“By the croaking of a frog; By the howling of the dog; By the crying of the hog Against the storm arising; By the evening curfew bell, By the doleful dying knell, O let this my direful spell, Hob, hinder thy surprising!

“By the mandrake’s [108b] dreadful groans; By the lubrican’s [108c] sad moans; By the noise of dead men’s bones In charnel-houses rattling; By the hissing of the snake, The rustling of the fire-drake, [108d] I charge thee thou this place forsake, Nor of Queen Mab be prattling!

“By the whirlwind’s hollow sound, By the thunder’s dreadful stound, Yells of spirits underground, I charge thee not to fear us; By the screech-owl’s dismal note, By the black night-raven’s throat, I charge thee, Hob, to tear thy coat With thorns, if thou come near us!”

Her spell thus spoke, she stept aside, And in a chink herself doth hide, To see thereof what would betide, For she doth only mind him: When presently she Puck espies, And well she marked his gloating eyes, How under every leaf he pries, In seeking still to find them.

But once the circle got within, The charms to work do straight begin, And he was caught as in a gin; For as he thus was busy, A pain he in his head-piece feels, Against a stubbéd tree he reels, And up went poor Hobgoblin’s heels, Alas! his brain was dizzy!

At length upon his feet he gets, Hobgoblin fumes, Hobgoblin frets; And as again he forward sets, And through the bushes scrambles, A stump doth trip him in his pace; Down comes poor Hob upon his face, And lamentably tore his case, Amongst the briars and brambles.

“A plague upon Queen Mab!” quoth he, “And all her maids where’er they be I think the devil guided me, To seek her so provokéd!” Where stumbling at a piece of wood, He fell into a ditch of mud, Where to the very chin he stood, In danger to be chokéd.

Now worse than e’er he was before, Poor Puck doth yell, poor Puck doth roar, That waked Queen Mab, who doubted sore Some treason had been wrought her: Until Nymphidia told the Queen What she had done, what she had seen, Who then had well-near cracked her spleen With very extreme laughter.

But leave we Hob to clamber out, Queen Mab and all her Fairy rout, And come again to have a bout With Oberon yet madding: And with Pigwiggin now distraught, Who much was troubled in his thought, That he so long the Queen had sought, And through the fields was gadding.

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