Don Juan is Byron\u2019s great satire, – his great epic \u2013 unfinished at his death, and condemned as immoral in his lifetime. It was also immensely popular. Byron published the first two cantos anonymously. Neither his friends or publisher were keen on the work; his last mistress, Countess Teresa Guiccioli, pleaded with him to stop writing it. They considered its focus to be beneath Byron\u2019s talent and a waste of his time, as well as deeply offensive. However, we can assume Byron enjoyed writing Don Juan, for he worked on the poem from 1818 until his death in 1824, leaving the 17th canto incomplete.<\/p>\n
Don Juan is without doubt a comic masterpiece. Byron\u2019s original intent, included in a letter to Thomas Moore, was to be \u201ca little quietly facetious upon everything.\u201d He was also inspired by a minor poem published in 1817 by John Hookham Frere. Entitled The Monks and the Giants or, alternatively, Whistlecraft, the work was two cantos of a burlesque narrative written in the Italian \u2018ottava rima\u2019 style. \u2018Ottava rima\u2019 was the standard verse form of Renaissance Italian poetry, and – in its native tongue (Italian) \u2013 the verse can be used for powerful comic and tragic effect. But consider the Italian and English languages, – Italian has far more polysyllabic words and natural rhymes than English. When you write \u2018ottava rima\u2019 in English, you automatically write a comedy. You need three rhymes for every stanza, with most of the rhymes consisting of two or three syllables. Byron\u2019s choice of the form defined the character of his epic. But it was also a bold and challenging technical choice for him as a poet. He began experimenting with \u2018ottava rima\u2019 in 1817, and began writing Don Juan a year later. The rest is poetic history.<\/p>\n
The story is a funny twist on the old legend of Don Juan, the great seducer of innocent women. In Byron\u2019s work, Don Juan is actively harassed by one woman after another. His comic misadventures are told with wit, style, and heart. The vigor and power of Byron\u2019s verse is remarkable. His words literally leap from the pages.<\/p>\n
There was a fragment of poetry found on the back of the manuscript of the first canto:<\/p>\n
I would to Heaven that I were so much clay,
\nAs I am blood, bone, marrow, passion, feeling \u2013
\nBecause at least the past were passed away,
\nAnd for the future \u2013 (but I write this reeling,
\nHaving got drunk exceedingly to-day,
\nSo that I seem to stand upon the ceiling)
\nI say \u2013 the future is a serious matter \u2013
\nAnd so \u2013 for God\u2019s sake \u2013 hock and soda-water!<\/p>\n
DEDICATION<\/p>\n
Bob Southey! You’re a poet, poet laureate,
\nAnd representative of all the race.
\nAlthough ’tis true that you turned out a Tory at
\nLast, yours has lately been a common case.
\nAnd now my epic renegade, what are ye at
\nWith all the lakers, in and out of place?
\nA nest of tuneful persons, to my eye
\nLike four and twenty blackbirds in a pye,<\/p>\n
Which pye being opened they began to sing’
\n(This old song and new simile holds good),
\n‘A dainty dish to set before the King’
\nOr Regent, who admires such kind of food.
\nAnd Coleridge too has lately taken wing,
\nBut like a hawk encumbered with his hood,
\nExplaining metaphysics to the nation.
\nI wish he would explain his explanation.<\/p>\n
You, Bob, are rather insolent, you know,
\nAt being disappointed in your wish
\nTo supersede all warblers here below,
\nAnd be the only blackbird in the dish.
\nAnd then you overstrain yourself, or so,
\nAnd tumble downward like the flying fish
\nGasping on deck, because you soar too high,
\nBob, And fall for lack of moisture quite a dry Bob.<\/p>\n
And Wordsworth in a rather long Excursion
\n(I think the quarto holds five hundred pages)
\nHas given a sample from the vasty version
\nOf his new system to perplex the sages.
\n‘Tis poetry, at least by his assertion,
\nAnd may appear so when the Dog Star rages,
\nAnd he who understands it would be able
\nTo add a story to the tower of Babel.<\/p>\n
You gentlemen, by dint of long seclusion
\nFrom better company, have kept your own
\nAt Keswick, and through still continued fusion
\nOf one another’s minds at last have grown
\nTo deem, as a most logical conclusion,
\nThat poesy has wreaths for you alone.
\nThere is a narrowness in such a notion,
\nWhich makes me wish you’d change your lakes for ocean.<\/p>\n
I would not imitate the petty thought,
\nNor coin my self-love to so base a vice,
\nFor all the glory your conversion brought,
\nSince gold alone should not have been its price.
\nYou have your salary; was’t for that you wrought?
\nAnd Wordsworth has his place in the Excise.
\nYou’re shabby fellows\u2014true\u2014but poets still
\nAnd duly seated on the immortal hill.<\/p>\n
Your bays may hide the baldness of your brows,
\nPerhaps some virtuous blushes; let them go.
\nTo you I envy neither fruit nor boughs,
\nAnd for the fame you would engross below,
\nThe field is universal and allows
\nScope to all such as feel the inherent glow.
\nScott, Rogers, Campbell, Moore, and Crabbe will try
\n‘Gainst you the question with posterity.<\/p>\n
For me, who, wandering with pedestrian Muses,
\nContend not with you on the winged’ steed,
\nI wish your fate may yield ye, when she chooses,
\nThe fame you envy and the skill you need.
\nAnd recollect a poet nothing loses
\nIn giving to his brethren their full meed
\nOf merit, and complaint of present days
\nIs not the certain path to future praise.<\/p>\n
He that reserves his laurels for posterity
\n(Who does not often claim the bright reversion)
\nHas generally no great crop to spare it, he
\nBeing only injured by his own assertion.
\nAnd although here and there some glorious rarity
\nArise like Titan from the sea’s immersion,
\nThe major part of such appellants go
\nTo\u2014God knows where\u2014for no one else can know.<\/p>\n
If fallen in evil days on evil tongues,
\nMilton appealed to the avenger, Time,
\nIf Time, the avenger, execrates his wrongs
\nAnd makes the word Miltonic mean sublime,
\nHe deigned not to belie his soul in songs,
\nNor turn his very talent to a crime.
\nHe did not loathe the sire to laud the son,
\nBut closed the tyrant-hater he begun.<\/p>\n
Think’st thou, could he, the blind old man, arise
\nLike Samuel from the grave to freeze once more
\nThe blood of monarchs with his prophecies,
\nOr be alive again\u2014again all hoar
\nWith time and trials, and those helpless eyes
\nAnd heartless daughters\u2014worn and pale and poor,
\nWould he adore a sultan? He obey
\nThe intellectual eunuch Castlereagh?<\/p>\n
Cold-blooded, smooth-faced, placid miscreant!
\nDabbling its sleek young hands in Erin’s gore,
\nAnd thus for wider carnage taught to pant,
\nTransferred to gorge upon a sister shore,
\nThe vulgarest tool that tyranny could want,
\nWith just enough of talent and no more,
\nTo lengthen fetters by another fixed
\nAnd offer poison long already mixed.<\/p>\n
An orator of such set trash of phrase,
\nIneffably, legitimately vile,
\nThat even its grossest flatterers dare not praise,
\nNor foes\u2014all nations\u2014condescend to smile.
\nNot even a sprightly blunder’s spark can blaze
\nFrom that Ixion grindstone’s ceaseless toil,
\nThat turns and turns to give the world a notion
\nOf endless torments and perpetual motion.<\/p>\n
A bungler even in its disgusting trade,
\nAnd botching, patching, leaving still behind
\nSomething of which its masters are afraid,
\nStates to be curbed and thoughts to be confined,
\nConspiracy or congress to be made,
\nCobbling at manacles for all mankind,
\nA tinkering slave-maker, who mends old chains,
\nWith God and man’s abhorrence for its gains.<\/p>\n
If we may judge of matter by the mind,
\nEmasculated to the marrow, it
\nHath but two objects, how to serve and bind,
\nDeeming the chain it wears even men may fit,
\nEutropius of its many masters, blind
\nTo worth as freedom, wisdom as to wit,
\nFearless, because no feeling dwells in ice;
\nIts very courage stagnates to a vice.<\/p>\n
Where shall I turn me not to view its bonds,
\nFor I will never feel them. Italy,
\nThy late reviving Roman soul desponds
\nBeneath the lie this state-thing breathed o’er thee.
\nThy clanking chain and Erin’s yet green wounds
\nHave voices, tongues to cry aloud for me.
\nEurope has slaves, allies, kings, armies still,
\nAnd Southey lives to sing them very ill.<\/p>\n
Meantime, Sir Laureate, I proceed to dedicate
\nIn honest simple verse this song to you.
\nAnd if in flattering strains I do not predicate,
\n‘Tis that I still retain my buff and blue;
\nMy politics as yet are all to educate.
\nApostasy’s so fashionable too,
\nTo keep one creed’s a task grown quite
\nHerculean Is it not so, my Tory, ultra-Julian?
\nCANTO THE FIRST<\/p>\n
I want a hero: an uncommon want,
\nWhen every year and month sends forth a new one,
\nTill, after cloying the gazettes with cant,
\nThe age discovers he is not the true one;
\nOf such as these I should not care to vaunt,
\nI ‘ll therefore take our ancient friend Don Juan\u2014
\nWe all have seen him, in the pantomime,
\nSent to the devil somewhat ere his time.<\/p>\n
Vernon, the butcher Cumberland, Wolfe, Hawke,
\nPrince Ferdinand, Granby, Burgoyne, Keppel, Howe,
\nEvil and good, have had their tithe of talk,
\nAnd fill’d their sign posts then, like Wellesley now;
\nEach in their turn like Banquo’s monarchs stalk,
\nFollowers of fame, ‘nine farrow’ of that sow:
\nFrance, too, had Buonaparte and Dumourier
\nRecorded in the Moniteur and Courier.<\/p>\n
Barnave, Brissot, Condorcet, Mirabeau,
\nPetion, Clootz, Danton, Marat, La Fayette,
\nWere French, and famous people, as we know:
\nAnd there were others, scarce forgotten yet,
\nJoubert, Hoche, Marceau, Lannes, Desaix, Moreau,
\nWith many of the military set,
\nExceedingly remarkable at times,
\nBut not at all adapted to my rhymes.<\/p>\n
Nelson was once Britannia’s god of war,
\nAnd still should be so, but the tide is turn’d;
\nThere ‘s no more to be said of Trafalgar,
\n‘T is with our hero quietly inurn’d;
\nBecause the army ‘s grown more popular,
\nAt which the naval people are concern’d;
\nBesides, the prince is all for the land-service,
\nForgetting Duncan, Nelson, Howe, and Jervis.<\/p>\n
Brave men were living before Agamemnon
\nAnd since, exceeding valorous and sage,
\nA good deal like him too, though quite the same none;
\nBut then they shone not on the poet’s page,
\nAnd so have been forgotten:\u2014I condemn none,
\nBut can’t find any in the present age
\nFit for my poem (that is, for my new one);
\nSo, as I said, I ‘ll take my friend Don Juan.<\/p>\n
Most epic poets plunge ‘in medias res’
\n(Horace makes this the heroic turnpike road),
\nAnd then your hero tells, whene’er you please,
\nWhat went before\u2014by way of episode,
\nWhile seated after dinner at his ease,
\nBeside his mistress in some soft abode,
\nPalace, or garden, paradise, or cavern,
\nWhich serves the happy couple for a tavern.<\/p>\n
That is the usual method, but not mine\u2014
\nMy way is to begin with the beginning;
\nThe regularity of my design
\nForbids all wandering as the worst of sinning,
\nAnd therefore I shall open with a line
\n(Although it cost me half an hour in spinning)
\nNarrating somewhat of Don Juan’s father,
\nAnd also of his mother, if you ‘d rather.<\/p>\n
In Seville was he born, a pleasant city,
\nFamous for oranges and women\u2014he
\nWho has not seen it will be much to pity,
\nSo says the proverb\u2014and I quite agree;
\nOf all the Spanish towns is none more pretty,
\nCadiz perhaps\u2014but that you soon may see;
\nDon Juan’s parents lived beside the river,
\nA noble stream, and call’d the Guadalquivir.<\/p>\n
His father’s name was Jose\u2014Don, of course,\u2014
\nA true Hidalgo, free from every stain
\nOf Moor or Hebrew blood, he traced his source
\nThrough the most Gothic gentlemen of Spain;
\nA better cavalier ne’er mounted horse,
\nOr, being mounted, e’er got down again,
\nThan Jose, who begot our hero, who
\nBegot\u2014but that ‘s to come\u2014Well, to renew:<\/p>\n
His mother was a learned lady, famed
\nFor every branch of every science known
\nIn every Christian language ever named,
\nWith virtues equall’d by her wit alone,
\nShe made the cleverest people quite ashamed,
\nAnd even the good with inward envy groan,
\nFinding themselves so very much exceeded
\nIn their own way by all the things that she did.<\/p>\n
Her memory was a mine: she knew by heart
\nAll Calderon and greater part of Lope,
\nSo that if any actor miss’d his part
\nShe could have served him for the prompter’s copy;
\nFor her Feinagle’s were an useless art,
\nAnd he himself obliged to shut up shop\u2014he
\nCould never make a memory so fine as
\nThat which adorn’d the brain of Donna Inez.<\/p>\n
Her favourite science was the mathematical,
\nHer noblest virtue was her magnanimity,
\nHer wit (she sometimes tried at wit) was Attic all,
\nHer serious sayings darken’d to sublimity;
\nIn short, in all things she was fairly what I call
\nA prodigy\u2014her morning dress was dimity,
\nHer evening silk, or, in the summer, muslin,
\nAnd other stuffs, with which I won’t stay puzzling.<\/p>\n
She knew the Latin\u2014that is, ‘the Lord’s prayer,’
\nAnd Greek\u2014the alphabet\u2014I ‘m nearly sure;
\nShe read some French romances here and there,
\nAlthough her mode of speaking was not pure;
\nFor native Spanish she had no great care,
\nAt least her conversation was obscure;
\nHer thoughts were theorems, her words a problem,
\nAs if she deem’d that mystery would ennoble ’em.<\/p>\n
She liked the English and the Hebrew tongue,
\nAnd said there was analogy between ’em;
\nShe proved it somehow out of sacred song,
\nBut I must leave the proofs to those who ‘ve seen ’em;
\nBut this I heard her say, and can’t be wrong
\nAnd all may think which way their judgments lean ’em,
\n”T is strange\u2014the Hebrew noun which means “I am,”
\nThe English always use to govern d–n.’<\/p>\n
Some women use their tongues\u2014she look’d a lecture,
\nEach eye a sermon, and her brow a homily,
\nAn all-in-all sufficient self-director,
\nLike the lamented late Sir Samuel Romilly,
\nThe Law’s expounder, and the State’s corrector,
\nWhose suicide was almost an anomaly\u2014
\nOne sad example more, that ‘All is vanity’
\n(The jury brought their verdict in ‘Insanity’).<\/p>\n
In short, she was a walking calculation,
\nMiss Edgeworth’s novels stepping from their covers,
\nOr Mrs. Trimmer’s books on education,
\nOr ‘Coelebs’ Wife’ set out in quest of lovers,
\nMorality’s prim personification,
\nIn which not Envy’s self a flaw discovers;
\nTo others’ share let ‘female errors fall,’
\nFor she had not even one\u2014the worst of all.<\/p>\n
O! she was perfect past all parallel\u2014
\nOf any modern female saint’s comparison;
\nSo far above the cunning powers of hell,
\nHer guardian angel had given up his garrison;
\nEven her minutest motions went as well
\nAs those of the best time-piece made by Harrison:
\nIn virtues nothing earthly could surpass her,
\nSave thine ‘incomparable oil,’ Macassar!<\/p>\n
Perfect she was, but as perfection is
\nInsipid in this naughty world of ours,
\nWhere our first parents never learn’d to kiss
\nTill they were exiled from their earlier bowers,
\nWhere all was peace, and innocence, and bliss
\n(I wonder how they got through the twelve hours),
\nDon Jose, like a lineal son of Eve,
\nWent plucking various fruit without her leave.<\/p>\n
He was a mortal of the careless kind,
\nWith no great love for learning, or the learn’d,
\nWho chose to go where’er he had a mind,
\nAnd never dream’d his lady was concern’d;
\nThe world, as usual, wickedly inclined
\nTo see a kingdom or a house o’erturn’d,
\nWhisper’d he had a mistress, some said two\u2014
\nBut for domestic quarrels one will do.<\/p>\n
Now Donna Inez had, with all her merit,
\nA great opinion of her own good qualities;
\nNeglect, indeed, requires a saint to bear it,
\nAnd such, indeed, she was in her moralities;
\nBut then she had a devil of a spirit,
\nAnd sometimes mix’d up fancies with realities,
\nAnd let few opportunities escape
\nOf getting her liege lord into a scrape.<\/p>\n
This was an easy matter with a man
\nOft in the wrong, and never on his guard;
\nAnd even the wisest, do the best they can,
\nHave moments, hours, and days, so unprepared,
\nThat you might ‘brain them with their lady’s fan;’
\nAnd sometimes ladies hit exceeding hard,
\nAnd fans turn into falchions in fair hands,
\nAnd why and wherefore no one understands.<\/p>\n
‘T is pity learned virgins ever wed
\nWith persons of no sort of education,
\nOr gentlemen, who, though well born and bred,
\nGrow tired of scientific conversation:
\nI don’t choose to say much upon this head,
\nI ‘m a plain man, and in a single station,
\nBut\u2014Oh! ye lords of ladies intellectual,
\nInform us truly, have they not hen-peck’d you all?<\/p>\n
Don Jose and his lady quarrell’d\u2014why,
\nNot any of the many could divine,
\nThough several thousand people chose to try,
\n‘T was surely no concern of theirs nor mine;
\nI loathe that low vice\u2014curiosity;
\nBut if there ‘s anything in which I shine,
\n‘T is in arranging all my friends’ affairs,
\nNot having of my own domestic cares.<\/p>\n
And so I interfered, and with the best
\nIntentions, but their treatment was not kind;
\nI think the foolish people were possess’d,
\nFor neither of them could I ever find,
\nAlthough their porter afterwards confess’d\u2014
\nBut that ‘s no matter, and the worst ‘s behind,
\nFor little Juan o’er me threw, down stairs,
\nA pail of housemaid’s water unawares.<\/p>\n
A little curly-headed, good-for-nothing,
\nAnd mischief-making monkey from his birth;
\nHis parents ne’er agreed except in doting
\nUpon the most unquiet imp on earth;
\nInstead of quarrelling, had they been but both in
\nTheir senses, they ‘d have sent young master forth
\nTo school, or had him soundly whipp’d at home,
\nTo teach him manners for the time to come.<\/p>\n
Don Jose and the Donna Inez led
\nFor some time an unhappy sort of life,
\nWishing each other, not divorced, but dead;
\nThey lived respectably as man and wife,
\nTheir conduct was exceedingly well-bred,
\nAnd gave no outward signs of inward strife,
\nUntil at length the smother’d fire broke out,
\nAnd put the business past all kind of doubt.<\/p>\n
For Inez call’d some druggists and physicians,
\nAnd tried to prove her loving lord was mad;
\nBut as he had some lucid intermissions,
\nShe next decided he was only bad;
\nYet when they ask’d her for her depositions,
\nNo sort of explanation could be had,
\nSave that her duty both to man and God
\nRequired this conduct\u2014which seem’d very odd.<\/p>\n
She kept a journal, where his faults were noted,
\nAnd open’d certain trunks of books and letters,
\nAll which might, if occasion served, be quoted;
\nAnd then she had all Seville for abettors,
\nBesides her good old grandmother (who doted);
\nThe hearers of her case became repeaters,
\nThen advocates, inquisitors, and judges,
\nSome for amusement, others for old grudges.<\/p>\n
And then this best and weakest woman bore
\nWith such serenity her husband’s woes,
\nJust as the Spartan ladies did of yore,
\nWho saw their spouses kill’d, and nobly chose
\nNever to say a word about them more\u2014
\nCalmly she heard each calumny that rose,
\nAnd saw his agonies with such sublimity,
\nThat all the world exclaim’d, ‘What magnanimity!’<\/p>\n
No doubt this patience, when the world is damning us,
\nIs philosophic in our former friends;
\n‘T is also pleasant to be deem’d magnanimous,
\nThe more so in obtaining our own ends;
\nAnd what the lawyers call a ‘malus animus’
\nConduct like this by no means comprehends;
\nRevenge in person ‘s certainly no virtue,
\nBut then ‘t is not my fault, if others hurt you.<\/p>\n
And if your quarrels should rip up old stories,
\nAnd help them with a lie or two additional,
\nI ‘m not to blame, as you well know\u2014no more is
\nAny one else\u2014they were become traditional;
\nBesides, their resurrection aids our glories
\nBy contrast, which is what we just were wishing all:
\nAnd science profits by this resurrection\u2014
\nDead scandals form good subjects for dissection.<\/p>\n
Their friends had tried at reconciliation,
\nThen their relations, who made matters worse.
