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Ah, what can ail thee, wretched wight,
So haggard and so wo-begone?
The squirrel's granary is full,
And the harvest's done.

I see a lily on thy brow,

With anguish moist and fever dew;
And on thy cheek a fading rose
Fast withereth too.

I met a lady in the meads,

Full beautiful, a fairy's child;
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.

I set her on my pacing steed,

And nothing else saw all day long; For sideways would she lean and sing A fairy's song.

I made a garland for her head,

And bracelets too, and fragrant zone; She look'd at me as she did love, And made sweet moan.

She found me roots of relish sweet,

And honey wild, and manna dew; And sure in language strange she said, I love thee true.

She took me to her elfin grot,

And there she gazed and sighed deep,
And there I shut her wild sad eyes-
So kiss'd to sleep.

And there we slumber'd on the moss,
And there I dream'd, ah wo betide,
The latest dream I ever dream'd
On the celd hill side.

I saw pale kings, and princes too,

Pale warriors, death-pale were they all; Who cried, "La Belle Dame Sans Mercy Hath thee in thrall!"

I saw their starved lips in the gloom
With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke and found me here,
On the cold hill side.

And this is why I sojourn here,

Alone and palely loitering,

Though the sedge is wither'd from the lake,
And no birds sing.

CAVIARE *

"Caviare to the multitude."—Hamlet.

The signature was of Mr. '

Keats's own putting; a touching circumstance, when we call to mind the treatment he met with, and consider how his memory has triumphed over

it.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

Of Sticks

AMONG other comparative injuries which we are accustomed to do to the characters of things animate and inanimate, in order to gratify our human vanity, such as calling a rascal a dog (which is a great compliment), and saying that a tyrant makes a beast of himself (which it would be a very good thing, and a lift in the world, if he could), is a habit in which some persons indulge themselves, of calling insipid things or persons sticks. Such and such a one is said to write a stick; and such another is himself called a stick ;—a poor stick, a mere stick, a stick of a fellow.

We protest against this injustice done to those useful and once flourishing sons of a good old stock. Take, for instance, a common cherry-stick, which is one of the favorite sort. In the first place, it is a very pleasant substance to look at, the grain running round it in glossy and shadowy rings. Then it is of primæ val antiquity, handed down from scion to scion through the most flourishing of genealogical trees. In the third place, it is of Eastern origin; of a stock, which it is possible may have furnished Haroun Al Raschid with a djereed, or Mahomet with a camel-stick, or Xenophon in his famous retreat with fences, or Xerxes, with tent-pins, or Alexander with a javelin, or Sardanapalus with tarts, or Solomon with a simile for his mistress' lips, or Jacob with a crook, or Methusalem with shadow, or Zoroaster with mathematical instruments, or the builders of Babel with scaffolding. Lastly, how do you know but that you may have eaten cherries off this very stick? for it was once alive with sap, and rustling with foliage, and powdered with blossoms, and red and laughing with fruit. Where the leathern tassel now hangs, may have dangled a bunch of berries; and instead of the brass ferule poking in the mud, th tip was growing into the air with its youngest green.

The use of sticks in general is of the very greatest antiquity. It is impossible to conceive a state of society in which boughs. should not be plucked from trees for some purpose of utility or amusement. Savages use clubs, hunters require lances, and shepherds their crooks. Then came the sceptre, which is originally nothing but a staff, or a lance, or a crook, distinguished from others. The Greek word for sceptre signifies also a walk. ing-stick. A mace, however plumped up and disguised with gilding and a heavy crown, is only the same thing in the hands of an inferior ruler; and so are all other sticks used in office, from the baton of the Grand Constable of France down to the tipstaff of a constable in Bow-street. As the shepherd's dog is the origin of the gentlest whelp that lies on a hearth-cushion, and of the most pompous barker that jumps about a pair of greys, so the merest stick used by a modern Arcadian, when he is driving his flock to Leadenhall-market with a piece of candle in his hat, and No. 554 on his arm, is the first great parent and original of all authoritative staves, from the beadle's cane wherewith he terrifies charity-boys who eat bull's-eyes in church-time, up to the silver mace of the verger, to the wands of parishes and governors,-the tasselled staff, wherewith the Band-Major so loftily picks out his measured way before the mu. sicians, and which he holds up when they are to cease; to the White Staff of the Lord Treasurer; the court-officer emphatically called the Lord Gold Stick; the Bishop's Crosier (Pedum Episcopale), whereby he is supposed to pull back the feet of his straying flock; and the royal and imperial sceptre aforesaid, whose holders, formerly called Shepherds of the people (Пéves A) were seditiously said to fleece more than to protect. The Vaulting-Staff, a luxurious instrument of exercise, must have been used in times immemorial for passing streams and rough ground with. It is the ancestor of the staff with which Pilgrims travelled. The Staff and Quarter-Staff of the country Robin Hoods is a remnant of the war-club. So is the Irish Shilelah, which a friend has well defined to be "a stick with two buttends." The originals of all these, that are not extant in our own country, may still be seen wherever there are nations uncivilized. The Negro Prince, who asked our countrymen what

was sain of him in Europe, was surrounded in state with a parcel of ragged fellows with shilelahs over their shoulders-Lord Gold Sticks.

But sticks have been great favorites with civilized as well as uncivilised nations; only the former have used them more for help and ornament. The Greeks were a sceptropherous people. Homer probably used a walking-stick because he was blind; but we have it on authority that Socrates did. On his first meeting with Xenophon, which was in a narrow passage, he barred up the way with his stick, and asked him, in his good-natured manner, where provisions were to be had. Xenophon having told him, he asked again if he knew where virtue and wisdom were to be had; and this reducing the young man to a nonplus, he said, "Follow me, and learn;" which Xenophon did, and became the great man we have all heard of. The fatherly story of Agesilaus, who was caught amusing his little boy with riding on a stick, and asked his visitor whether he was a father, is too well known for repetition.

his old

There is an illustrious anecdote connected with our subject in Roman history. The highest compliment which his country. men thought they could pay to the first Scipio, was to call him a walking-stick; for such is the signification of his name. It was given him for the filial zeal with which he used to help father about, serving his decrepit age instead of a staff. But the Romans were not remarkable for sentiment. What we hear in general of their sticks, is the thumpings which servants get in their plays; and above all, the famous rods which the lictors carried, and which being actual sticks, must have inflicted horrible dull bruises and malignant stripes. They were pretty things, it must be confessed, to carry before the chief magistrate! just as if the King or Lord Chancellor were to be preced. ed by a cat-o'-nine-tails.

Sticks are not at all in such request with modern times as they were. Formerly, we suspect, most of the poorer ranks in England used to carry them, both on account of the prevalence of manly sports, and for security in travelling; for before the invention of posts and mail-coaches, a trip to Scotland or Northumberland was a thing to make a man write his will.

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