No one to see my Ape, my Dwarf, my Fool,
Or how I pace my Otaheitan mule.
Ape, Dwarf and Fool, why stand you gaping there?
Burst the door open, quick - or I declare
I’ll switch you soundly and in pieces tear.’
The dwarf began to tremble and the ape
Star’d at the fool, the fool was all agape,
The Princess grasp’d her switch, but just in time The dwarf with piteous face began to rhyme.
‘O mighty Princess did you ne’er hear tell
What your poor servants know but too too well?
Know you the three great crimes in faery land?
The first, alas! poor Dwarf, I understand -
I made a whipstock of a faery’s wand -
The next is snoring in their company -
The next, the last, the direst of the three
Is making free when they are not at home.
I was a Prince - a baby prince - my doom You see, I made a whipstock of a wand -
My top has henceforth slept in faery land.
He was a Prince, the Fool, a grown up Prince,
But he has never been a King’s son since
He fell a-snoring at a faery Ball -
Your poor Ape was a prince and he, poor thing,
Picklock’d a faery’s boudour - now no king,
But ape - so pray your highness stay awhile;
’Tis sooth indeed, we know it to our sorrow -
Persist and you may be an ape tomorrow - While the Dwarf spake the Princess all for spite
Peal’d [sic] the brown hazel twig to lily white,
Clench’d her small teeth, and held her lips apart,
Try’d to look unconcem’d with beating heart.
They saw her highness had made up her mind
And quaver’d like the reeds before the wind,
And they had had it, but, O happy chance!
The Ape for very fear began to dance
And grin’d as all his ugliness did ache -
She staid her vixen fingers for his sake, He was so very ugly: then she took
Her pocket glass mirror and began to look
First at herself and [then] at him and then
She smil’d at her own beauteous face again.
Yet for all this - for all her pretty face
She took it in her head to see the place.
Women gain little from experience
Either in Lovers, husbands or expense.
The more the beauty, the more fortune too,
Beauty before the wide world never knew.
So each fair reasons - tho’ it oft miscarries. She thought her pretty face would please the faeries.
‘My darling Ape I won’t whip you today -
Give me the Picklock, sirrah, and go play.’
They all three wept - but counsel was as vain
As crying cup biddy”’ to drops of rain.
Yet lingeringly did the sad Ape forth draw
The Picklock from the Pocket in his Jaw.
The Princess took it and dismounting straight
Trip’d in blue silver’d slippers to the gate And touch’d the wards, the door full courteously
Opened - she enter’d with her servants three.
Again it clos’d and there was nothing seen
But the Mule grazing on the herbage green.
The Mule no sooner saw himself alone
Than he prick’d up his ears - and said ‘well done!
At least, unhappy Prince, I may be free -
No more a Princess shall side-saddle me.
O O King of Othaietè - tho’ a Mule
“Aye every inch a King” - tho’ “Fortune’s fool” Well done - for by what Mr Dwarfy said
I I would not give a sixpence for her head.’
Even as he spake he trotted in high glee
To the knotty side of an old pollard tree
And rub [‘d] his sides against the mossed bark
Till his girths burst and left him naked stark
Except his bridle - how get rid of that,
Buckled and tied with many a twist and plait?
At last it struck him to pretend to sleep
And then the thievish monkeys down would creep And filch the unpleasant trammels quite away.
No sooner thought of than adown he lay,
Sham’d a good snore - the monkey-men descended
And whom they thought to injure they befriended.
They hung his bridle on a topmost bough
And of[f] he went, run, trot, or anyhow -
Brown is gone to bed - and I am tired of rhyming
To a Young Lady who Sent Me a Laurel Crown
Fresh morning gusts have blown away all fear
From my glad bosom, - now from gloominess
I mount for ever - not an atom less
Than the proud laurel shall content my bier.
No! by the eternal stars! or why sit here
In the Sun’s eye, and ‘gainst my temples press
Apollo’s very leaves, woven to bless
By thy white fingers and thy spirit clear.
Lo! who dares say, ‘Do this’? Who dares call down
My will from its high purpose? Who say, ‘Stand,’
Or ‘Go’? This mighty moment I would frown
On abject Caesars - not the stoutest band
Of mailed heroes should tear off my crown:
Yet would I kneel and kiss thy gentle hand!
What the Thrush Said
Lines From a Letter to John Hamilton Reynolds
O Thou whose face hath felt the Winter’s wind.
Whose eye has seen the snow-clouds hung in mist,
And the black elm tops ‘mong the freezing stars,
To thee the spring will be a harvest-time.
O thou, whose only book has been the light
Of supreme darkness which thou feddest on
Night after night when Phoebus was away.
To thee the Spring shall be a triple morn.
O fret not after knowledge - I have none,