\n(‘T were hard to tell upon a like occasion
\nTo whom it may be best to have recourse\u2014
\nI can’t say much for friend or yet relation):
\nThe lawyers did their utmost for divorce,
\nBut scarce a fee was paid on either side
\nBefore, unluckily, Don Jose died.<\/p>\n
He died: and most unluckily, because,
\nAccording to all hints I could collect
\nFrom counsel learned in those kinds of laws
\n(Although their talk ‘s obscure and circumspect),
\nHis death contrived to spoil a charming cause;
\nA thousand pities also with respect
\nTo public feeling, which on this occasion
\nWas manifested in a great sensation.<\/p>\n
But, ah! he died; and buried with him lay
\nThe public feeling and the lawyers’ fees:
\nHis house was sold, his servants sent away,
\nA Jew took one of his two mistresses,
\nA priest the other\u2014at least so they say:
\nI ask’d the doctors after his disease\u2014
\nHe died of the slow fever call’d the tertian,
\nAnd left his widow to her own aversion.<\/p>\n
Yet Jose was an honourable man,
\nThat I must say who knew him very well;
\nTherefore his frailties I ‘ll no further scan
\nIndeed there were not many more to tell;
\nAnd if his passions now and then outran
\nDiscretion, and were not so peaceable
\nAs Numa’s (who was also named Pompilius),
\nHe had been ill brought up, and was born bilious.<\/p>\n
Whate’er might be his worthlessness or worth,
\nPoor fellow! he had many things to wound him.
\nLet ‘s own\u2014since it can do no good on earth\u2014
\nIt was a trying moment that which found him
\nStanding alone beside his desolate hearth,
\nWhere all his household gods lay shiver’d round him:
\nNo choice was left his feelings or his pride,
\nSave death or Doctors’ Commons\u2014so he died.<\/p>\n
Dying intestate, Juan was sole heir
\nTo a chancery suit, and messuages, and lands,
\nWhich, with a long minority and care,
\nPromised to turn out well in proper hands:
\nInez became sole guardian, which was fair,
\nAnd answer’d but to nature’s just demands;
\nAn only son left with an only mother
\nIs brought up much more wisely than another.<\/p>\n
Sagest of women, even of widows, she
\nResolved that Juan should be quite a paragon,
\nAnd worthy of the noblest pedigree
\n(His sire was of Castile, his dam from Aragon):
\nThen for accomplishments of chivalry,
\nIn case our lord the king should go to war again,
\nHe learn’d the arts of riding, fencing, gunnery,
\nAnd how to scale a fortress\u2014or a nunnery.<\/p>\n
But that which Donna Inez most desired,
\nAnd saw into herself each day before all
\nThe learned tutors whom for him she hired,
\nWas, that his breeding should be strictly moral;
\nMuch into all his studies she inquired,
\nAnd so they were submitted first to her, all,
\nArts, sciences, no branch was made a mystery
\nTo Juan’s eyes, excepting natural history.<\/p>\n
The languages, especially the dead,
\nThe sciences, and most of all the abstruse,
\nThe arts, at least all such as could be said
\nTo be the most remote from common use,
\nIn all these he was much and deeply read;
\nBut not a page of any thing that ‘s loose,
\nOr hints continuation of the species,
\nWas ever suffer’d, lest he should grow vicious.<\/p>\n
His classic studies made a little puzzle,
\nBecause of filthy loves of gods and goddesses,
\nWho in the earlier ages raised a bustle,
\nBut never put on pantaloons or bodices;
\nHis reverend tutors had at times a tussle,
\nAnd for their AEneids, Iliads, and Odysseys,
\nWere forced to make an odd sort! of apology,
\nFor Donna Inez dreaded the Mythology.<\/p>\n
Ovid ‘s a rake, as half his verses show him,
\nAnacreon’s morals are a still worse sample,
\nCatullus scarcely has a decent poem,
\nI don’t think Sappho’s Ode a good example,
\nAlthough Longinus tells us there is no hymn
\nWhere the sublime soars forth on wings more ample:
\nBut Virgil’s songs are pure, except that horrid one
\nBeginning with ‘Formosum Pastor Corydon.’<\/p>\n
Lucretius’ irreligion is too strong,
\nFor early stomachs, to prove wholesome food;
\nI can’t help thinking Juvenal was wrong,
\nAlthough no doubt his real intent was good,
\nFor speaking out so plainly in his song,
\nSo much indeed as to be downright rude;
\nAnd then what proper person can be partial
\nTo all those nauseous epigrams of Martial?<\/p>\n
Juan was taught from out the best edition,
\nExpurgated by learned men, who place
\nJudiciously, from out the schoolboy’s vision,
\nThe grosser parts; but, fearful to deface
\nToo much their modest bard by this omission,
\nAnd pitying sore his mutilated case,
\nThey only add them all in an appendix,
\nWhich saves, in fact, the trouble of an index;<\/p>\n
For there we have them all ‘at one fell swoop,’
\nInstead of being scatter’d through the Pages;
\nThey stand forth marshall’d in a handsome troop,
\nTo meet the ingenuous youth of future ages,
\nTill some less rigid editor shall stoop
\nTo call them back into their separate cages,
\nInstead of standing staring all together,
\nLike garden gods\u2014and not so decent either.<\/p>\n
The Missal too (it was the family Missal)
\nWas ornamented in a sort of way
\nWhich ancient mass-books often are, and this all
\nKinds of grotesques illumined; and how they,
\nWho saw those figures on the margin kiss all,
\nCould turn their optics to the text and pray,
\nIs more than I know\u2014But Don Juan’s mother
\nKept this herself, and gave her son another.<\/p>\n
Sermons he read, and lectures he endured,
\nAnd homilies, and lives of all the saints;
\nTo Jerome and to Chrysostom inured,
\nHe did not take such studies for restraints;
\nBut how faith is acquired, and then ensured,
\nSo well not one of the aforesaid paints
\nAs Saint Augustine in his fine Confessions,
\nWhich make the reader envy his transgressions.<\/p>\n
This, too, was a seal’d book to little Juan\u2014
\nI can’t but say that his mamma was right,
\nIf such an education was the true one.
\nShe scarcely trusted him from out her sight;
\nHer maids were old, and if she took a new one,
\nYou might be sure she was a perfect fright;
\nShe did this during even her husband’s life\u2014
\nI recommend as much to every wife.<\/p>\n
Young Juan wax’d in goodliness and grace;
\nAt six a charming child, and at eleven
\nWith all the promise of as fine a face
\nAs e’er to man’s maturer growth was given:
\nHe studied steadily, and grew apace,
\nAnd seem’d, at least, in the right road to heaven,
\nFor half his days were pass’d at church, the other
\nBetween his tutors, confessor, and mother.<\/p>\n
At six, I said, he was a charming child,
\nAt twelve he was a fine, but quiet boy;
\nAlthough in infancy a little wild,
\nThey tamed him down amongst them: to destroy
\nHis natural spirit not in vain they toil’d,
\nAt least it seem’d so; and his mother’s joy
\nWas to declare how sage, and still, and steady,
\nHer young philosopher was grown already.<\/p>\n
I had my doubts, perhaps I have them still,
\nBut what I say is neither here nor there:
\nI knew his father well, and have some skill
\nIn character\u2014but it would not be fair
\nFrom sire to son to augur good or ill:
\nHe and his wife were an ill-sorted pair\u2014
\nBut scandal ‘s my aversion\u2014I protest
\nAgainst all evil speaking, even in jest.<\/p>\n
For my part I say nothing\u2014nothing\u2014but
\nThis I will say\u2014my reasons are my own\u2014
\nThat if I had an only son to put
\nTo school (as God be praised that I have none),
\n‘T is not with Donna Inez I would shut
\nHim up to learn his catechism alone,
\nNo\u2014no\u2014I ‘d send him out betimes to college,
\nFor there it was I pick’d up my own knowledge.<\/p>\n
For there one learns\u2014’t is not for me to boast,
\nThough I acquired\u2014but I pass over that,
\nAs well as all the Greek I since have lost:
\nI say that there ‘s the place\u2014but ‘Verbum sat.’
\nI think I pick’d up too, as well as most,
\nKnowledge of matters\u2014but no matter what\u2014
\nI never married\u2014but, I think, I know
\nThat sons should not be educated so.<\/p>\n
Young Juan now was sixteen years of age,
\nTall, handsome, slender, but well knit: he seem’d
\nActive, though not so sprightly, as a page;
\nAnd everybody but his mother deem’d
\nHim almost man; but she flew in a rage
\nAnd bit her lips (for else she might have scream’d)
\nIf any said so, for to be precocious
\nWas in her eyes a thing the most atrocious.<\/p>\n
Amongst her numerous acquaintance, all
\nSelected for discretion and devotion,
\nThere was the Donna Julia, whom to call
\nPretty were but to give a feeble notion
\nOf many charms in her as natural
\nAs sweetness to the flower, or salt to ocean,
\nHer zone to Venus, or his bow to Cupid
\n(But this last simile is trite and stupid).<\/p>\n
The darkness of her Oriental eye
\nAccorded with her Moorish origin
\n(Her blood was not all Spanish, by the by;
\nIn Spain, you know, this is a sort of sin);
\nWhen proud Granada fell, and, forced to fly,
\nBoabdil wept, of Donna Julia’s kin
\nSome went to Africa, some stay’d in Spain,
\nHer great-great-grandmamma chose to remain.<\/p>\n
She married (I forget the pedigree)
\nWith an Hidalgo, who transmitted down
\nHis blood less noble than such blood should be;
\nAt such alliances his sires would frown,
\nIn that point so precise in each degree
\nThat they bred in and in, as might be shown,
\nMarrying their cousins\u2014nay, their aunts, and nieces,
\nWhich always spoils the breed, if it increases.<\/p>\n
This heathenish cross restored the breed again,
\nRuin’d its blood, but much improved its flesh;
\nFor from a root the ugliest in Old Spain
\nSprung up a branch as beautiful as fresh;
\nThe sons no more were short, the daughters plain:
\nBut there ‘s a rumour which I fain would hush,
\n‘T is said that Donna Julia’s grandmamma
\nProduced her Don more heirs at love than law.<\/p>\n
However this might be, the race went on
\nImproving still through every generation,
\nUntil it centred in an only son,
\nWho left an only daughter; my narration
\nMay have suggested that this single one
\nCould be but Julia (whom on this occasion
\nI shall have much to speak about), and she
\nWas married, charming, chaste, and twenty-three.<\/p>\n
Her eye (I ‘m very fond of handsome eyes)
\nWas large and dark, suppressing half its fire
\nUntil she spoke, then through its soft disguise
\nFlash’d an expression more of pride than ire,
\nAnd love than either; and there would arise
\nA something in them which was not desire,
\nBut would have been, perhaps, but for the soul
\nWhich struggled through and chasten’d down the whole.<\/p>\n
Her glossy hair was cluster’d o’er a brow
\nBright with intelligence, and fair, and smooth;
\nHer eyebrow’s shape was like th’ aerial bow,
\nHer cheek all purple with the beam of youth,
\nMounting at times to a transparent glow,
\nAs if her veins ran lightning; she, in sooth,
\nPossess’d an air and grace by no means common:
\nHer stature tall\u2014I hate a dumpy woman.<\/p>\n
Wedded she was some years, and to a man
\nOf fifty, and such husbands are in plenty;
\nAnd yet, I think, instead of such a ONE
\n‘T were better to have TWO of five-and-twenty,
\nEspecially in countries near the sun:
\nAnd now I think on ‘t, ‘mi vien in mente,’
\nLadies even of the most uneasy virtue
\nPrefer a spouse whose age is short of thirty.<\/p>\n
‘T is a sad thing, I cannot choose but say,
\nAnd all the fault of that indecent sun,
\nWho cannot leave alone our helpless clay,
\nBut will keep baking, broiling, burning on,
\nThat howsoever people fast and pray,
\nThe flesh is frail, and so the soul undone:
\nWhat men call gallantry, and gods adultery,
\nIs much more common where the climate ‘s sultry.<\/p>\n
Happy the nations of the moral North!
