PUCK  My fairy lord, this must be done with haste,

For night’s swift dragons cut the clouds full fast

And yonder shines Aurora’s harbinger,

At whose approach ghosts, wandering here and there,

Troop home to churchyards. Damned spirits all,

That in cross-ways and floods have burial,

Already to their wormy beds are gone.

For fear lest day should look their shames upon,

They wilfully themselves exile from light,

And must for ay consort with black-browed night.           (3.2.378-387)

Puck seems to switch idiom here, in this lyrical little moment as he conjures, less for Oberon than the audience, the approach of the dawn. (It overlaps with Romeo and Juliet in its tone, I think, as well as in some of its conceits.) My fairy lord, this must be done with haste—for once he agrees with Oberon about the need to hurry—for night’s swift dragons cut the clouds full fast and yonder shines Aurora’s harbinger. The morning star is visible above the horizon, and night (or the moon), drawn in her chariot by dragons, not horses (as the sun is) is fleeing across the sky, as the first rays of the sun perhaps begin to light the morning clouds. And at the shining of that star, ghosts, wandering here and there, troop home to churchyards. (Hamlet.) This uncanny night is coming to an end, with all its hauntings; the most sinister ones have gone already, damned spirits all, that in cross-ways and floods have burial—the spirits of those not permitted burial in sanctified ground, those who died unlawfully, unquietly, by their own hands, by drowning (Hamlet again), and so buried at a cross-roads already to their wormy beds are gone, because for fear lest day should look their shames upon, they wilfully themselves exile from light, and must for ay consort with black-browed night. It’s a sinister conjuring, even as Puck is saying, it’s alright, they’ve gone now, the night is quiet, and a new day will soon dawn. I love that Puck gets this moment of darkly wondering contemplation.