood, an elemental kind. Astonished by the unaccustomed glow, As if immanent in the shadows started up Imps with wry limbs and carved beast visages, Sprite-prompters goblin-wizened or faery-small, And genii fairer but unsouled and poor And fallen beings, their heavenly portion lost, And errant divinities trapped in Time's dust. Ignorant and dangerous wills but armed with power, Half-animal, half-god their mood, their shape. Out of the greyness of a dim background Their whispers come, an inarticulate force, Awake in mind an echoing thought or word, To their sting of impulse the heart's sanction draw, And in that little Nature do their work And fill its powers and creatures with unease. Its seed of joy they curse with sorrow's fruit, Put out with error's breath its scanty lights And turn its surface truths to falsehood's ends, Its small emotions spur, its passions drive To the abyss or through the bog and mire: Or else with a goad of hard dry lusts they prick, While jogs on devious ways that nowhere lead Life's cart finding no issue from ignorance. To sport with good and evil is their law; Luring to failure and meaningless success, All models they corrupt, all measures cheat, Make knowledge a poison, virtue a pattern dull And lead the endless cycles of desire Through semblances of sad or happy chance To an inescapable fatality. 
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