\nWhere all is virtue, and the winter season
\nSends sin, without a rag on, shivering forth
\n(‘T was snow that brought St. Anthony to reason);
\nWhere juries cast up what a wife is worth,
\nBy laying whate’er sum in mulct they please on
\nThe lover, who must pay a handsome price,
\nBecause it is a marketable vice.<\/p>\n
Alfonso was the name of Julia’s lord,
\nA man well looking for his years, and who
\nWas neither much beloved nor yet abhorr’d:
\nThey lived together, as most people do,
\nSuffering each other’s foibles by accord,
\nAnd not exactly either one or two;
\nYet he was jealous, though he did not show it,
\nFor jealousy dislikes the world to know it.<\/p>\n
Julia was\u2014yet I never could see why\u2014
\nWith Donna Inez quite a favourite friend;
\nBetween their tastes there was small sympathy,
\nFor not a line had Julia ever penn’d:
\nSome people whisper but no doubt they lie,
\nFor malice still imputes some private end,
\nThat Inez had, ere Don Alfonso’s marriage,
\nForgot with him her very prudent carriage;<\/p>\n
And that still keeping up the old connection,
\nWhich time had lately render’d much more chaste,
\nShe took his lady also in affection,
\nAnd certainly this course was much the best:
\nShe flatter’d Julia with her sage protection,
\nAnd complimented Don Alfonso’s taste;
\nAnd if she could not (who can?) silence scandal,
\nAt least she left it a more slender handle.<\/p>\n
I can’t tell whether Julia saw the affair
\nWith other people’s eyes, or if her own
\nDiscoveries made, but none could be aware
\nOf this, at least no symptom e’er was shown;
\nPerhaps she did not know, or did not care,
\nIndifferent from the first or callous grown:
\nI ‘m really puzzled what to think or say,
\nShe kept her counsel in so close a way.<\/p>\n
Juan she saw, and, as a pretty child,
\nCaress’d him often\u2014such a thing might be
\nQuite innocently done, and harmless styled,
\nWhen she had twenty years, and thirteen he;
\nBut I am not so sure I should have smiled
\nWhen he was sixteen, Julia twenty-three;
\nThese few short years make wondrous alterations,
\nParticularly amongst sun-burnt nations.<\/p>\n
Whate’er the cause might be, they had become
\nChanged; for the dame grew distant, the youth shy,
\nTheir looks cast down, their greetings almost dumb,
\nAnd much embarrassment in either eye;
\nThere surely will be little doubt with some
\nThat Donna Julia knew the reason why,
\nBut as for Juan, he had no more notion
\nThan he who never saw the sea of ocean.<\/p>\n
Yet Julia’s very coldness still was kind,
\nAnd tremulously gentle her small hand
\nWithdrew itself from his, but left behind
\nA little pressure, thrilling, and so bland
\nAnd slight, so very slight, that to the mind
\n‘T was but a doubt; but ne’er magician’s wand
\nWrought change with all Armida’s fairy art
\nLike what this light touch left on Juan’s heart.<\/p>\n
And if she met him, though she smiled no more,
\nShe look’d a sadness sweeter than her smile,
\nAs if her heart had deeper thoughts in store
\nShe must not own, but cherish’d more the while
\nFor that compression in its burning core;
\nEven innocence itself has many a wile,
\nAnd will not dare to trust itself with truth,
\nAnd love is taught hypocrisy from youth.<\/p>\n
But passion most dissembles, yet betrays
\nEven by its darkness; as the blackest sky
\nForetells the heaviest tempest, it displays
\nIts workings through the vainly guarded eye,
\nAnd in whatever aspect it arrays
\nItself, ‘t is still the same hypocrisy;
\nColdness or anger, even disdain or hate,
\nAre masks it often wears, and still too late.<\/p>\n
Then there were sighs, the deeper for suppression,
\nAnd stolen glances, sweeter for the theft,
\nAnd burning blushes, though for no transgression,
\nTremblings when met, and restlessness when left;
\nAll these are little preludes to possession,
\nOf which young passion cannot be bereft,
\nAnd merely tend to show how greatly love is
\nEmbarrass’d at first starting with a novice.<\/p>\n
Poor Julia’s heart was in an awkward state;
\nShe felt it going, and resolved to make
\nThe noblest efforts for herself and mate,
\nFor honour’s, pride’s, religion’s, virtue’s sake;
\nHer resolutions were most truly great,
\nAnd almost might have made a Tarquin quake:
\nShe pray’d the Virgin Mary for her grace,
\nAs being the best judge of a lady’s case.<\/p>\n
She vow’d she never would see Juan more,
\nAnd next day paid a visit to his mother,
\nAnd look’d extremely at the opening door,
\nWhich, by the Virgin’s grace, let in another;
\nGrateful she was, and yet a little sore\u2014
\nAgain it opens, it can be no other,
\n‘T is surely Juan now\u2014No! I ‘m afraid
\nThat night the Virgin was no further pray’d.<\/p>\n
She now determined that a virtuous woman
\nShould rather face and overcome temptation,
\nThat flight was base and dastardly, and no man
\nShould ever give her heart the least sensation;
\nThat is to say, a thought beyond the common
\nPreference, that we must feel upon occasion
\nFor people who are pleasanter than others,
\nBut then they only seem so many brothers.<\/p>\n
And even if by chance\u2014and who can tell?
\nThe devil ‘s so very sly\u2014she should discover
\nThat all within was not so very well,
\nAnd, if still free, that such or such a lover
\nMight please perhaps, a virtuous wife can quell
\nSuch thoughts, and be the better when they ‘re over;
\nAnd if the man should ask, ‘t is but denial:
\nI recommend young ladies to make trial.<\/p>\n
And then there are such things as love divine,
\nBright and immaculate, unmix’d and pure,
\nSuch as the angels think so very fine,
\nAnd matrons who would be no less secure,
\nPlatonic, perfect, ‘just such love as mine;’
\nThus Julia said\u2014and thought so, to be sure;
\nAnd so I ‘d have her think, were I the man
\nOn whom her reveries celestial ran.<\/p>\n
Such love is innocent, and may exist
\nBetween young persons without any danger.
\nA hand may first, and then a lip be kist;
\nFor my part, to such doings I ‘m a stranger,
\nBut hear these freedoms form the utmost list
\nOf all o’er which such love may be a ranger:
\nIf people go beyond, ‘t is quite a crime,
\nBut not my fault\u2014I tell them all in time.<\/p>\n
Love, then, but love within its proper limits,
\nWas Julia’s innocent determination
\nIn young Don Juan’s favour, and to him its
\nExertion might be useful on occasion;
\nAnd, lighted at too pure a shrine to dim its
\nEthereal lustre, with what sweet persuasion
\nHe might be taught, by love and her together\u2014
\nI really don’t know what, nor Julia either.<\/p>\n
Fraught with this fine intention, and well fenced
\nIn mail of proof\u2014her purity of soul\u2014
\nShe, for the future of her strength convinced.
\nAnd that her honour was a rock, or mole,
\nExceeding sagely from that hour dispensed
\nWith any kind of troublesome control;
\nBut whether Julia to the task was equal
\nIs that which must be mention’d in the sequel.<\/p>\n
Her plan she deem’d both innocent and feasible,
\nAnd, surely, with a stripling of sixteen
\nNot scandal’s fangs could fix on much that ‘s seizable,
\nOr if they did so, satisfied to mean
\nNothing but what was good, her breast was peaceable\u2014
\nA quiet conscience makes one so serene!
\nChristians have burnt each other, quite persuaded
\nThat all the Apostles would have done as they did.<\/p>\n
And if in the mean time her husband died,
\nBut Heaven forbid that such a thought should cross
\nHer brain, though in a dream! (and then she sigh’d)
\nNever could she survive that common loss;
\nBut just suppose that moment should betide,
\nI only say suppose it\u2014inter nos.
\n(This should be entre nous, for Julia thought
\nIn French, but then the rhyme would go for naught.)<\/p>\n
I only say suppose this supposition:
\nJuan being then grown up to man’s estate
\nWould fully suit a widow of condition,
\nEven seven years hence it would not be too late;
\nAnd in the interim (to pursue this vision)
\nThe mischief, after all, could not be great,
\nFor he would learn the rudiments of love,
\nI mean the seraph way of those above.<\/p>\n
So much for Julia. Now we ‘ll turn to Juan.
\nPoor little fellow! he had no idea
\nOf his own case, and never hit the true one;
\nIn feelings quick as Ovid’s Miss Medea,
\nHe puzzled over what he found a new one,
\nBut not as yet imagined it could be
\nThing quite in course, and not at all alarming,
\nWhich, with a little patience, might grow charming.<\/p>\n
Silent and pensive, idle, restless, slow,
\nHis home deserted for the lonely wood,
\nTormented with a wound he could not know,
\nHis, like all deep grief, plunged in solitude:
\nI ‘m fond myself of solitude or so,
\nBut then, I beg it may be understood,
\nBy solitude I mean a sultan’s, not
\nA hermit’s, with a haram for a grot.<\/p>\n
‘Oh Love! in such a wilderness as this,
\nWhere transport and security entwine,
\nHere is the empire of thy perfect bliss,
\nAnd here thou art a god indeed divine.’
\nThe bard I quote from does not sing amiss,
\nWith the exception of the second line,
\nFor that same twining ‘transport and security’
\nAre twisted to a phrase of some obscurity.<\/p>\n
The poet meant, no doubt, and thus appeals
\nTo the good sense and senses of mankind,
\nThe very thing which every body feels,
\nAs all have found on trial, or may find,
\nThat no one likes to be disturb’d at meals
\nOr love.\u2014I won’t say more about ‘entwined’
\nOr ‘transport,’ as we knew all that before,
\nBut beg ‘Security’ will bolt the door.<\/p>\n
Young Juan wander’d by the glassy brooks,
\nThinking unutterable things; he threw
\nHimself at length within the leafy nooks
\nWhere the wild branch of the cork forest grew;
\nThere poets find materials for their books,
\nAnd every now and then we read them through,
\nSo that their plan and prosody are eligible,
\nUnless, like Wordsworth, they prove unintelligible.<\/p>\n
He, Juan (and not Wordsworth), so pursued
\nHis self-communion with his own high soul,
\nUntil his mighty heart, in its great mood,
\nHad mitigated part, though not the whole
\nOf its disease; he did the best he could
\nWith things not very subject to control,
\nAnd turn’d, without perceiving his condition,
\nLike Coleridge, into a metaphysician.<\/p>\n
He thought about himself, and the whole earth
\nOf man the wonderful, and of the stars,
\nAnd how the deuce they ever could have birth;
\nAnd then he thought of earthquakes, and of wars,
\nHow many miles the moon might have in girth,
\nOf air-balloons, and of the many bars
\nTo perfect knowledge of the boundless skies;\u2014
\nAnd then he thought of Donna Julia’s eyes.<\/p>\n
In thoughts like these true wisdom may discern
\nLongings sublime, and aspirations high,
\nWhich some are born with, but the most part learn
\nTo plague themselves withal, they know not why:
\n‘T was strange that one so young should thus concern
\nHis brain about the action of the sky;
\nIf you think ‘t was philosophy that this did,
\nI can’t help thinking puberty assisted.<\/p>\n
He pored upon the leaves, and on the flowers,
\nAnd heard a voice in all the winds; and then
\nHe thought of wood-nymphs and immortal bowers,
\nAnd how the goddesses came down to men:
\nHe miss’d the pathway, he forgot the hours,
\nAnd when he look’d upon his watch again,
\nHe found how much old Time had been a winner\u2014
\nHe also found that he had lost his dinner.<\/p>\n
Sometimes he turn’d to gaze upon his book,
\nBoscan, or Garcilasso;\u2014by the wind
\nEven as the page is rustled while we look,
\nSo by the poesy of his own mind
\nOver the mystic leaf his soul was shook,
\nAs if ‘t were one whereon magicians bind
\nTheir spells, and give them to the passing gale,
\nAccording to some good old woman’s tale.<\/p>\n
Thus would he while his lonely hours away
\nDissatisfied, nor knowing what he wanted;
\nNor glowing reverie, nor poet’s lay,
\nCould yield his spirit that for which it panted,
\nA bosom whereon he his head might lay,
\nAnd hear the heart beat with the love it granted,
\nWith\u2014several other things, which I forget,
\nOr which, at least, I need not mention yet.<\/p>\n
Those lonely walks, and lengthening reveries,
\nCould not escape the gentle Julia’s eyes;
\nShe saw that Juan was not at his ease;
\nBut that which chiefly may, and must surprise,
\nIs, that the Donna Inez did not tease
\nHer only son with question or surmise:
\nWhether it was she did not see, or would not,
\nOr, like all very clever people, could not.<\/p>\n
This may seem strange, but yet ‘t is very common;
\nFor instance\u2014gentlemen, whose ladies take
\nLeave to o’erstep the written rights of woman,
\nAnd break the\u2014Which commandment is ‘t they break?
\n(I have forgot the number, and think no man
\nShould rashly quote, for fear of a mistake.)
\nI say, when these same gentlemen are jealous,
\nThey make some blunder, which their ladies tell us.<\/p>\n
A real husband always is suspicious,
\nBut still no less suspects in the wrong place,
\nJealous of some one who had no such wishes,
\nOr pandering blindly to his own disgrace,
\nBy harbouring some dear friend extremely vicious;
\nThe last indeed ‘s infallibly the case:
\nAnd when the spouse and friend are gone off wholly,
\nHe wonders at their vice, and not his folly.<\/p>\n
Thus parents also are at times short-sighted;
\nThough watchful as the lynx, they ne’er discover,
\nThe while the wicked world beholds delighted,
\nYoung Hopeful’s mistress, or Miss Fanny’s lover,
\nTill some confounded escapade has blighted
\nThe plan of twenty years, and all is over;
\nAnd then the mother cries, the father swears,
\nAnd wonders why the devil he got heirs.<\/p>\n
But Inez was so anxious, and so clear
\nOf sight, that I must think, on this occasion,
\nShe had some other motive much more near
\nFor leaving Juan to this new temptation;
\nBut what that motive was, I sha’n’t say here;
\nPerhaps to finish Juan’s education,
\nPerhaps to open Don Alfonso’s eyes,
\nIn case he thought his wife too great a prize.<\/p>\n
It was upon a day, a summer’s day.\u2014
\nSummer’s indeed a very dangerous season,
\nAnd so is spring about the end of May;
\nThe sun, no doubt, is the prevailing reason;
\nBut whatsoe’er the cause is, one may say,
\nAnd stand convicted of more truth than treason,
\nThat there are months which nature grows more merry in,\u2014
\nMarch has its hares, and May must have its heroine.<\/p>\n
‘T was on a summer’s day\u2014the sixth of June:\u2014
\nI like to be particular in dates,
\nNot only of the age, and year, but moon;
\nThey are a sort of post-house, where the Fates
\nChange horses, making history change its tune,
\nThen spur away o’er empires and o’er states,
\nLeaving at last not much besides chronology,
\nExcepting the post-obits of theology.<\/p>\n
‘T was on the sixth of June, about the hour
\nOf half-past six\u2014perhaps still nearer seven\u2014
\nWhen Julia sate within as pretty a bower
\nAs e’er held houri in that heathenish heaven
\nDescribed by Mahomet, and Anacreon Moore,
\nTo whom the lyre and laurels have been given,
\nWith all the trophies of triumphant song\u2014
\nHe won them well, and may he wear them long!<\/p>\n
She sate, but not alone; I know not well
\nHow this same interview had taken place,
\nAnd even if I knew, I should not tell\u2014
\nPeople should hold their tongues in any case;
\nNo matter how or why the thing befell,
\nBut there were she and Juan, face to face\u2014
\nWhen two such faces are so, ‘t would be wise,
\nBut very difficult, to shut their eyes.<\/p>\n
How beautiful she look’d! her conscious heart
\nGlow’d in her cheek, and yet she felt no wrong.
\nO Love! how perfect is thy mystic art,
\nStrengthening the weak, and trampling on the strong,
\nHow self-deceitful is the sagest part
\nOf mortals whom thy lure hath led along\u2014
\nThe precipice she stood on was immense,
\nSo was her creed in her own innocence.<\/p>\n
She thought of her own strength, and Juan’s youth,
\nAnd of the folly of all prudish fears,
\nVictorious virtue, and domestic truth,
\nAnd then of Don Alfonso’s fifty years:
\nI wish these last had not occurr’d, in sooth,
\nBecause that number rarely much endears,
\nAnd through all climes, the snowy and the sunny,
\nSounds ill in love, whate’er it may in money.<\/p>\n
When people say, ‘I’ve told you fifty times,’
\nThey mean to scold, and very often do;
\nWhen poets say, ‘I’ve written fifty rhymes,’
\nThey make you dread that they ‘ll recite them too;
\nIn gangs of fifty, thieves commit their crimes;
\nAt fifty love for love is rare, ‘t is true,
\nBut then, no doubt, it equally as true is,
\nA good deal may be bought for fifty Louis.<\/p>\n
Julia had honour, virtue, truth, and love,
\nFor Don Alfonso; and she inly swore,
\nBy all the vows below to powers above,
\nShe never would disgrace the ring she wore,
\nNor leave a wish which wisdom might reprove;
\nAnd while she ponder’d this, besides much more,
\nOne hand on Juan’s carelessly was thrown,
\nQuite by mistake\u2014she thought it was her own;<\/p>\n
Unconsciously she lean’d upon the other,
\nWhich play’d within the tangles of her hair:
\nAnd to contend with thoughts she could not smother
\nShe seem’d by the distraction of her air.
\n‘T was surely very wrong in Juan’s mother
\nTo leave together this imprudent pair,
\nShe who for many years had watch’d her son so\u2014
\nI ‘m very certain mine would not have done so.<\/p>\n
The hand which still held Juan’s, by degrees
\nGently, but palpably confirm’d its grasp,
\nAs if it said, ‘Detain me, if you please;’
\nYet there ‘s no doubt she only meant to clasp
\nHis fingers with a pure Platonic squeeze:
\nShe would have shrunk as from a toad, or asp,
\nHad she imagined such a thing could rouse
\nA feeling dangerous to a prudent spouse.<\/p>\n
I cannot know what Juan thought of this,
\nBut what he did, is much what you would do;
\nHis young lip thank’d it with a grateful kiss,
\nAnd then, abash’d at its own joy, withdrew
\nIn deep despair, lest he had done amiss,\u2014
\nLove is so very timid when ‘t is new:
\nShe blush’d, and frown’d not, but she strove to speak,
\nAnd held her tongue, her voice was grown so weak.<\/p>\n
The sun set, and up rose the yellow moon:
\nThe devil ‘s in the moon for mischief; they
\nWho call’d her CHASTE, methinks, began too soon
\nTheir nomenclature; there is not a day,
\nThe longest, not the twenty-first of June,
\nSees half the business in a wicked way
\nOn which three single hours of moonshine smile\u2014
\nAnd then she looks so modest all the while.<\/p>\n
There is a dangerous silence in that hour,
\nA stillness, which leaves room for the full soul
\nTo open all itself, without the power
\nOf calling wholly back its self-control;
\nThe silver light which, hallowing tree and tower,
\nSheds beauty and deep softness o’er the whole,
\nBreathes also to the heart, and o’er it throws
\nA loving languor, which is not repose.<\/p>\n
And Julia sate with Juan, half embraced
\nAnd half retiring from the glowing arm,
\nWhich trembled like the bosom where ‘t was placed;
\nYet still she must have thought there was no harm,
\nOr else ‘t were easy to withdraw her waist;
\nBut then the situation had its charm,
\nAnd then\u2014God knows what next\u2014I can’t go on;
\nI ‘m almost sorry that I e’er begun.<\/p>\n
O Plato! Plato! you have paved the way,
\nWith your confounded fantasies, to more
\nImmoral conduct by the fancied sway
\nYour system feigns o’er the controulless core
\nOf human hearts, than all the long array
\nOf poets and romancers:\u2014You ‘re a bore,
\nA charlatan, a coxcomb\u2014and have been,
\nAt best, no better than a go-between.<\/p>\n
And Julia’s voice was lost, except in sighs,
\nUntil too late for useful conversation;
\nThe tears were gushing from her gentle eyes,
\nI wish indeed they had not had occasion,
\nBut who, alas! can love, and then be wise?
