John Keats Secret Renaissance
John Keats Posthumous and Fugitive Poems
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 cou[r[teou[s]sly
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.
End of Canto xii
Canto the xiii
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 King of Othaieté — tho’ a Mule
“Aye every inch a King” — tho’ “Fortune’s fool” –
Well done for by what Mr. Dwarfy said
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
Aud 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
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
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt”>And of[f] he went, run, trot, or anyhow
Brown is gone to bed — and I am tired of rhyming . . .
In after-time a sage of mickle lore
Yclep’d Typographus, the Giant took
And did refit his limbs as heretofore,
And made him read in many a learned book,
And into many a lively legend look;
Thereby in goodly themes so training him,
That all his brutishness he quite forsook,
When, meeting Artegall and Talus grim,
The one he struck stone-blind, the other’s eyes wox dim.