Song of Fairies Robbing an Orchard

By Leigh Hunt 1784–1859 Leigh Hunt

We, the Fairies, blithe and antic,

Of dimensions not gigantic,

Though the moonshine mostly keep us,

Oft in orchards frisk and peep us.

Stolen sweets are always sweeter,

Stolen kisses much completer,

Stolen looks are nice in chapels,

Stolen, stolen, be your apples.

When to bed the world are bobbing,

Then's the time for orchard-robbing;

Yet the fruit were scarce worth peeling,

Were it not for stealing, stealing.

Biography

Leigh Hunt was a central figure of the Romantic movement in England, but he was not, as he wished to be and knew he was not, one of its great poets. However, he produced, during the first sixty years of the nineteenth century, a large body of poetry in a variety of forms: narrative poems, satires, poetic dramas, odes, epistles, sonnets, short lyrics, and translations from Greek, Roman, Italian, and French poems. His vivid . . .

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