\nNot that remorse did not oppose temptation;
\nA little still she strove, and much repented
\nAnd whispering ‘I will ne’er consent’\u2014consented.<\/p>\n
‘T is said that Xerxes offer’d a reward
\nTo those who could invent him a new pleasure:
\nMethinks the requisition ‘s rather hard,
\nAnd must have cost his majesty a treasure:
\nFor my part, I ‘m a moderate-minded bard,
\nFond of a little love (which I call leisure);
\nI care not for new pleasures, as the old
\nAre quite enough for me, so they but hold.<\/p>\n
O Pleasure! you are indeed a pleasant thing,
\nAlthough one must be damn’d for you, no doubt:
\nI make a resolution every spring
\nOf reformation, ere the year run out,
\nBut somehow, this my vestal vow takes wing,
\nYet still, I trust it may be kept throughout:
\nI ‘m very sorry, very much ashamed,
\nAnd mean, next winter, to be quite reclaim’d.<\/p>\n
Here my chaste Muse a liberty must take\u2014
\nStart not! still chaster reader\u2014she ‘ll be nice hence\u2014
\nForward, and there is no great cause to quake;
\nThis liberty is a poetic licence,
\nWhich some irregularity may make
\nIn the design, and as I have a high sense
\nOf Aristotle and the Rules, ‘t is fit
\nTo beg his pardon when I err a bit.<\/p>\n
This licence is to hope the reader will
\nSuppose from June the sixth (the fatal day,
\nWithout whose epoch my poetic skill
\nFor want of facts would all be thrown away),
\nBut keeping Julia and Don Juan still
\nIn sight, that several months have pass’d; we ‘ll say
\n‘T was in November, but I ‘m not so sure
\nAbout the day\u2014the era ‘s more obscure.<\/p>\n
We ‘ll talk of that anon.\u2014’T is sweet to hear
\nAt midnight on the blue and moonlit deep
\nThe song and oar of Adria’s gondolier,
\nBy distance mellow’d, o’er the waters sweep;
\n‘T is sweet to see the evening star appear;
\n‘T is sweet to listen as the night-winds creep
\nFrom leaf to leaf; ‘t is sweet to view on high
\nThe rainbow, based on ocean, span the sky.<\/p>\n
‘T is sweet to hear the watch-dog’s honest bark
\nBay deep-mouth’d welcome as we draw near home;
\n‘T is sweet to know there is an eye will mark
\nOur coming, and look brighter when we come;
\n‘T is sweet to be awaken’d by the lark,
\nOr lull’d by falling waters; sweet the hum
\nOf bees, the voice of girls, the song of birds,
\nThe lisp of children, and their earliest words.<\/p>\n
Sweet is the vintage, when the showering grapes
\nIn Bacchanal profusion reel to earth,
\nPurple and gushing: sweet are our escapes
\nFrom civic revelry to rural mirth;
\nSweet to the miser are his glittering heaps,
\nSweet to the father is his first-born’s birth,
\nSweet is revenge\u2014especially to women,
\nPillage to soldiers, prize-money to seamen.<\/p>\n
Sweet is a legacy, and passing sweet
\nThe unexpected death of some old lady
\nOr gentleman of seventy years complete,
\nWho ‘ve made ‘us youth’ wait too\u2014too long already
\nFor an estate, or cash, or country seat,
\nStill breaking, but with stamina so steady
\nThat all the Israelites are fit to mob its
\nNext owner for their double-damn’d post-obits.<\/p>\n
‘T is sweet to win, no matter how, one’s laurels,
\nBy blood or ink; ‘t is sweet to put an end
\nTo strife; ‘t is sometimes sweet to have our quarrels,
\nParticularly with a tiresome friend:
\nSweet is old wine in bottles, ale in barrels;
\nDear is the helpless creature we defend
\nAgainst the world; and dear the schoolboy spot
\nWe ne’er forget, though there we are forgot.<\/p>\n
But sweeter still than this, than these, than all,
\nIs first and passionate love\u2014it stands alone,
\nLike Adam’s recollection of his fall;
\nThe tree of knowledge has been pluck’d\u2014all ‘s known\u2014
\nAnd life yields nothing further to recall
\nWorthy of this ambrosial sin, so shown,
\nNo doubt in fable, as the unforgiven
\nFire which Prometheus filch’d for us from heaven.<\/p>\n
Man ‘s a strange animal, and makes strange use
\nOf his own nature, and the various arts,
\nAnd likes particularly to produce
\nSome new experiment to show his parts;
\nThis is the age of oddities let loose,
\nWhere different talents find their different marts;
\nYou ‘d best begin with truth, and when you ‘ve lost your
\nLabour, there ‘s a sure market for imposture.<\/p>\n
What opposite discoveries we have seen!
\n(Signs of true genius, and of empty pockets.)
\nOne makes new noses, one a guillotine,
\nOne breaks your bones, one sets them in their sockets;
\nBut vaccination certainly has been
\nA kind antithesis to Congreve’s rockets,
\nWith which the Doctor paid off an old pox,
\nBy borrowing a new one from an ox.<\/p>\n
Bread has been made (indifferent) from potatoes;
\nAnd galvanism has set some corpses grinning,
\nBut has not answer’d like the apparatus
\nOf the Humane Society’s beginning
\nBy which men are unsuffocated gratis:
\nWhat wondrous new machines have late been spinning!
\nI said the small-pox has gone out of late;
\nPerhaps it may be follow’d by the great.<\/p>\n
‘T is said the great came from America;
\nPerhaps it may set out on its return,\u2014
\nThe population there so spreads, they say
\n‘T is grown high time to thin it in its turn,
\nWith war, or plague, or famine, any way,
\nSo that civilisation they may learn;
\nAnd which in ravage the more loathsome evil is\u2014
\nTheir real lues, or our pseudo-syphilis?<\/p>\n
This is the patent-age of new inventions
\nFor killing bodies, and for saving souls,
\nAll propagated with the best intentions;
\nSir Humphry Davy’s lantern, by which coals
\nAre safely mined for in the mode he mentions,
\nTombuctoo travels, voyages to the Poles,
\nAre ways to benefit mankind, as true,
\nPerhaps, as shooting them at Waterloo.<\/p>\n
Man ‘s a phenomenon, one knows not what,
\nAnd wonderful beyond all wondrous measure;
\n‘T is pity though, in this sublime world, that
\nPleasure ‘s a sin, and sometimes sin ‘s a pleasure;
\nFew mortals know what end they would be at,
\nBut whether glory, power, or love, or treasure,
\nThe path is through perplexing ways, and when
\nThe goal is gain’d, we die, you know\u2014and then\u2014<\/p>\n
What then?\u2014I do not know, no more do you\u2014
\nAnd so good night.\u2014Return we to our story:
\n‘T was in November, when fine days are few,
\nAnd the far mountains wax a little hoary,
\nAnd clap a white cape on their mantles blue;
\nAnd the sea dashes round the promontory,
\nAnd the loud breaker boils against the rock,
\nAnd sober suns must set at five o’clock.<\/p>\n
‘T was, as the watchmen say, a cloudy night;
\nNo moon, no stars, the wind was low or loud
\nBy gusts, and many a sparkling hearth was bright
\nWith the piled wood, round which the family crowd;
\nThere ‘s something cheerful in that sort of light,
\nEven as a summer sky ‘s without a cloud:
\nI ‘m fond of fire, and crickets, and all that,
\nA lobster salad, and champagne, and chat.<\/p>\n
‘T was midnight\u2014Donna Julia was in bed,
\nSleeping, most probably,\u2014when at her door
\nArose a clatter might awake the dead,
\nIf they had never been awoke before,
\nAnd that they have been so we all have read,
\nAnd are to be so, at the least, once more.–
\nThe door was fasten’d, but with voice and fist
\nFirst knocks were heard, then ‘Madam\u2014Madam\u2014hist!<\/p>\n
‘For God’s sake, Madam\u2014Madam\u2014here ‘s my master,
\nWith more than half the city at his back\u2014
\nWas ever heard of such a curst disaster!
\n‘T is not my fault\u2014I kept good watch\u2014Alack!
\nDo pray undo the bolt a little faster\u2014
\nThey ‘re on the stair just now, and in a crack
\nWill all be here; perhaps he yet may fly\u2014
\nSurely the window ‘s not so very high!’<\/p>\n
By this time Don Alfonso was arrived,
\nWith torches, friends, and servants in great number;
\nThe major part of them had long been wived,
\nAnd therefore paused not to disturb the slumber
\nOf any wicked woman, who contrived
\nBy stealth her husband’s temples to encumber:
\nExamples of this kind are so contagious,
\nWere one not punish’d, all would be outrageous.<\/p>\n
I can’t tell how, or why, or what suspicion
\nCould enter into Don Alfonso’s head;
\nBut for a cavalier of his condition
\nIt surely was exceedingly ill-bred,
\nWithout a word of previous admonition,
\nTo hold a levee round his lady’s bed,
\nAnd summon lackeys, arm’d with fire and sword,
\nTo prove himself the thing he most abhorr’d.<\/p>\n
Poor Donna Julia, starting as from sleep
\n(Mind\u2014that I do not say\u2014she had not slept),
\nBegan at once to scream, and yawn, and weep;
\nHer maid Antonia, who was an adept,
\nContrived to fling the bed-clothes in a heap,
\nAs if she had just now from out them crept:
\nI can’t tell why she should take all this trouble
\nTo prove her mistress had been sleeping double.<\/p>\n
But Julia mistress, and Antonia maid,
\nAppear’d like two poor harmless women, who
\nOf goblins, but still more of men afraid,
\nHad thought one man might be deterr’d by two,
\nAnd therefore side by side were gently laid,
\nUntil the hours of absence should run through,
\nAnd truant husband should return, and say,
\n‘My dear, I was the first who came away.’<\/p>\n
Now Julia found at length a voice, and cried,
\n‘In heaven’s name, Don Alfonso, what d’ ye mean?
\nHas madness seized you? would that I had died
\nEre such a monster’s victim I had been!
\nWhat may this midnight violence betide,
\nA sudden fit of drunkenness or spleen?
\nDare you suspect me, whom the thought would kill?
\nSearch, then, the room!’\u2014Alfonso said, ‘I will.’<\/p>\n
He search’d, they search’d, and rummaged everywhere,
\nCloset and clothes’ press, chest and window-seat,
\nAnd found much linen, lace, and several pair
\nOf stockings, slippers, brushes, combs, complete,
\nWith other articles of ladies fair,
\nTo keep them beautiful, or leave them neat:
\nArras they prick’d and curtains with their swords,
\nAnd wounded several shutters, and some boards.<\/p>\n
Under the bed they search’d, and there they found\u2014
\nNo matter what\u2014it was not that they sought;
\nThey open’d windows, gazing if the ground
\nHad signs or footmarks, but the earth said nought;
\nAnd then they stared each other’s faces round:
\n‘T is odd, not one of all these seekers thought,
\nAnd seems to me almost a sort of blunder,
\nOf looking in the bed as well as under.<\/p>\n
During this inquisition, Julia’s tongue
\nWas not asleep\u2014’Yes, search and search,’ she cried,
\n‘Insult on insult heap, and wrong on wrong!
\nIt was for this that I became a bride!
\nFor this in silence I have suffer’d long
\nA husband like Alfonso at my side;
\nBut now I ‘ll bear no more, nor here remain,
\nIf there be law or lawyers in all Spain.<\/p>\n
‘Yes, Don Alfonso! husband now no more,
\nIf ever you indeed deserved the name,
\nIs ‘t worthy of your years?\u2014you have threescore\u2014
\nFifty, or sixty, it is all the same\u2014
\nIs ‘t wise or fitting, causeless to explore
\nFor facts against a virtuous woman’s fame?
\nUngrateful, perjured, barbarous Don Alfonso,
\nHow dare you think your lady would go on so?<\/p>\n
‘Is it for this I have disdain’d to hold
\nThe common privileges of my sex?
\nThat I have chosen a confessor so old
\nAnd deaf, that any other it would vex,
\nAnd never once he has had cause to scold,
\nBut found my very innocence perplex
\nSo much, he always doubted I was married\u2014
\nHow sorry you will be when I ‘ve miscarried!<\/p>\n
‘Was it for this that no Cortejo e’er
\nI yet have chosen from out the youth of Seville?
\nIs it for this I scarce went anywhere,
\nExcept to bull-fights, mass, play, rout, and revel?
\nIs it for this, whate’er my suitors were,
\nI favor’d none\u2014nay, was almost uncivil?
\nIs it for this that General Count O’Reilly,
\nWho took Algiers, declares I used him vilely?<\/p>\n
‘Did not the Italian Musico Cazzani
\nSing at my heart six months at least in vain?
\nDid not his countryman, Count Corniani,
\nCall me the only virtuous wife in Spain?
\nWere there not also Russians, English, many?
\nThe Count Strongstroganoff I put in pain,
\nAnd Lord Mount Coffeehouse, the Irish peer,
\nWho kill’d himself for love (with wine) last year.<\/p>\n
‘Have I not had two bishops at my feet,
\nThe Duke of Ichar, and Don Fernan Nunez?
\nAnd is it thus a faithful wife you treat?
\nI wonder in what quarter now the moon is:
\nI praise your vast forbearance not to beat
\nMe also, since the time so opportune is\u2014
\nO, valiant man! with sword drawn and cock’d trigger,
\nNow, tell me, don’t you cut a pretty figure?<\/p>\n
‘Was it for this you took your sudden journey.
\nUnder pretence of business indispensable
\nWith that sublime of rascals your attorney,
\nWhom I see standing there, and looking sensible
\nOf having play’d the fool? though both I spurn, he
\nDeserves the worst, his conduct ‘s less defensible,
\nBecause, no doubt, ‘t was for his dirty fee,
\nAnd not from any love to you nor me.<\/p>\n
‘If he comes here to take a deposition,
\nBy all means let the gentleman proceed;
\nYou ‘ve made the apartment in a fit condition:
\nThere ‘s pen and ink for you, sir, when you need\u2014
\nLet every thing be noted with precision,
\nI would not you for nothing should be fee’d\u2014
\nBut, as my maid ‘s undrest, pray turn your spies out.’
\n‘Oh!’ sobb’d Antonia, ‘I could tear their eyes out.’<\/p>\n
‘There is the closet, there the toilet, there
\nThe antechamber\u2014search them under, over;
\nThere is the sofa, there the great arm-chair,
\nThe chimney\u2014which would really hold a lover.
\nI wish to sleep, and beg you will take care
\nAnd make no further noise, till you discover
\nThe secret cavern of this lurking treasure\u2014
\nAnd when ‘t is found, let me, too, have that pleasure.<\/p>\n
‘And now, Hidalgo! now that you have thrown
\nDoubt upon me, confusion over all,
\nPray have the courtesy to make it known
\nWho is the man you search for? how d’ ye cal
\nHim? what ‘s his lineage? let him but be shown\u2014
\nI hope he ‘s young and handsome\u2014is he tall?
\nTell me\u2014and be assured, that since you stain
\nMy honour thus, it shall not be in vain.<\/p>\n
‘At least, perhaps, he has not sixty years,
\nAt that age he would be too old for slaughter,
\nOr for so young a husband’s jealous fears
\n(Antonia! let me have a glass of water).
\nI am ashamed of having shed these tears,
\nThey are unworthy of my father’s daughter;
\nMy mother dream’d not in my natal hour
\nThat I should fall into a monster’s power.<\/p>\n
‘Perhaps ‘t is of Antonia you are jealous,
\nYou saw that she was sleeping by my side
\nWhen you broke in upon us with your fellows:
\nLook where you please\u2014we ‘ve nothing, sir, to hide;
\nOnly another time, I trust, you ‘ll tell us,
\nOr for the sake of decency abide
\nA moment at the door, that we may be
\nDrest to receive so much good company.<\/p>\n
‘And now, sir, I have done, and say no more;
\nThe little I have said may serve to show
\nThe guileless heart in silence may grieve o’er
\nThe wrongs to whose exposure it is slow:
\nI leave you to your conscience as before,
\n‘T will one day ask you why you used me so?
