Day 704: Midsummer Magic

Midsummer Dream - Robert Edward Hughes 

Today is International Fairy Day! Yes, Midsummer magic and madness.  Here is an excerpt from 'A Midsummer's Night's Dream' by Shakespeare - the quintessential text of fairies and summer magic - to mark the occasion and maybe add some sparkle to your day:
*(If you haven't read or seen the play - I'd highly recommend it! )

A Midsummer Night's Dream

(Act V, Scene I. Athens. The palace of THESEUS.)

Enter THESEUS, HIPPOLYTA, PHILOSTRATE, Lords and Attendants
HIPPOLYTA

'Tis strange, my Theseus, that these lovers speak of.

THESEUS

More strange than true: I never may believe
These antique fables, nor these fairy toys.
Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends.
The lunatic, the lover and the poet
Are of imagination all compact:
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,
That is, the madman; the lover, all as frantic,
Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt:
The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And, as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
Such tricks hath strong imagination,
That if it would but apprehend some joy,
It comprehends some bringer of that joy;
Or in the night, imagining some fear,
How easy is a bush supposed a bear!

HIPPOLYTA

But all the story of the night told over,
And all their minds transfigured so together,
More witnesseth than fancy's images
And grows to something of great constancy;
But, howsoever, strange and admirable.