And their music is--hark! when the horn winds afar. The chaplain to shrive this frolicsome hive Is a fat curtail Friar, the merriest alive! His quarter-staff, whack! greets a crown with a crack! And, 'stead of rough sackcloth, his penance is sack! The peerless in beauty receives their fond duty, Her throne is the greensward, her canopy flowers! What huntress so gay as the Lady of May? The Queen of the Woodlands, King Robin's, and ours! His subjects are we, and'tis centuries three Since his name first re-echo'd beneath this roof-tree! With Robin our King let the old rafters ring! They have heard their last shout! they have seen their last spring! And though we may sigh for blythe moments gone by, Yet why should we sorrow, bold foresters, why? Since those who come after their full share of laughter Shall have, when death's sables have veil'd you and I. As the club was literary as well as convivial, such of the members as the gods had made poetical, critical, or historical, favoured the company at these appointed meetings with their lucubrations. Uncle Timothy's had been antiquarian and critical, Mr. Bosky's facetious and vocal:-- A merry song is better far Than sharp lampoon or witty libel. One brother, Mr. Boreum, who had got the scientific bee in his bonnet, was never so happy as when he could detect a _faux pas_ in the sun's march, discover a new mountain in the moon, or add another stick to the bundle that has been so long burthensome to the back of the man in it! and Mr. Pigtail Paddlebox, a civil engineer, maintained, by knock-me-down-proof-positive, that Noah's Ark was an antediluvian steamer of some five hundred horse-power! The evening's contribution was Uncle Timothy's, The Second Part of the _Merrie Mysteries of Bartlemy Fair_, which Mr. Bosky having promised to read with good emphasis and discretion, the President's hammer commanded silence, and he proceeded with his task. CHAPTER VI. |The world is a stage; men and women are the players; chance composes the piece; Fortune (blind jade!) distributes the parts; the fools shift the scenery; the philosophers are the spectators; the rich occupy the boxes; the powerful, the pit; and the poor, the gallery. The forsaken of Lady Fortune snuff the candles,--Folly makes the concert,--and Time drops the curtain!