\nGod grant you feel not then the bitterest grief!-
\nAntonia! where ‘s my pocket-handkerchief?’<\/p>\n
She ceased, and turn’d upon her pillow; pale
\nShe lay, her dark eyes flashing through their tears,
\nLike skies that rain and lighten; as a veil,
\nWaved and o’ershading her wan cheek, appears
\nHer streaming hair; the black curls strive, but fail,
\nTo hide the glossy shoulder, which uprears
\nIts snow through all;\u2014her soft lips lie apart,
\nAnd louder than her breathing beats her heart.<\/p>\n
The Senhor Don Alfonso stood confused;
\nAntonia bustled round the ransack’d room,
\nAnd, turning up her nose, with looks abused
\nHer master and his myrmidons, of whom
\nNot one, except the attorney, was amused;
\nHe, like Achates, faithful to the tomb,
\nSo there were quarrels, cared not for the cause,
\nKnowing they must be settled by the laws.<\/p>\n
With prying snub-nose, and small eyes, he stood,
\nFollowing Antonia’s motions here and there,
\nWith much suspicion in his attitude;
\nFor reputations he had little care;
\nSo that a suit or action were made good,
\nSmall pity had he for the young and fair,
\nAnd ne’er believed in negatives, till these
\nWere proved by competent false witnesses.<\/p>\n
But Don Alfonso stood with downcast looks,
\nAnd, truth to say, he made a foolish figure;
\nWhen, after searching in five hundred nooks,
\nAnd treating a young wife with so much rigour,
\nHe gain’d no point, except some self-rebukes,
\nAdded to those his lady with such vigour
\nHad pour’d upon him for the last half-hour,
\nQuick, thick, and heavy\u2014as a thunder-shower.<\/p>\n
At first he tried to hammer an excuse,
\nTo which the sole reply was tears and sobs,
\nAnd indications of hysterics, whose
\nPrologue is always certain throes, and throbs,
\nGasps, and whatever else the owners choose:
\nAlfonso saw his wife, and thought of Job’s;
\nHe saw too, in perspective, her relations,
\nAnd then he tried to muster all his patience.<\/p>\n
He stood in act to speak, or rather stammer,
\nBut sage Antonia cut him short before
\nThe anvil of his speech received the hammer,
\nWith ‘Pray, sir, leave the room, and say no more,
\nOr madam dies.’\u2014Alfonso mutter’d, ‘D\u2014n her,’
\nBut nothing else, the time of words was o’er;
\nHe cast a rueful look or two, and did,
\nHe knew not wherefore, that which he was bid.<\/p>\n
With him retired his ‘posse comitatus,’
\nThe attorney last, who linger’d near the door
\nReluctantly, still tarrying there as late as
\nAntonia let him\u2014not a little sore
\nAt this most strange and unexplain’d ‘hiatus’
\nIn Don Alfonso’s facts, which just now wore
\nAn awkward look; as he revolved the case,
\nThe door was fasten’d in his legal face.<\/p>\n
No sooner was it bolted, than\u2014Oh shame!
\nO sin! Oh sorrow! and oh womankind!
\nHow can you do such things and keep your fame,
\nUnless this world, and t’ other too, be blind?
\nNothing so dear as an unfilch’d good name!
\nBut to proceed\u2014for there is more behind:
\nWith much heartfelt reluctance be it said,
\nYoung Juan slipp’d half-smother’d, from the bed.<\/p>\n
He had been hid\u2014I don’t pretend to say
\nHow, nor can I indeed describe the where\u2014
\nYoung, slender, and pack’d easily, he lay,
\nNo doubt, in little compass, round or square;
\nBut pity him I neither must nor may
\nHis suffocation by that pretty pair;
\n‘T were better, sure, to die so, than be shut
\nWith maudlin Clarence in his Malmsey butt.<\/p>\n
And, secondly, I pity not, because
\nHe had no business to commit a sin,
\nForbid by heavenly, fined by human laws,
\nAt least ‘t was rather early to begin;
\nBut at sixteen the conscience rarely gnaws
\nSo much as when we call our old debts in
\nAt sixty years, and draw the accompts of evil,
\nAnd find a deuced balance with the devil.<\/p>\n
Of his position I can give no notion:
\n‘T is written in the Hebrew Chronicle,
\nHow the physicians, leaving pill and potion,
\nPrescribed, by way of blister, a young belle,
\nWhen old King David’s blood grew dull in motion,
\nAnd that the medicine answer’d very well;
\nPerhaps ‘t was in a different way applied,
\nFor David lived, but Juan nearly died.<\/p>\n
What ‘s to be done? Alfonso will be back
\nThe moment he has sent his fools away.
\nAntonia’s skill was put upon the rack,
\nBut no device could be brought into play\u2014
\nAnd how to parry the renew’d attack?
\nBesides, it wanted but few hours of day:
\nAntonia puzzled; Julia did not speak,
\nBut press’d her bloodless lip to Juan’s cheek.<\/p>\n
He turn’d his lip to hers, and with his hand
\nCall’d back the tangles of her wandering hair;
\nEven then their love they could not all command,
\nAnd half forgot their danger and despair:
\nAntonia’s patience now was at a stand\u2014
\n‘Come, come, ‘t is no time now for fooling there,’
\nShe whisper’d, in great wrath\u2014’I must deposit
\nThis pretty gentleman within the closet:<\/p>\n
‘Pray, keep your nonsense for some luckier night\u2014
\nWho can have put my master in this mood?
\nWhat will become on ‘t\u2014I ‘m in such a fright,
\nThe devil ‘s in the urchin, and no good\u2014
\nIs this a time for giggling? this a plight?
\nWhy, don’t you know that it may end in blood?
\nYou ‘ll lose your life, and I shall lose my place,
\nMy mistress all, for that half-girlish face.<\/p>\n
‘Had it but been for a stout cavalier
\nOf twenty-five or thirty (come, make haste)\u2014
\nBut for a child, what piece of work is here!
\nI really, madam, wonder at your taste
\n(Come, sir, get in)\u2014my master must be near:
\nThere, for the present, at the least, he’s fast,
\nAnd if we can but till the morning keep
\nOur counsel\u2014(Juan, mind, you must not sleep).’<\/p>\n
Now, Don Alfonso entering, but alone,
\nClosed the oration of the trusty maid:
\nShe loiter’d, and he told her to be gone,
\nAn order somewhat sullenly obey’d;
\nHowever, present remedy was none,
\nAnd no great good seem’d answer’d if she stay’d:
\nRegarding both with slow and sidelong view,
\nShe snuff’d the candle, curtsied, and withdrew.<\/p>\n
Alfonso paused a minute\u2014then begun
\nSome strange excuses for his late proceeding;
\nHe would not justify what he had done,
\nTo say the best, it was extreme ill-breeding;
\nBut there were ample reasons for it, none
\nOf which he specified in this his pleading:
\nHis speech was a fine sample, on the whole,
\nOf rhetoric, which the learn’d call ‘rigmarole.’<\/p>\n
Julia said nought; though all the while there rose
\nA ready answer, which at once enables
\nA matron, who her husband’s foible knows,
\nBy a few timely words to turn the tables,
\nWhich, if it does not silence, still must pose,\u2014
\nEven if it should comprise a pack of fables;
\n‘T is to retort with firmness, and when he
\nSuspects with one, do you reproach with three.<\/p>\n
Julia, in fact, had tolerable grounds,\u2014
\nAlfonso’s loves with Inez were well known,
\nBut whether ‘t was that one’s own guilt confounds\u2014
\nBut that can’t be, as has been often shown,
\nA lady with apologies abounds;\u2014
\nIt might be that her silence sprang alone
\nFrom delicacy to Don Juan’s ear,
\nTo whom she knew his mother’s fame was dear.<\/p>\n
There might be one more motive, which makes two;
\nAlfonso ne’er to Juan had alluded,\u2014
\nMention’d his jealousy but never who
\nHad been the happy lover, he concluded,
\nConceal’d amongst his premises; ‘t is true,
\nHis mind the more o’er this its mystery brooded;
\nTo speak of Inez now were, one may say,
\nLike throwing Juan in Alfonso’s way.<\/p>\n
A hint, in tender cases, is enough;
\nSilence is best, besides there is a tact
\n(That modern phrase appears to me sad stuff,
\nBut it will serve to keep my verse compact)\u2014
\nWhich keeps, when push’d by questions rather rough,
\nA lady always distant from the fact:
\nThe charming creatures lie with such a grace,
\nThere ‘s nothing so becoming to the face.<\/p>\n
They blush, and we believe them; at least I
\nHave always done so; ‘t is of no great use,
\nIn any case, attempting a reply,
\nFor then their eloquence grows quite profuse;
\nAnd when at length they ‘re out of breath, they sigh,
\nAnd cast their languid eyes down, and let loose
\nA tear or two, and then we make it up;
\nAnd then\u2014and then\u2014and then\u2014sit down and sup.<\/p>\n
Alfonso closed his speech, and begg’d her pardon,
\nWhich Julia half withheld, and then half granted,
\nAnd laid conditions he thought very hard on,
\nDenying several little things he wanted:
\nHe stood like Adam lingering near his garden,
\nWith useless penitence perplex’d and haunted,
\nBeseeching she no further would refuse,
\nWhen, lo! he stumbled o’er a pair of shoes.<\/p>\n
A pair of shoes!\u2014what then? not much, if they
\nAre such as fit with ladies’ feet, but these
\n(No one can tell how much I grieve to say)
\nWere masculine; to see them, and to seize,
\nWas but a moment’s act.\u2014Ah! well-a-day!
\nMy teeth begin to chatter, my veins freeze\u2014
\nAlfonso first examined well their fashion,
\nAnd then flew out into another passion.<\/p>\n
He left the room for his relinquish’d sword,
\nAnd Julia instant to the closet flew.
\n‘Fly, Juan, fly! for heaven’s sake\u2014not a word\u2014
\nThe door is open\u2014you may yet slip through
\nThe passage you so often have explored\u2014
\nHere is the garden-key\u2014Fly\u2014fly\u2014Adieu!
\nHaste\u2014haste! I hear Alfonso’s hurrying feet\u2014
\nDay has not broke\u2014there ‘s no one in the street:<\/p>\n
None can say that this was not good advice,
\nThe only mischief was, it came too late;
\nOf all experience ‘t is the usual price,
\nA sort of income-tax laid on by fate:
\nJuan had reach’d the room-door in a. trice,
\nAnd might have done so by the garden-gate,
\nBut met Alfonso in his dressing-gown,
\nWho threaten’d death\u2014so Juan knock’d him down.<\/p>\n
Dire was the scuffle, and out went the light;
\nAntonia cried out ‘Rape!’ and Julia ‘Fire!’
\nBut not a servant stirr’d to aid the fight.
\nAlfonso, pommell’d to his heart’s desire,
\nSwore lustily he’d be revenged this night;
\nAnd Juan, too, blasphemed an octave higher;
\nHis blood was up: though young, he was a Tartar,
\nAnd not at all disposed to prove a martyr.<\/p>\n
Alfonso’s sword had dropp’d ere he could draw it,
\nAnd they continued battling hand to hand,
\nFor Juan very luckily ne’er saw it;
\nHis temper not being under great command,
\nIf at that moment he had chanced to claw it,
\nAlfonso’s days had not been in the land
\nMuch longer.\u2014Think of husbands’, lovers’ lives!
\nAnd how ye may be doubly widows\u2014wives!<\/p>\n
Alfonso grappled to detain the foe,
\nAnd Juan throttled him to get away,
\nAnd blood (‘t was from the nose) began to flow;
\nAt last, as they more faintly wrestling lay,
\nJuan contrived to give an awkward blow,
\nAnd then his only garment quite gave way;
\nHe fled, like Joseph, leaving it; but there,
\nI doubt, all likeness ends between the pair.<\/p>\n
Lights came at length, and men, and maids, who found
\nAn awkward spectacle their eyes before;
\nAntonia in hysterics, Julia swoon’d,
\nAlfonso leaning, breathless, by the door;
\nSome half-torn drapery scatter’d on the ground,
\nSome blood, and several footsteps, but no more:
\nJuan the gate gain’d, turn’d the key about,
\nAnd liking not the inside, lock’d the out.<\/p>\n
Here ends this canto.\u2014Need I sing, or say,
\nHow Juan naked, favour’d by the night,
\nWho favours what she should not, found his way,
\nAnd reach’d his home in an unseemly plight?
\nThe pleasant scandal which arose next day,
\nThe nine days’ wonder which was brought to light,
\nAnd how Alfonso sued for a divorce,
\nWere in the English newspapers, of course.<\/p>\n
If you would like to see the whole proceedings,
\nThe depositions, and the cause at full,
\nThe names of all the witnesses, the pleadings
\nOf counsel to nonsuit, or to annul,
\nThere ‘s more than one edition, and the readings
\nAre various, but they none of them are dull;
\nThe best is that in short-hand ta’en by Gurney,
\nWho to Madrid on purpose made a journey.<\/p>\n
But Donna Inez, to divert the train
\nOf one of the most circulating scandals
\nThat had for centuries been known in Spain,
\nAt least since the retirement of the Vandals,
\nFirst vow’d (and never had she vow’d in vain)
\nTo Virgin Mary several pounds of candles;
\nAnd then, by the advice of some old ladies,
\nShe sent her son to be shipp’d off from Cadiz.<\/p>\n
She had resolved that he should travel through
\nAll European climes, by land or sea,
\nTo mend his former morals, and get new,
\nEspecially in France and Italy
\n(At least this is the thing most people do).
