Over hill, over dale,
Thorough bush, thorough brier,
Over park, over pale,
Thorough flood, thorough fire!
I do wander everywhere,
Swifter than the moon's sphere;
And I serve the Fairy Queen,
To dew her orbs upon the green;
The cowslips tall her pensioners be;
In their gold coats spots you see;
Those be rubies, fairy favours;
In those freckles live their savours;
I must go seek some dewdrops here,
And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear.
REVIEW
The poem “A Fairy Song”, written by an English poet and playwright, William Shakespeare who is often called England’s national poet and the “Bard of Avon”, is a lingering and elegant song written in a vibrant, brilliant and coruscating manner. It is not really a poem but it is an extract from a play called “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”.
In this poem there is a fairy that keeps going around & spreading dew droplets on every flower she come across. The flowers are known as cow tail and she is spreading dew drops on them. She refers those flowers as her Fairy queen. Cow tails are the queen pensioners which mean that the queen is giving away something in return just like an employee gets a pension in return of his services to his employer at work. The poem is all about a fairy serving the fairy queen.
The lines are taken from Scene 1, Act 2 of a play named as “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”. It is a scene where all the fairies that are dwelling in the forest make their entry in the play. The fairy who speaks those lines creates a mood to introduce life in a dramatically different way as compared to the actual life of human characters in the play.
The fairy is interacting with the Puck in the play. When the Puck questions the fairy about where she is going she explained her job to him. She said that she is a servant of Titania and her job is to make everything pretty and put dew drops over the cow tails.
She said that she does everything what fairies do. She explained that she wanders various places like briers, fires, dales, parks and floods quickly to serve Titania (the queen of fairy) by dropping dew drops over the bushes and grass. She does so because they are fairy favors and she tries making them smell good.
An extract in a sonnet form from Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" Act 2 Scene 1 spoken by Fairy encapsulates the musical innocence that pervades this play.
The fairy's job is to work for the fairy queen and set a dewdrop upon every cowslip (a common wild flower). She accomplishes this by wandering at a swift pace (an oxymoron) through the night and dropping dew upon the flowers.
The first four lines are strictly syllabic and use alliteration.
"Dale" means valley or, at least, extensive flat land contrasting with "hill" thereby implying that no part of the land is excluded from her attentions.
"Brier" is a thorned wild shrub, eg rose shrub, blackberry, blackthorn, contrasting with "bush", i.e shrubs without thorns.
"Pale" is poetic for a fence or a fenced plot of land whereas a park is a plot of land with decorative trees.
"Thorough" is an old spelling of "through" (now outdated)
"Flood" (poetic for water) contrasts with "Fire" in order to impart the sense of everywhere without exclusion.
"do wander" emphatic verb form (now largely outdated) but, here, also adds another syllable for rhythmic purposes.
"Swifter than the moon's sphere". She travels faster than the moon can traverse the earth. "Sphere" adds nothing but poetry to our knowledge already that the moon is a sphere. Shakespeare uses the comparative adjectival form of "swift" (more poetic than "fast"). It should really be "more swiftly" because it is an adverb governed by the verb "do wander".
"The Fairy Queen" is Titania.
"To dew her orbs upon the green". Shakespeare uses the noun "dew" as a verb. It means to place drops of dew into Titania's flowers (she presumably owns all wild flowers). "orb" is a globe shaped object but here means a flower head. "The green" is poetic for "grass".
"The cowslips tall her pensioners be" is a poetic inversion of adjective and verb. Otherwise, the prose would be "The tall cowslips be her pensioners". "to be" is probably the most irregular verb in the language. Shakespeare uses the infinitive for poetic reasons and to rhyme with "see". The modern conjugation would be "are". "Pensioners" means her dependants, servants or followers.
"In their gold coats spots you see". Poetic inversion of subject and verb (you see) which would normally occur first in a prose statement thus, "you see spots in their gold coats". Shakespeare suggests that all the flower heads are ennobled by having gold coats such as pensioners might wear when serving their queen.Cowslips do not have gold flowers but "gold" is used here as an honorific for all colours. The spots in the flower heads are gemstones placed there by fairies as a favour (gift). Again, "to be" is used instead of the more prosaic "are". The spots are then called freckles, thereby comparing them to attractive spots on the face.
"Savours" has several meanings. Here, probably is aroma.
"I must go seek some dewdrops here". "go seek" is an abbreviation of "go to (or, and) seek"
Fairy must set out with a supply of dewdrops so that she can hang (poetic for "set") a pearl (poetic for dewdrop derived from the clear colour of a pearl) in every ear (poetic for flower deriving from ladies earrings often being made of pear
The first quatrain is in iambic trimeter, characteristic of lullabies, ballads, and children's rhymes. It builds up to the iambic pentameter characteristic of dramatic speech. Shakespeare is just playing with the meter in those lines. The first quatrain establishes a sort of innocent quality to the fairy's speech, but he eventually builds right back into the standard iambic pentameter that Puck uses immediately after.
This is not a speech from Puck but from a fairy who enters with him in Act 2, Scene 1. Puck asks where he/she is going, and this is the answer.
I go over hills and valleys, through bushes and thorns, over parks and fenced-in spaces, through water and fire. I wander everywhere faster than the moon revolves around the Earth. I work for Titania, the Fairy Queen, and organize fairy dances for her in the grass. The cowslip flowers are her bodyguards. You’ll see that their petals have spots on them—those are rubies, fairy gifts. Their sweet smells come from those little freckles. Now I have to go find some dewdrops and hang a pearl earring on every cowslip flower. Goodbye, you dumb old spirit. I’ve got to go. The queen and her elves will be here soon.
We should keep in mind two things: First of all, it's not really correct to call this a "poem" on its own, since it is a cutting of dialogue from a play, though it clearly rhymes.
Second, we read the original precisely because it is beautiful and poetic.
William Shakespeare did not intend to consider the words you have anthologised under the name "A Fairy Song" seperately from the play A Midsummer Night's Dream. They are spoken by a fairy who runs into Robin Goodfellow, otherwise known as Puck by way of an introduction. The important point here is that the fairy says "And I serve the fairy queen" which means that she (it's usually a she, but could be a he) is one of Titania's servants, and she further says that the Queen and her fairies are coming to this spot. All the rest of it is about how she wanders about doing errands for Titania like hanging dewdrops in flowers and other silly stuff.
