“After breakfast I commenced the ritual of the summer solstice by reading A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare. For me, this is the most perfect poem that Shakespeare ever wrote.

Everything dissolves into moonlight, and the moonlight is enchantment made visible. And O! what moon-silvered phrases drop, in shivering ecstasy, from the lips of fairies and mortals!

The play is drenched in magic, and after you have taken the last drop on your lips, it is hard after a time to return to the tangible world of tables, books, windows and writing paper.”

BY ISLANDMAN, The Orkney Herald 29 June 1948.

Over hill, over dale,
  Thorough bush, thorough brier,
Over park, over pale,
  Thorough flood, thorough fire,
I do wander every where,
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.
Farewell, thou lob of spirits; I’ll be gone:
Our queen and all her elves come here anon.