\nJulia was sent into a convent: she
\nGrieved, but, perhaps, her feelings may be better
\nShown in the following copy of her Letter:\u2014<\/p>\n
‘They tell me ‘t is decided; you depart:
\n‘T is wise\u2014’t is well, but not the less a pain;
\nI have no further claim on your young heart,
\nMine is the victim, and would be again;
\nTo love too much has been the only art
\nI used;\u2014I write in haste, and if a stain
\nBe on this sheet, ‘t is not what it appears;
\nMy eyeballs burn and throb, but have no tears.<\/p>\n
‘I loved, I love you, for this love have lost
\nState, station, heaven, mankind’s, my own esteem,
\nAnd yet can not regret what it hath cost,
\nSo dear is still the memory of that dream;
\nYet, if I name my guilt, ‘t is not to boast,
\nNone can deem harshlier of me than I deem:
\nI trace this scrawl because I cannot rest\u2014
\nI ‘ve nothing to reproach, or to request.<\/p>\n
‘Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart,
\n‘T is woman’s whole existence; man may range
\nThe court, camp, church, the vessel, and the mart;
\nSword, gown, gain, glory, offer in exchange
\nPride, fame, ambition, to fill up his heart,
\nAnd few there are whom these cannot estrange;
\nMen have all these resources, we but one,
\nTo love again, and be again undone.<\/p>\n
‘You will proceed in pleasure, and in pride,
\nBeloved and loving many; all is o’er
\nFor me on earth, except some years to hide
\nMy shame and sorrow deep in my heart’s core;
\nThese I could bear, but cannot cast aside
\nThe passion which still rages as before\u2014
\nAnd so farewell\u2014forgive me, love me\u2014No,
\nThat word is idle now\u2014but let it go.<\/p>\n
‘My breast has been all weakness, is so yet;
\nBut still I think I can collect my mind;
\nMy blood still rushes where my spirit ‘s set,
\nAs roll the waves before the settled wind;
\nMy heart is feminine, nor can forget\u2014
\nTo all, except one image, madly blind;
\nSo shakes the needle, and so stands the pole,
\nAs vibrates my fond heart to my fix’d soul.<\/p>\n
‘I have no more to say, but linger still,
\nAnd dare not set my seal upon this sheet,
\nAnd yet I may as well the task fulfil,
\nMy misery can scarce be more complete:
\nI had not lived till now, could sorrow kill;
\nDeath shuns the wretch who fain the blow would meet,
\nAnd I must even survive this last adieu,
\nAnd bear with life, to love and pray for you!’<\/p>\n
This note was written upon gilt-edged paper
\nWith a neat little crow-quill, slight and new:
\nHer small white hand could hardly reach the taper,
\nIt trembled as magnetic needles do,
\nAnd yet she did not let one tear escape her;
\nThe seal a sun-flower; ‘Elle vous suit partout,’
\nThe motto cut upon a white cornelian;
\nThe wax was superfine, its hue vermilion.<\/p>\n
This was Don Juan’s earliest scrape; but whether
\nI shall proceed with his adventures is
\nDependent on the public altogether;
\nWe ‘ll see, however, what they say to this:
\nTheir favour in an author’s cap ‘s a feather,
\nAnd no great mischief ‘s done by their caprice;
\nAnd if their approbation we experience,
\nPerhaps they ‘ll have some more about a year hence.<\/p>\n
My poem ‘s epic, and is meant to be
\nDivided in twelve books; each book containing,
\nWith love, and war, a heavy gale at sea,
\nA list of ships, and captains, and kings reigning,
\nNew characters; the episodes are three:
\nA panoramic view of hell ‘s in training,
\nAfter the style of Virgil and of Homer,
\nSo that my name of Epic ‘s no misnomer.<\/p>\n
All these things will be specified in time,
\nWith strict regard to Aristotle’s rules,
\nThe Vade Mecum of the true sublime,
\nWhich makes so many poets, and some fools:
\nProse poets like blank-verse, I ‘m fond of rhyme,
\nGood workmen never quarrel with their tools;
\nI ‘ve got new mythological machinery,
\nAnd very handsome supernatural scenery.<\/p>\n
There ‘s only one slight difference between
\nMe and my epic brethren gone before,
\nAnd here the advantage is my own, I ween
\n(Not that I have not several merits more,
\nBut this will more peculiarly be seen);
\nThey so embellish, that ‘t is quite a bore
\nTheir labyrinth of fables to thread through,
\nWhereas this story ‘s actually true.<\/p>\n
If any person doubt it, I appeal
\nTo history, tradition, and to facts,
\nTo newspapers, whose truth all know and feel,
\nTo plays in five, and operas in three acts;
\nAll these confirm my statement a good deal,
\nBut that which more completely faith exacts
\nIs that myself, and several now in Seville,
\nSaw Juan’s last elopement with the devil.<\/p>\n
If ever I should condescend to prose,
\nI ‘ll write poetical commandments, which
\nShall supersede beyond all doubt all those
\nThat went before; in these I shall enrich
\nMy text with many things that no one knows,
\nAnd carry precept to the highest pitch:
\nI ‘ll call the work ‘Longinus o’er a Bottle,
\nOr, Every Poet his own Aristotle.’<\/p>\n
Thou shalt believe in Milton<\/a>, Dryden<\/a>, Pope<\/a>; Thou shalt not covet Mr. Sotheby’s Muse, If any person should presume to assert If, after all, there should be some so blind The public approbation I expect, I sent it in a letter to the Editor, I think that with this holy new alliance ‘Non ego hoc ferrem calida juventa But now at thirty years my hair is grey No more\u2014no more\u2014Oh! never more on me No more\u2014no more\u2014Oh! never more, my heart, My days of love are over; me no more Ambition was my idol, which was broken What is the end of Fame? ‘t is but to fill What are the hopes of man? Old Egypt’s King But I being fond of true philosophy, But for the present, gentle reader! and ‘Go, little book, from this my solitude! CANTO THE SECOND.<\/p>\n O ye! who teach the ingenuous youth of nations, Had he but been placed at a public school, I can’t say that it puzzles me at all, Well\u2014well, the world must turn upon its axis, I said that Juan had been sent to Cadiz\u2014 An Arab horse, a stately stag, a barb Chaste Muse!\u2014well, if you must, you must)\u2014the veil But to our tale: the Donna Inez sent Don Juan bade his valet pack his things In the mean time, to pass her hours away, Juan embark’d\u2014the ship got under way, I can’t but say it is an awkward sight So Juan stood, bewilder’d on the deck: Don Juan stood, and, gazing from the stern, But Juan had got many things to leave, So Juan wept, as wept the captive Jews And Juan wept, and much he sigh’d and thought, ‘Farewell, my Spain! a long farewell!’ he cried, ‘And, oh! if e’er I should forget, I swear\u2014 ‘Sooner shall heaven kiss earth (here he fell sicker), He felt that chilling heaviness of heart, Love ‘s a capricious power: I ‘ve known it hold But worst of all is nausea, or a pain The ship, call’d the most holy ‘Trinidada,’ His suite consisted of three servants and ‘T was not without some reason, for the wind At one o’clock the wind with sudden shift One gang of people instantly was put Into the opening; but all such ingredients As day advanced the weather seem’d to abate, There she lay motionless, and seem’d upset; Immediately the masts were cut away, It may be easily supposed, while this There ‘s nought, no doubt, so much the spirit calms Perhaps more mischief had been done, but for ‘Give us more grog,’ they cried, ‘for it will be The good old gentleman was quite aghast, But now there came a flash of hope once more; Under the vessel’s keel the sail was past, There winds and waves had hurl’d them, and from thence, The wind, in fact, perhaps was rather less, Again the weather threaten’d,\u2014again blew Then came the carpenter, at last, with tears The ship was evidently settling now Some lash’d them in their hammocks; some put on The worst of all was, that in their condition, But in the long-boat they contrived to stow The other boats, the yawl and pinnace, had ‘T was twilight, and the sunless day went down Some trial had been making at a raft, At half-past eight o’clock, booms, hencoops, spars, Then rose from sea to sky the wild farewell\u2014 And first one universal shriek there rush’d, The boats, as stated, had got off before, All the rest perish’d; near two hundred souls Juan got into the long-boat, and there Pedro, his valet, too, he tried to save, A small old spaniel,\u2014which had been Don Jose’s, He also stuff’d his money where he could ‘T was a rough night, and blew so stiffly yet, Nine souls more went in her: the long-boat still The sun rose red and fiery, a sure sign They counted thirty, crowded in a space ‘T is very certain the desire of life ‘T is said that persons living on annuities ‘T is thus with people in an open boat, But man is a carnivorous production, And thus it was with this our hapless crew; The consequence was easily foreseen\u2014 The fourth day came, but not a breath of air, On the sixth day they fed upon his hide, The seventh day, and no wind\u2014the burning sun At length one whisper’d his companion, who But ere they came to this, they that day shared The lots were made, and mark’d, and mix’d, and handed, He but requested to be bled to death: The surgeon, as there was no other fee, The sailors ate him, all save three or four, ‘T was better that he did not; for, in fact, Their numbers were much thinn’d by this infliction, And next they thought upon the master’s mate, Of poor Pedrillo something still remain’d, And if Pedrillo’s fate should shocking be, And the same night there fell a shower of rain, It pour’d down torrents, but they were no richer And their baked lips, with many a bloody crack, There were two fathers in this ghastly crew, The other father had a weaklier child, And o’er him bent his sire, and never raised The boy expired\u2014the father held the clay, Now overhead a rainbow, bursting through It changed, of course; a heavenly chameleon, Our shipwreck’d seamen thought it a good omen\u2014 About this time a beautiful white bird, But in this case I also must remark, With twilight it again came on to blow, As morning broke, the light wind died away, And then of these some part burst into tears, The day before, fast sleeping on the water, The land appear’d a high and rocky coast, Meantime the current, with a rising gale, Famine, despair, cold, thirst, and heat, had done As they drew nigh the land, which now was seen The shore look’d wild, without a trace of man, But in his native stream, the Guadalquivir, So here, though faint, emaciated, and stark, Nor yet had he arrived but for the oar, There, breathless, with his digging nails he clung With slow and staggering effort he arose, And as he gazed, his dizzy brain spun fast, How long in his damp trance young Juan lay His eyes he open’d, shut, again unclosed, ‘T was bending dose o’er his, and the small mouth Then was the cordial pour’d, and mantle flung And lifting him with care into the cave, Her brow was overhung with coins of gold, Her hair, I said, was auburn; but her eyes Her brow was white and low, her cheek’s pure dye I ‘ll tell you why I say so, for ‘t is just And such was she, the lady of the cave: But with our damsel this was not the case: The other female’s dress was not unlike, And these two tended him, and cheer’d him both I ‘ll tell you who they were, this female pair, A fisherman he had been in his youth, A fisher, therefore, was he,\u2014though of men, He was a Greek, and on his isle had built He had an only daughter, call’d Haidee, Frontispiece<\/p>\n And walking out upon the beach, below But taking him into her father’s house And therefore, with her maid, she thought it best They made a fire,\u2014but such a fire as they He had a bed of furs, and a pelisse, And thus they left him to his lone repose: Young Juan slept all dreamless:\u2014but the maid, And pensive to her father’s house she went, The morn broke, and found Juan slumbering still Not so Haidee: she sadly toss’d and tumbled, But up she got, and up she made them get, I say, the sun is a most glorious sight, And Haidee met the morning face to face; And down the cliff the island virgin came, And when into the cavern Haidee stepp’d And thus like to an angel o’er the dying She knew that the best feelings must have victual, And Zoe, when the eggs were ready, and For still he lay, and on his thin worn cheek And she bent o’er him, and he lay beneath, He woke and gazed, and would have slept again, And thus upon his elbow he arose, Now Juan could not understand a word, And Juan gazed as one who is awoke And Juan, too, was help’d out from his dream, But beef is rare within these oxless isles; I say that beef is rare, and can’t help thinking For we all know that English people are But to resume. The languid Juan raised He ate, and he was well supplied: and she, And so she took the liberty to state, Next they\u2014he being naked, save a tatter’d And then fair Haidee tried her tongue at speaking, And then she had recourse to nods, and signs, And now, by dint of fingers and of eyes, ‘T is pleasing to be school’d in a strange tongue That is, some words of Spanish, Turk, and Greek, As for the ladies, I have nought to say, Return we to Don Juan. He begun And every day by daybreak\u2014rather early And every morn his colour freshlier came, While Venus fills the heart (without heart really When Juan woke he found some good things ready, Both were so young, and one so innocent, It was such pleasure to behold him, such And thus a moon roll’d on, and fair Haidee Then came her freedom, for she had no mother, Now she prolong’d her visits and her talk It was a wild and breaker-beaten coast, And the small ripple spilt upon the beach Man, being reasonable, must get drunk; Ring for your valet\u2014bid him quickly bring The coast\u2014I think it was the coast that And forth they wander’d, her sire being gone, It was the cooling hour, just when the rounded And thus they wander’d forth, and hand in hand, They look’d up to the sky, whose floating glow A long, long kiss, a kiss of youth, and love, By length I mean duration; theirs endured They were alone, but not alone as they They fear’d no eyes nor ears on that lone beach, Haidde spoke not of scruples, ask’d no vows, She loved, and was beloved\u2014she adored, Alas! they were so young, so beautiful, Alas! for Juan and Haidee! they were They look upon each other, and their eyes And when those deep and burning moments pass’d, An infant when it gazes on a light, For there it lies so tranquil, so beloved, The lady watch’d her lover\u2014and that hour Alas! the love of women! it is known They are right; for man, to man so oft unjust, Some take a lover, some take drams or prayers, Haidee was Nature’s bride, and knew not this; And oh! that quickening of the heart, that beat! And now ‘t was done\u2014on the lone shore were plighted
\nThou shalt not set up Wordsworth<\/a>, Coleridge<\/a>, Southey<\/a>;
\nBecause the first is crazed beyond all hope,
\nThe second drunk, the third so quaint and mouthy:
\nWith Crabbe it may be difficult to cope,
\nAnd Campbell’s Hippocrene is somewhat drouthy:
\nThou shalt not steal from Samuel Rogers, nor
\nCommit\u2014flirtation with the muse of Moore.<\/p>\n
\nHis Pegasus, nor anything that ‘s his;
\nThou shalt not bear false witness like ‘the Blues’
\n(There ‘s one, at least, is very fond of this);
\nThou shalt not write, in short, but what I choose:
\nThis is true criticism, and you may kiss\u2014
\nExactly as you please, or not,\u2014the rod;<\/p>\n
\nThis story is not moral, first, I pray,
\nThat they will not cry out before they ‘re hurt,
\nThen that they ‘ll read it o’er again, and say
\n(But, doubtless, nobody will be so pert)
\nThat this is not a moral tale, though gay;
\nBesides, in Canto Twelfth, I mean to show
\nThe very place where wicked people go.<\/p>\n
\nTo their own good this warning to despise,
\nLed by some tortuosity of mind,
\nNot to believe my verse and their own eyes,
\nAnd cry that they ‘the moral cannot find,’
\nI tell him, if a clergyman, he lies;
\nShould captains the remark, or critics, make,
\nThey also lie too\u2014under a mistake.<\/p>\n
\nAnd beg they ‘ll take my word about the moral,
\nWhich I with their amusement will connect
\n(So children cutting teeth receive a coral);
\nMeantime, they ‘ll doubtless please to recollect
\nMy epical pretensions to the laurel:
\nFor fear some prudish readers should grow skittish,
\nI ‘ve bribed my grandmother’s review\u2014the British.<\/p>\n
\nWho thank’d me duly by return of post\u2014
\nI ‘m for a handsome article his creditor;
\nYet, if my gentle Muse he please to roast,
\nAnd break a promise after having made it her,
\nDenying the receipt of what it cost,
\nAnd smear his page with gall instead of honey,
\nAll I can say is\u2014that he had the money.<\/p>\n
\nI may ensure the public, and defy
\nAll other magazines of art or science,
\nDaily, or monthly, or three monthly; I
\nHave not essay’d to multiply their clients,
\nBecause they tell me ‘t were in vain to try,
\nAnd that the Edinburgh Review and Quarterly
\nTreat a dissenting author very martyrly.<\/p>\n
\nConsule Planco,’ Horace said, and so
\nSay I; by which quotation there is meant a
\nHint that some six or seven good years ago
\n(Long ere I dreamt of dating from the Brenta)
\nI was most ready to return a blow,
\nAnd would not brook at all this sort of thing
\nIn my hot youth\u2014when George the Third was King.<\/p>\n
\n(I wonder what it will be like at forty?
\nI thought of a peruke the other day)\u2014
\nMy heart is not much greener; and, in short, I
\nHave squander’d my whole summer while ‘t was May,
\nAnd feel no more the spirit to retort; I
\nHave spent my life, both interest and principal,
\nAnd deem not, what I deem’d, my soul invincible.<\/p>\n
\nThe freshness of the heart can fall like dew,
\nWhich out of all the lovely things we see
\nExtracts emotions beautiful and new,
\nHived in our bosoms like the bag o’ the bee:
\nThink’st thou the honey with those objects grew?
\nAlas! ‘t was not in them, but in thy power
\nTo double even the sweetness of a flower.<\/p>\n
\nCanst thou be my sole world, my universe!
\nOnce all in all, but now a thing apart,
\nThou canst not be my blessing or my curse:
\nThe illusion ‘s gone for ever, and thou art
\nInsensible, I trust, but none the worse,
\nAnd in thy stead I ‘ve got a deal of judgment,
\nThough heaven knows how it ever found a lodgment.<\/p>\n
\nThe charms of maid, wife, and still less of widow,
\nCan make the fool of which they made before,\u2014
\nIn short, I must not lead the life I did do;
\nThe credulous hope of mutual minds is o’er,
\nThe copious use of claret is forbid too,
\nSo for a good old-gentlemanly vice,
\nI think I must take up with avarice.<\/p>\n
\nBefore the shrines of Sorrow, and of Pleasure;
\nAnd the two last have left me many a token
\nO’er which reflection may be made at leisure:
\nNow, like Friar Bacon’s brazen head, I ‘ve spoken,
\n‘Time is, Time was, Time ‘s past:’\u2014a chymic treasure
\nIs glittering youth, which I have spent betimes\u2014
\nMy heart in passion, and my head on rhymes.<\/p>\n
\nA certain portion of uncertain paper:
\nSome liken it to climbing up a hill,
\nWhose summit, like all hills, is lost in vapour;
\nFor this men write, speak, preach, and heroes kill,
\nAnd bards burn what they call their ‘midnight taper,’
\nTo have, when the original is dust,
\nA name, a wretched picture, and worse bust.<\/p>\n
\nCheops erected the first pyramid
\nAnd largest, thinking it was just the thing
\nTo keep his memory whole, and mummy hid;
\nBut somebody or other rummaging,
\nBurglariously broke his coffin’s lid:
\nLet not a monument give you or me hopes,
\nSince not a pinch of dust remains of Cheops.<\/p>\n
\nSay very often to myself, ‘Alas!
\nAll things that have been born were born to die,
\nAnd flesh (which Death mows down to hay) is grass;
\nYou ‘ve pass’d your youth not so unpleasantly,
\nAnd if you had it o’er again\u2014’t would pass\u2014
\nSo thank your stars that matters are no worse,
\nAnd read your Bible, sir, and mind your purse.’<\/p>\n
\nStill gentler purchaser! the bard\u2014that ‘s I\u2014
\nMust, with permission, shake you by the hand,
\nAnd so ‘Your humble servant, and good-b’ye!’
\nWe meet again, if we should understand
\nEach other; and if not, I shall not try
\nYour patience further than by this short sample\u2014
\n‘T were well if others follow’d my example.<\/p>\n
\nI cast thee on the waters\u2014go thy ways!
\nAnd if, as I believe, thy vein be good,
\nThe world will find thee after many days.’
\nWhen Southey’s read, and Wordsworth understood,
\nI can’t help putting in my claim to praise\u2014
\nThe four first rhymes are Southey’s every line:
\nFor God’s sake, reader! take them not for mine.<\/p>\n
\nHolland, France, England, Germany, or Spain,
\nI pray ye flog them upon all occasions,
\nIt mends their morals, never mind the pain:
\nThe best of mothers and of educations
\nIn Juan’s case were but employ’d in vain,
\nSince, in a way that ‘s rather of the oddest, he
\nBecame divested of his native modesty.<\/p>\n
\nIn the third form, or even in the fourth,
\nHis daily task had kept his fancy cool,
\nAt least, had he been nurtured in the north;
\nSpain may prove an exception to the rule,
\nBut then exceptions always prove its worth\u2014
\nA lad of sixteen causing a divorce
\nPuzzled his tutors very much, of course.<\/p>\n
\nIf all things be consider’d: first, there was
\nHis lady\u2014mother, mathematical,
\nA\u2014never mind; his tutor, an old ass;
\nA pretty woman (that ‘s quite natural,
\nOr else the thing had hardly come to pass);
\nA husband rather old, not much in unity
\nWith his young wife\u2014a time, and opportunity.<\/p>\n
\nAnd all mankind turn with it, heads or tails,
\nAnd live and die, make love and pay our taxes,
\nAnd as the veering wind shifts, shift our sails;
\nThe king commands us, and the doctor quacks us,
\nThe priest instructs, and so our life exhales,
\nA little breath, love, wine, ambition, fame,
\nFighting, devotion, dust,\u2014perhaps a name.<\/p>\n
\nA pretty town, I recollect it well\u2014
\n‘T is there the mart of the colonial trade is
\n(Or was, before Peru learn’d to rebel),
\nAnd such sweet girls\u2014I mean, such graceful ladies,
\nTheir very walk would make your bosom swell;
\nI can’t describe it, though so much it strike,
\nNor liken it\u2014I never saw the like:<\/p>\n
\nNew broke, a cameleopard, a gazelle,
\nNo\u2014none of these will do;\u2014and then their garb!
