lovely sight To see the puny goblin there ; He seem'd an angel form of light. With azure wing and sunny hair, Throned on a cloud of purple fair. Circled with blue and edged with white, And sitting at the fall of even Beneath the bow of summer heaven. A moment, and its lustre fell; But ere it met the billow blue. He caught within his crimson bell A droplet of its sparkling dew — Joy to thee, Fay! thy task is done; Thy wings are pure, for the gem is won. Cheerily ply thy dripping oar. And haste away to the elfin shore. It was once the fashion among admirers of Drake's dainty work to place the author upon a somewhat dizzy pedestal. More than one has compared the lively trochaic tetrameter that concludes The Culprit Digitized by Microsoft® 26o The Hudson River Fay with Milton's L'alkgro, which was unquestionably its inspiration. This is Drake's: Ouphe and goblin, imp and sprite, Elf of eve and starry Fay, Ye that love the moon's soft light Hither — hither wend your way : Twine ye in a jocund ring. Sing and trip it merrily, Hand to hand and wing to wing. Round the wild witch-hazel tree. Now turn to Milton and read Haste thee, nymph, arid bring with thee Jest and youthful Jollity, Quips and cranks and wanton wiles. Nods and becks and wreathed smiles, Such as hang on Hebe's cheek. And love to live in dimple sleek : Sport that wrinkled care derides, And Laughter holding both his sides. Come, and trip it as you go On the light fantastic toe. Idlewild was the home of N. P. Willis, that versa- tile worker, idler, flaneur, poet, city dandy, and coun- try gentleman, who made no deep impression by his literary labours, but is nevertheless vividly remem- bered when many a man of greater power is forgotten. General James Grant Wilson wrote, in 1886, in a remi- niscent vein, of a visit to the scene of the poet's retire- ment at Cornwall, where he was trying to recuperate the strength of which he had been, from his youth up, somewhat of a spendthrift: Digitized by Microsoft® Literary Associations of the Hudson 261 It was on a sunny summer's morning in the month of Sep- tember [wrote Wilson] that we landed from a steamer at the wharf known as Cornwall's Landing. We then wended our way to a picturesque, many-gabled, gothic structure, nestled among luxurious evergreens, admirably situated in the plateau north of the Highlands, and within sound, under favourable conditions of the weather, of the evening gun at West Point. A tall and elegant figure, with rosy cheeks and a luxuriance of clustering hair, which upwards of sixty winters had failed to whiten, enters with the easy grace of a man of the world, and we see before us our friend the master of the mansion. We sally forth to see his loved domain, and to look at the extensive and varied views commanded by his coign of vantage. Around us we see the Storm King and other wooded moun- tains, towering to a height of nearly two thousand feet: the whole river, — here expanded into a broad bay, on whose bosom the white-sailed sloops and schooners are idly floating with the flood tide: and on the opposite shore valleys and hillsides, sprinkled with country-seats ; from among which our companion points out the ancestral home of the venerable Gulian C. Ver- planck, and the summer residences of other mutual New York friends. Seated on the grey rocks, Mr. Willis described his first visit to the site on which his beautiful home stands: "It was one of the roughest pieces of uncultivated land that I ever looked at; but it had capabilities. I saw trees, knolls, rocks, and this ravine, musical with water-falls, and looking to the south a noble, wild prospect, as Sam Johnson would have said. I passed over the rough and rocky fifty acres with the owner, who looked his astonishment as well as expressed it, that a New Yorker should have any use for his unimproved property. He said, 'What on earth can you do with it? it is only an idle wild.' I did not tell him, but I bought it and you see what I have done with it, and that I was indebted to my Dutch prede- cessor for a very pretty and appropriate name." Irving, Halleck, and numerous other friends of Wil- lis visited him at Idlewild, and on one occasion, when Digitized by Microsoft® 262 The Hudson River he had been there with Mr. and Mrs. Moses H. Grin- nell, his neighbours at Sunnyside, Washington Irving expressed the opinion that the poet's cough was hkely to prolong his hfe by making