THE FAIRY REEL - Neil Gaiman

If I were young as once I was, and dreams

     and death more distant then,

I wouldn't split my soul in two, and keep

     half in the world of men,

So half of me would stay at home, and

     strive for Faërie in vain,

While all the while my soul would stroll up

     narrow path, down crooked lane,

And there would meet a fairy lass and

     smile and bow with kisses three,

She'd pluck wild eagles from the air and

     nail me to a lightning tree

And if my heart would run from her or

     flee from her, be gone from her,

She’d wrap it in a nest of stars and then

     she'd take it on with her

Until one day she'd tire of it, all bored

     with it and done with it

She'd leave it by a burning brook, and off

     brown boys would run with it.

They'd take it and have fun with it and

     stretch it long and cruel and thin,

They'd slice it into four and then they'd

     string with it a violin.

And every day and every night they'd

     play upon my heart a song

So plaintive and so wild and strange that

     all who heard it danced along

And sang and whirled and sank and trod and

     skipped and slipped and reeled and rolled

Until, with eyes as bright as coals, they'd

     crumble into wheels of gold....

But I am young no longer now; for sixty

     years my heart's been gone

To play its dreadful music there, beyond

     the valley of the sun.

I watch with envious eyes and mind, the

     single–souled, who dare not feel

The wind that blows beyond the moon,

     who do not hear the Fairy Reel.

If you don't hear the Fairy Reel, they will

     not pause to steal your breath.

When I was young I was a fool. So wrap

     me up in dreams and death.