\nTheir veil and petticoat\u2014Alas! to dwell
\nUpon such things would very near absorb
\nA canto\u2014then their feet and ankles,\u2014well,
\nThank Heaven I ‘ve got no metaphor quite ready
\n(And so, my sober Muse\u2014come, let ‘s be steady\u2014<\/p>\n
\nThrown back a moment with the glancing hand,
\nWhile the o’erpowering eye, that turns you pale,
\nFlashes into the heart:\u2014All sunny land
\nOf love! when I forget you, may I fail
\nTo\u2014say my prayers\u2014but never was there plann’d
\nA dress through which the eyes give such a volley,
\nExcepting the Venetian Fazzioli.<\/p>\n
\nHer son to Cadiz only to embark;
\nTo stay there had not answer’d her intent,
\nBut why?\u2014we leave the reader in the dark\u2014
\n‘T was for a voyage that the young man was meant,
\nAs if a Spanish ship were Noah’s ark,
\nTo wean him from the wickedness of earth,
\nAnd send him like a dove of promise forth.<\/p>\n
\nAccording to direction, then received
\nA lecture and some money: for four springs
\nHe was to travel; and though Inez grieved
\n(As every kind of parting has its stings),
\nShe hoped he would improve\u2014perhaps believed:
\nA letter, too, she gave (he never read it)
\nOf good advice\u2014and two or three of credit.<\/p>\n
\nBrave Inez now set up a Sunday school
\nFor naughty children, who would rather play
\n(Like truant rogues) the devil, or the fool;
\nInfants of three years old were taught that day,
\nDunces were whipt, or set upon a stool:
\nThe great success of Juan’s education,
\nSpurr’d her to teach another generation.<\/p>\n
\nThe wind was fair, the water passing rough:
\nA devil of a sea rolls in that bay,
\nAs I, who ‘ve cross’d it oft, know well enough;
\nAnd, standing upon deck, the dashing spray
\nFlies in one’s face, and makes it weather-tough:
\nAnd there he stood to take, and take again,
\nHis first\u2014perhaps his last\u2014farewell of Spain.<\/p>\n
\nTo see one’s native land receding through
\nThe growing waters; it unmans one quite,
\nEspecially when life is rather new:
\nI recollect Great Britain’s coast looks white,
\nBut almost every other country ‘s blue,
\nWhen gazing on them, mystified by distance,
\nWe enter on our nautical existence.<\/p>\n
\nThe wind sung, cordage strain’d, and sailors swore,
\nAnd the ship creak’d, the town became a speck,
\nFrom which away so fair and fast they bore.
\nThe best of remedies is a beef-steak
\nAgainst sea-sickness: try it, sir, before
\nYou sneer, and I assure you this is true,
\nFor I have found it answer\u2014so may you.<\/p>\n
\nBeheld his native Spain receding far:
\nFirst partings form a lesson hard to learn,
\nEven nations feel this when they go to war;
\nThere is a sort of unexprest concern,
\nA kind of shock that sets one’s heart ajar:
\nAt leaving even the most unpleasant people
\nAnd places, one keeps looking at the steeple.<\/p>\n
\nHis mother, and a mistress, and no wife,
\nSo that he had much better cause to grieve
\nThan many persons more advanced in life;
\nAnd if we now and then a sigh must heave
\nAt quitting even those we quit in strife,
\nNo doubt we weep for those the heart endears\u2014
\nThat is, till deeper griefs congeal our tears.<\/p>\n
\nBy Babel’s waters, still remembering Sion:
\nI ‘d weep,\u2014but mine is not a weeping Muse,
\nAnd such light griefs are not a thing to die on;
\nYoung men should travel, if but to amuse
\nThemselves; and the next time their servants tie on
\nBehind their carriages their new portmanteau,
\nPerhaps it may be lined with this my canto.<\/p>\n
\nWhile his salt tears dropp’d into the salt sea,
\n‘Sweets to the sweet’ (I like so much to quote;
\nYou must excuse this extract, ‘t is where she,
\nThe Queen of Denmark, for Ophelia brought
\nFlowers to the grave); and, sobbing often, he
\nReflected on his present situation,
\nAnd seriously resolved on reformation.<\/p>\n
\n‘Perhaps I may revisit thee no more,
\nBut die, as many an exiled heart hath died,
\nOf its own thirst to see again thy shore:
\nFarewell, where Guadalquivir’s waters glide!
\nFarewell, my mother! and, since all is o’er,
\nFarewell, too, dearest Julia!\u2014(Here he drew
\nHer letter out again, and read it through.)<\/p>\n
\nBut that ‘s impossible, and cannot be\u2014
\nSooner shall this blue ocean melt to air,
\nSooner shall earth resolve itself to sea,
\nThan I resign thine image, oh, my fair!
\nOr think of any thing excepting thee;
\nA mind diseased no remedy can physic
\n(Here the ship gave a lurch, and he grew sea-sick).<\/p>\n
\nO, Julia! what is every other wo?
\n(For God’s sake let me have a glass of liquor;
\nPedro, Battista, help me down below.)
\nJulia, my love! (you rascal, Pedro, quicker)\u2014
\nO, Julia! (this curst vessel pitches so)\u2014
\nBeloved Julia, hear me still beseeching!’
\n(Here he grew inarticulate with retching.)<\/p>\n
\nOr rather stomach, which, alas! attends,
\nBeyond the best apothecary’s art,
\nThe loss of love, the treachery of friends,
\nOr death of those we dote on, when a part
\nOf us dies with them as each fond hope ends:
\nNo doubt he would have been much more pathetic,
\nBut the sea acted as a strong emetic. I<\/p>\n
\nOut through a fever caused by its own heat,
\nBut be much puzzled by a cough and cold,
\nAnd find a quincy very hard to treat;
\nAgainst all noble maladies he ‘s bold,
\nBut vulgar illnesses don’t like to meet,
\nNor that a sneeze should interrupt his sigh,
\nNor inflammations redden his blind eye.<\/p>\n
\nAbout the lower region of the bowels;
\nLove, who heroically breathes a vein,
\nShrinks from the application of hot towels,
\nAnd purgatives are dangerous to his reign,
\nSea-sickness death: his love was perfect, how else
\nCould Juan’s passion, while the billows roar,
\nResist his stomach, ne’er at sea before?<\/p>\n
\nWas steering duly for the port Leghorn;
\nFor there the Spanish family Moncada
\nWere settled long ere Juan’s sire was born:
\nThey were relations, and for them he had a
\nLetter of introduction, which the morn
\nOf his departure had been sent him by
\nHis Spanish friends for those in Italy.<\/p>\n
\nA tutor, the licentiate Pedrillo,
\nWho several languages did understand,
\nBut now lay sick and speechless on his pillow,
\nAnd rocking in his hammock, long’d for land,
\nHis headache being increased by every billow;
\nAnd the waves oozing through the port-hole made
\nHis berth a little damp, and him afraid.<\/p>\n
\nIncreased at night, until it blew a gale;
\nAnd though ‘t was not much to a naval mind,
\nSome landsmen would have look’d a little pale,
\nFor sailors are, in fact, a different kind:
\nAt sunset they began to take in sail,
\nFor the sky show’d it would come on to blow,
\nAnd carry away, perhaps, a mast or so.<\/p>\n
\nThrew the ship right into the trough of the sea,
\nWhich struck her aft, and made an awkward rift,
\nStarted the stern-post, also shatter’d the
\nWhole of her stern-frame, and, ere she could lift
\nHerself from out her present jeopardy,
\nThe rudder tore away: ‘t was time to sound
\nThe pumps, and there were four feet water found.<\/p>\n
\nUpon the pumps and the remainder set
\nTo get up part of the cargo, and what not;
\nBut they could not come at the leak as yet;
\nAt last they did get at it really, but
\nStill their salvation was an even bet:
\nThe water rush’d through in a way quite puzzling,
\nWhile they thrust sheets, shirts, jackets, bales of muslin,<\/p>\n
\nWould have been vain, and they must have gone down,
\nDespite of all their efforts and expedients,
\nBut for the pumps: I ‘m glad to make them known
\nTo all the brother tars who may have need hence,
\nFor fifty tons of water were upthrown
\nBy them per hour, and they had all been undone,
\nBut for the maker, Mr. Mann, of London.<\/p>\n
\nAnd then the leak they reckon’d to reduce,
\nAnd keep the ship afloat, though three feet yet
\nKept two hand and one chain-pump still in use.
\nThe wind blew fresh again: as it grew late
\nA squall came on, and while some guns broke loose,
\nA gust\u2014which all descriptive power transcends\u2014
\nLaid with one blast the ship on her beam ends.<\/p>\n
\nThe water left the hold, and wash’d the decks,
\nAnd made a scene men do not soon forget;
\nFor they remember battles, fires, and wrecks,
\nOr any other thing that brings regret,
\nOr breaks their hopes, or hearts, or heads, or necks:
\nThus drownings are much talk’d of by the divers,
\nAnd swimmers, who may chance to be survivors.<\/p>\n
\nBoth main and mizen; first the mizen went,
\nThe main-mast follow’d: but the ship still lay
\nLike a mere log, and baffled our intent.
\nForemast and bowsprit were cut down, and they
\nEased her at last (although we never meant
\nTo part with all till every hope was blighted),
\nAnd then with violence the old ship righted.<\/p>\n
\nWas going on, some people were unquiet,
\nThat passengers would find it much amiss
\nTo lose their lives, as well as spoil their diet;
\nThat even the able seaman, deeming his
\nDays nearly o’er, might be disposed to riot,
\nAs upon such occasions tars will ask
\nFor grog, and sometimes drink rum from the cask.<\/p>\n
\nAs rum and true religion: thus it was,
\nSome plunder’d, some drank spirits, some sung psalms,
\nThe high wind made the treble, and as bas
\nThe hoarse harsh waves kept time; fright cured the qualms
\nOf all the luckless landsmen’s sea-sick maws:
\nStrange sounds of wailing, blasphemy, devotion,
\nClamour’d in chorus to the roaring ocean.<\/p>\n
\nOur Juan, who, with sense beyond his years,
\nGot to the spirit-room, and stood before
\nIt with a pair of pistols; and their fears,
\nAs if Death were more dreadful by his door
\nOf fire than water, spite of oaths and tears,
\nKept still aloof the crew, who, ere they sunk,
\nThought it would be becoming to die drunk.<\/p>\n
\nAll one an hour hence.’ Juan answer’d, ‘No!
\n‘T is true that death awaits both you and me,
\nBut let us die like men, not sink below
\nLike brutes;’\u2014and thus his dangerous post kept he,
\nAnd none liked to anticipate the blow;
\nAnd even Pedrillo, his most reverend tutor,
\nWas for some rum a disappointed suitor.<\/p>\n
\nAnd made a loud and pious lamentation;
\nRepented all his sins, and made a last
\nIrrevocable vow of reformation;
\nNothing should tempt him more (this peril past)
\nTo quit his academic occupation,
\nIn cloisters of the classic Salamanca,
\nTo follow Juan’s wake, like Sancho Panca.<\/p>\n
\nDay broke, and the wind lull’d: the masts were gone,
\nThe leak increased; shoals round her, but no shore,
\nThe vessel swam, yet still she held her own.
\nThey tried the pumps again, and though before
\nTheir desperate efforts seem’d all useless grown,
\nA glimpse of sunshine set some hands to bale\u2014
\nThe stronger pump’d, the weaker thrumm’d a sail.<\/p>\n
\nAnd for the moment it had some effect;
\nBut with a leak, and not a stick of mast,
\nNor rag of canvas, what could they expect?
\nBut still ‘t is best to struggle to the last,
\n‘T is never too late to be wholly wreck’d:
\nAnd though ‘t is true that man can only die once,
\n‘T is not so pleasant in the Gulf of Lyons.<\/p>\n
\nWithout their will, they carried them away;
\nFor they were forced with steering to dispense,
\nAnd never had as yet a quiet day
\nOn which they might repose, or even commence
\nA jurymast or rudder, or could say
\nThe ship would swim an hour, which, by good luck,
\nStill swam\u2014though not exactly like a duck.<\/p>\n
\nBut the ship labour’d so, they scarce could hope
\nTo weather out much longer; the distress
\nWas also great with which they had to cope
\nFor want of water, and their solid mess
\nWas scant enough: in vain the telescope
\nWas used\u2014nor sail nor shore appear’d in sight,
\nNought but the heavy sea, and coming night.<\/p>\n
\nA gale, and in the fore and after hold
\nWater appear’d; yet, though the people knew
\nAll this, the most were patient, and some bold,
\nUntil the chains and leathers were worn through
\nOf all our pumps:\u2014a wreck complete she roll’d,
\nAt mercy of the waves, whose mercies are
\nLike human beings during civil war.<\/p>\n
\nIn his rough eyes, and told the captain he
\nCould do no more: he was a man in years,
\nAnd long had voyaged through many a stormy sea,
\nAnd if he wept at length, they were not fears
\nThat made his eyelids as a woman’s be,
\nBut he, poor fellow, had a wife and children,\u2014
\nTwo things for dying people quite bewildering.<\/p>\n
\nFast by the head; and, all distinction gone,
\nSome went to prayers again, and made a vow
\nOf candles to their saints\u2014but there were none
\nTo pay them with; and some look’d o’er the bow;
\nSome hoisted out the boats; and there was one
\nThat begg’d Pedrillo for an absolution,
\nWho told him to be damn’d\u2014in his confusion.<\/p>\n
\nTheir best clothes, as if going to a fair;
\nSome cursed the day on which they saw the sun,
\nAnd gnash’d their teeth, and, howling, tore their hair;
\nAnd others went on as they had begun,
\nGetting the boats out, being well aware
\nThat a tight boat will live in a rough sea,
\nUnless with breakers close beneath her lee.<\/p>\n
\nHaving been several days in great distress,
\n‘T was difficult to get out such provision
\nAs now might render their long suffering less:
\nMen, even when dying, dislike inanition;
\nTheir stock was damaged by the weather’s stress:
\nTwo casks of biscuit and a keg of butter
\nWere all that could be thrown into the cutter.<\/p>\n
\nSome pounds of bread, though injured by the wet;
\nWater, a twenty-gallon cask or so;
\nSix flasks of wine; and they contrived to get
\nA portion of their beef up from below,
\nAnd with a piece of pork, moreover, met,
\nBut scarce enough to serve them for a luncheon\u2014
\nThen there was rum, eight gallons in a puncheon.<\/p>\n
\nBeen stove in the beginning of the gale;
\nAnd the long-boat’s condition was but bad,
\nAs there were but two blankets for a sail,
\nAnd one oar for a mast, which a young lad
\nThrew in by good luck over the ship’s rail;
\nAnd two boats could not hold, far less be stored,
\nTo save one half the people then on board.<\/p>\n
\nOver the waste of waters; like a veil,
\nWhich, if withdrawn, would but disclose the frown
\nOf one whose hate is mask’d but to assail,
\nThus to their hopeless eyes the night was shown,
\nAnd grimly darkled o’er the faces pale,
\nAnd the dim desolate deep: twelve days had Fear
\nBeen their familiar, and now Death was here.<\/p>\n
\nWith little hope in such a rolling sea,
\nA sort of thing at which one would have laugh’d,
\nIf any laughter at such times could be,
\nUnless with people who too much have quaff’d,
\nAnd have a kind of wild and horrid glee,
\nHalf epileptical and half hysterical:\u2014
\nTheir preservation would have been a miracle.<\/p>\n
\nAnd all things, for a chance, had been cast loose,
\nThat still could keep afloat the struggling tars,
\nFor yet they strove, although of no great use:
\nThere was no light in heaven but a few stars,
\nThe boats put off o’ercrowded with their crews;
\nShe gave a heel, and then a lurch to port,
\nAnd, going down head foremost\u2014sunk, in short.<\/p>\n
\nThen shriek’d the timid, and stood still the brave,
\nThen some leap’d overboard with dreadful yell,
\nAs eager to anticipate their grave;
\nAnd the sea yawn’d around her like a hell,
\nAnd down she suck’d with her the whirling wave,
\nLike one who grapples with his enemy,
\nAnd strives to strangle him before he die.<\/p>\n
\nLouder than the loud ocean, like a crash
\nOf echoing thunder; and then all was hush’d,
\nSave the wild wind and the remorseless dash
\nOf billows; but at intervals there gush’d,
\nAccompanied with a convulsive splash,
\nA solitary shriek, the bubbling cry
\nOf some strong swimmer in his agony.<\/p>\n
\nAnd in them crowded several of the crew;
\nAnd yet their present hope was hardly more
\nThan what it had been, for so strong it blew
\nThere was slight chance of reaching any shore;
\nAnd then they were too many, though so few\u2014
\nNine in the cutter, thirty in the boat,
\nWere counted in them when they got afloat.<\/p>\n
\nHad left their bodies; and what ‘s worse, alas!
\nWhen over Catholics the ocean rolls,
\nThey must wait several weeks before a mass
\nTakes off one peck of purgatorial coals,
\nBecause, till people know what ‘s come to pass,
\nThey won’t lay out their money on the dead\u2014
\nIt costs three francs for every mass that ‘s said.<\/p>\n
\nContrived to help Pedrillo to a place;
\nIt seem’d as if they had exchanged their care,
\nFor Juan wore the magisterial face
\nWhich courage gives, while poor Pedrillo’s pair
\nOf eyes were crying for their owner’s case:
\nBattista; though (a name call’d shortly Tita),
\nWas lost by getting at some aqua-vita.<\/p>\n
\nBut the same cause, conducive to his loss,
\nLeft him so drunk, he jump’d into the wave
\nAs o’er the cutter’s edge he tried to cross,
\nAnd so he found a wine-and-watery grave;
\nThey could not rescue him although so close,
\nBecause the sea ran higher every minute,
\nAnd for the boat\u2014the crew kept crowding in it.<\/p>\n
\nHis father’s, whom he loved, as ye may think,
\nFor on such things the memory reposes
\nWith tenderness\u2014stood howling on the brink,
\nKnowing (dogs have such intellectual noses!),
\nNo doubt, the vessel was about to sink;
\nAnd Juan caught him up, and ere he stepp’d
\nOff, threw him in, then after him he leap’d.<\/p>\n
\nAbout his person, and Pedrillo’s too,
\nWho let him do, in fact, whate’er he would,
\nNot knowing what himself to say, or do,
\nAs every rising wave his dread renew’d;
\nBut Juan, trusting they might still get through,
\nAnd deeming there were remedies for any ill,
\nThus re-embark’d his tutor and his spaniel.<\/p>\n
\nThat the sail was becalm’d between the seas,
\nThough on the wave’s high top too much to set,
\nThey dared not take it in for all the breeze:
\nEach sea curl’d o’er the stern, and kept them wet,
\nAnd made them bale without a moment’s ease,
\nSo that themselves as well as hopes were damp’d,
\nAnd the poor little cutter quickly swamp’d.<\/p>\n
\nKept above water, with an oar for mast,
\nTwo blankets stitch’d together, answering ill
\nInstead of sail, were to the oar made fast:
\nThough every wave roll’d menacing to fill,
\nAnd present peril all before surpass’d,
\nThey grieved for those who perish’d with the cutter,
\nAnd also for the biscuit-casks and butter.<\/p>\n
\nOf the continuance of the gale: to run
\nBefore the sea until it should grow fine,
\nWas all that for the present could be done:
\nA few tea-spoonfuls of their rum and wine
\nWere served out to the people, who begun
\nTo faint, and damaged bread wet through the bags,
\nAnd most of them had little clothes but rags.<\/p>\n
\nWhich left scarce room for motion or exertion;
\nThey did their best to modify their case,
\nOne half sate up, though numb’d with the immersion,
\nWhile t’other half were laid down in their place
\nAt watch and watch; thus, shivering like the tertian
\nAgue in its cold fit, they fill’d their boat,
\nWith nothing but the sky for a great coat.<\/p>\n
\nProlongs it: this is obvious to physicians,
\nWhen patients, neither plagued with friends nor wife,
\nSurvive through very desperate conditions,
\nBecause they still can hope, nor shines the knife
\nNor shears of Atropos before their visions:
\nDespair of all recovery spoils longevity,
\nAnd makes men miseries miseries of alarming brevity.<\/p>\n
\nAre longer lived than others,\u2014God knows why,
\nUnless to plague the grantors,\u2014yet so true it is,
\nThat some, I really think, do never die;
\nOf any creditors the worst a Jew it is,
\nAnd that ‘s their mode of furnishing supply:
\nIn my young days they lent me cash that way,
\nWhich I found very troublesome to pay.<\/p>\n
\nThey live upon the love of life, and bear
\nMore than can be believed, or even thought,
\nAnd stand like rocks the tempest’s wear and tear;
\nAnd hardship still has been the sailor’s lot,
\nSince Noah’s ark went cruising here and there;
\nShe had a curious crew as well as cargo,
\nLike the first old Greek privateer, the Argo.<\/p>\n
\nAnd must have meals, at least one meal a day;
\nHe cannot live, like woodcocks, upon suction,
\nBut, like the shark and tiger, must have prey;
\nAlthough his anatomical construction
\nBears vegetables, in a grumbling way,
\nYour labouring people think beyond all question,
\nBeef, veal, and mutton, better for digestion.<\/p>\n
\nFor on the third day there came on a calm,
\nAnd though at first their strength it might renew,
\nAnd lying on their weariness like balm,
\nLull’d them like turtles sleeping on the blue
\nOf ocean, when they woke they felt a qualm,
\nAnd fell all ravenously on their provision,
\nInstead of hoarding it with due precision.<\/p>\n
\nThey ate up all they had, and drank their wine,
\nIn spite of all remonstrances, and then
\nOn what, in fact, next day were they to dine?
\nThey hoped the wind would rise, these foolish men!
\nAnd carry them to shore; these hopes were fine,
\nBut as they had but one oar, and that brittle,
\nIt would have been more wise to save their victual.<\/p>\n
\nAnd Ocean slumber’d like an unwean’d child:
\nThe fifth day, and their boat lay floating there,
\nThe sea and sky were blue, and clear, and mild\u2014
\nWith their one oar (I wish they had had a pair)
\nWhat could they do? and hunger’s rage grew wild:
\nSo Juan’s spaniel, spite of his entreating,
\nWas kill’d and portion’d out for present eating.<\/p>\n
\nAnd Juan, who had still refused, because
\nThe creature was his father’s dog that died,
\nNow feeling all the vulture in his jaws,
\nWith some remorse received (though first denied)
\nAs a great favour one of the fore-paws,
\nWhich he divided with Pedrillo, who
\nDevour’d it, longing for the other too.<\/p>\n
\nBlister’d and scorch’d, and, stagnant on the sea,
\nThey lay like carcasses; and hope was none,
\nSave in the breeze that came not; savagely
\nThey glared upon each other\u2014all was done,
\nWater, and wine, and food,\u2014and you might see
\nThe longings of the cannibal arise
\n(Although they spoke not) in their wolfish eyes.<\/p>\n
\nWhisper’d another, and thus it went round,
\nAnd then into a hoarser murmur grew,
\nAn ominous, and wild, and desperate sound;
\nAnd when his comrade’s thought each sufferer knew,
\n‘T was but his own, suppress’d till now, he found:
\nAnd out they spoke of lots for flesh and blood,
\nAnd who should die to be his fellow’s food.<\/p>\n
\nSome leathern caps, and what remain’d of shoes;
\nAnd then they look’d around them and despair’d,
\nAnd none to be the sacrifice would choose;
\nAt length the lots were torn up, and prepared,
\nBut of materials that much shock the Muse\u2014
\nHaving no paper, for the want of better,
\nThey took by force from Juan Julia’s letter.<\/p>\n
\nIn silent horror, and their distribution
\nLull’d even the savage hunger which demanded,
\nLike the Promethean vulture, this pollution;
\nNone in particular had sought or plann’d it,
\n‘T was nature gnaw’d them to this resolution,
\nBy which none were permitted to be neuter\u2014
\nAnd the lot fell on Juan’s luckless tutor.<\/p>\n
\nThe surgeon had his instruments, and bled
\nPedrillo, and so gently ebb’d his breath,
\nYou hardly could perceive when he was dead.
\nHe died as born, a Catholic in faith,
\nLike most in the belief in which they ‘re bred,
\nAnd first a little crucifix he kiss’d,
\nAnd then held out his jugular and wrist.<\/p>\n
\nHad his first choice of morsels for his pains;
\nBut being thirstiest at the moment, he
\nPreferr’d a draught from the fast-flowing veins:
\nPart was divided, part thrown in the sea,
\nAnd such things as the entrails and the brains
\nRegaled two sharks, who follow’d o’er the billow\u2014
\nThe sailors ate the rest of poor Pedrillo.<\/p>\n
\nWho were not quite so fond of animal food;
\nTo these was added Juan, who, before
\nRefusing his own spaniel, hardly could
\nFeel now his appetite increased much more;
\n‘T was not to be expected that he should,
\nEven in extremity of their disaster,
\nDine with them on his pastor and his master.<\/p>\n
\nThe consequence was awful in the extreme;
\nFor they, who were most ravenous in the act,
\nWent raging mad\u2014Lord! how they did blaspheme!
\nAnd foam and roll, with strange convulsions rack’d,
\nDrinking salt water like a mountain-stream,
\nTearing, and grinning, howling, screeching, swearing,
\nAnd, with hyaena-laughter, died despairing.<\/p>\n
\nAnd all the rest were thin enough, Heaven knows;
\nAnd some of them had lost their recollection,
\nHappier than they who still perceived their woes;
\nBut others ponder’d on a new dissection,
\nAs if not warn’d sufficiently by those
\nWho had already perish’d, suffering madly,
\nFor having used their appetites so sadly.<\/p>\n
\nAs fattest; but he saved himself, because,
\nBesides being much averse from such a fate,
\nThere were some other reasons: the first was,
\nHe had been rather indisposed of late;
\nAnd that which chiefly proved his saving clause
\nWas a small present made to him at Cadiz,
\nBy general subscription of the ladies.<\/p>\n
\nBut was used sparingly,\u2014some were afraid,
\nAnd others still their appetites constrain’d,
\nOr but at times a little supper made;
\nAll except Juan, who throughout abstain’d,
\nChewing a piece of bamboo and some lead:
\nAt length they caught two boobies and a noddy,
\nAnd then they left off eating the dead body.<\/p>\n
\nRemember Ugolino condescends
\nTo eat the head of his arch-enemy
\nThe moment after he politely ends
\nHis tale: if foes be food in hell, at sea
\n‘T is surely fair to dine upon our friends,
\nWhen shipwreck’s short allowance grows too scanty,
\nWithout being much more horrible than Dante.<\/p>\n
\nFor which their mouths gaped, like the cracks of earth
\nWhen dried to summer dust; till taught by pain
\nMen really know not what good water ‘s worth;
\nIf you had been in Turkey or in Spain,
\nOr with a famish’d boat’s-crew had your berth,
\nOr in the desert heard the camel’s bell,
\nYou ‘d wish yourself where Truth is\u2014in a well.<\/p>\n
\nUntil they found a ragged piece of sheet,
\nWhich served them as a sort of spongy pitcher,
\nAnd when they deem’d its moisture was complete
\nThey wrung it out, and though a thirsty ditcher
\nMight not have thought the scanty draught so sweet
\nAs a full pot of porter, to their thinking
\nThey ne’er till now had known the joys of drinking.<\/p>\n
\nSuck’d in the moisture, which like nectar stream’d;
\nTheir throats were ovens, their swoln tongues were black,
\nAs the rich man’s in hell, who vainly scream’d
\nTo beg the beggar, who could not rain back
\nA drop of dew, when every drop had seem’d
\nTo taste of heaven\u2014If this be true, indeed
\nSome Christians have a comfortable creed.<\/p>\n
\nAnd with them their two sons, of whom the one
\nWas more robust and hardy to the view,
\nBut he died early; and when he was gone,
\nHis nearest messmate told his sire, who threw
\nOne glance at him, and said, ‘Heaven’s will be done!
\nI can do nothing,’ and he saw him thrown
\nInto the deep without a tear or groan.<\/p>\n
\nOf a soft cheek and aspect delicate;
\nBut the boy bore up long, and with a mild
\nAnd patient spirit held aloof his fate;
\nLittle he said, and now and then he smiled,
\nAs if to win a part from off the weight
\nHe saw increasing on his father’s heart,
\nWith the deep deadly thought that they must part.<\/p>\n
\nHis eyes from off his face, but wiped the foam
\nFrom his pale lips, and ever on him gazed,
\nAnd when the wish’d-for shower at length was come,
\nAnd the boy’s eyes, which the dull film half glazed,
\nBrighten’d, and for a moment seem’d to roam,
\nHe squeezed from out a rag some drops of rain
\nInto his dying child’s mouth\u2014but in vain.<\/p>\n
\nAnd look’d upon it long, and when at last
\nDeath left no doubt, and the dead burthen lay
\nStiff on his heart, and pulse and hope were past,
\nHe watch’d it wistfully, until away
\n‘T was borne by the rude wave wherein ‘t was cast;
\nThen he himself sunk down all dumb and shivering,
\nAnd gave no sign of life, save his limbs quivering.<\/p>\n
\nThe scattering clouds, shone, spanning the dark sea,
\nResting its bright base on the quivering blue;
\nAnd all within its arch appear’d to be
\nClearer than that without, and its wide hue
\nWax’d broad and waving, like a banner free,
\nThen changed like to a bow that ‘s bent, and then
\nForsook the dim eyes of these shipwreck’d men.<\/p>\n
\nThe airy child of vapour and the sun,
\nBrought forth in purple, cradled in vermilion,
\nBaptized in molten gold, and swathed in dun,
\nGlittering like crescents o’er a Turk’s pavilion,
\nAnd blending every colour into one,
\nJust like a black eye in a recent scuffle
\n(For sometimes we must box without the muffle).<\/p>\n
\nIt is as well to think so, now and then;
\n‘T was an old custom of the Greek and Roman,
\nAnd may become of great advantage when
\nFolks are discouraged; and most surely no men
\nHad greater need to nerve themselves again
\nThan these, and so this rainbow look’d like hope\u2014
\nQuite a celestial kaleidoscope.<\/p>\n
\nWebfooted, not unlike a dove in size
\nAnd plumage (probably it might have err’d
\nUpon its course), pass’d oft before their eyes,
\nAnd tried to perch, although it saw and heard
\nThe men within the boat, and in this guise
\nIt came and went, and flutter’d round them till
\nNight fell: this seem’d a better omen still.<\/p>\n
\n‘T was well this bird of promise did not perch,
\nBecause the tackle of our shatter’d bark
\nWas not so safe for roosting as a church;
\nAnd had it been the dove from Noah’s ark,
\nReturning there from her successful search,
\nWhich in their way that moment chanced to fall,
\nThey would have eat her, olive-branch and all.<\/p>\n
\nBut not with violence; the stars shone out,
\nThe boat made way; yet now they were so low,
\nThey knew not where nor what they were about;
\nSome fancied they saw land, and some said ‘No!’
\nThe frequent fog-banks gave them cause to doubt\u2014
\nSome swore that they heard breakers, others guns,
\nAnd all mistook about the latter once.<\/p>\n
\nWhen he who had the watch sung out and swore,
\nIf ‘t was not land that rose with the sun’s ray,
\nHe wish’d that land he never might see more;
\nAnd the rest rubb’d their eyes and saw a bay,
\nOr thought they saw, and shaped their course for shore;
\nFor shore it was, and gradually grew
\nDistinct, and high, and palpable to view.<\/p>\n
\nAnd others, looking with a stupid stare,
\nCould not yet separate their hopes from fears,
\nAnd seem’d as if they had no further care;
\nWhile a few pray’d (the first time for some years)\u2014
\nAnd at the bottom of the boat three were
\nAsleep: they shook them by the hand and head,
\nAnd tried to awaken them, but found them dead.<\/p>\n
\nThey found a turtle of the hawk’s-bill kind,
\nAnd by good fortune, gliding softly, caught her,
\nWhich yielded a day’s life, and to their mind
\nProved even still a more nutritious matter,
\nBecause it left encouragement behind:
\nThey thought that in such perils, more than chance
\nHad sent them this for their deliverance.<\/p>\n
\nAnd higher grew the mountains as they drew,
\nSet by a current, toward it: they were lost
\nIn various conjectures, for none knew
\nTo what part of the earth they had been tost,
\nSo changeable had been the winds that blew;
\nSome thought it was Mount AEtna, some the highlands,
\nOf Candia, Cyprus, Rhodes, or other islands.<\/p>\n
\nStill set them onwards to the welcome shore,
\nLike Charon’s bark of spectres, dull and pale:
\nTheir living freight was now reduced to four,
\nAnd three dead, whom their strength could not avail
\nTo heave into the deep with those before,
\nThough the two sharks still follow’d them, and dash’d
\nThe spray into their faces as they splash’d.<\/p>\n
\nTheir work on them by turns, and thinn’d them to
\nSuch things a mother had not known her son
\nAmidst the skeletons of that gaunt crew;
\nBy night chill’d, by day scorch’d, thus one by one
\nThey perish’d, until wither’d to these few,
\nBut chiefly by a species of self-slaughter,
\nIn washing down Pedrillo with salt water.<\/p>\n
\nUnequal in its aspect here and there,
\nThey felt the freshness of its growing green,
\nThat waved in forest-tops, and smooth’d the air,
\nAnd fell upon their glazed eyes like a screen
\nFrom glistening waves, and skies so hot and bare\u2014
\nLovely seem’d any object that should sweep
\nAway the vast, salt, dread, eternal deep.<\/p>\n
\nAnd girt by formidable waves; but they
\nWere mad for land, and thus their course they ran,
\nThough right ahead the roaring breakers lay:
\nA reef between them also now began
\nTo show its boiling surf and bounding spray,
\nBut finding no place for their landing better,
\nThey ran the boat for shore,\u2014and overset her.<\/p>\n
\nJuan to lave his youthful limbs was wont;
\nAnd having learnt to swim in that sweet river,
\nHad often turn’d the art to some account:
\nA better swimmer you could scarce see ever,
\nHe could, perhaps, have pass’d the Hellespont,
\nAs once (a feat on which ourselves we prided)
\nLeander, Mr. Ekenhead, and I did.<\/p>\n
\nHe buoy’d his boyish limbs, and strove to ply
\nWith the quick wave, and gain, ere it was dark,
\nThe beach which lay before him, high and dry:
\nThe greatest danger here was from a shark,
\nThat carried off his neighbour by the thigh;
\nAs for the other two, they could not swim,
\nSo nobody arrived on shore but him.<\/p>\n
\nWhich, providentially for him, was wash’d
\nJust as his feeble arms could strike no more,
\nAnd the hard wave o’erwhelm’d him as ‘t was dash’d
\nWithin his grasp; he clung to it, and sore
\nThe waters beat while he thereto was lash’d;
\nAt last, with swimming, wading, scrambling, he
\nRoll’d on the beach, half-senseless, from the sea:<\/p>\n
\nFast to the sand, lest the returning wave,
\nFrom whose reluctant roar his life he wrung,
\nShould suck him back to her insatiate grave:
\nAnd there he lay, full length, where he was flung,
\nBefore the entrance of a cliff-worn cave,
\nWith just enough of life to feel its pain,
\nAnd deem that it was saved, perhaps in vain.<\/p>\n
\nBut sunk again upon his bleeding knee
\nAnd quivering hand; and then he look’d for those
\nWho long had been his mates upon the sea;
\nBut none of them appear’d to share his woes,
\nSave one, a corpse, from out the famish’d three,
\nWho died two days before, and now had found
\nAn unknown barren beach for burial ground.<\/p>\n
\nAnd down he sunk; and as he sunk, the sand
\nSwam round and round, and all his senses pass’d:
\nHe fell upon his side, and his stretch’d hand
\nDroop’d dripping on the oar (their jurymast),
\nAnd, like a wither’d lily, on the land
\nHis slender frame and pallid aspect lay,
\nAs fair a thing as e’er was form’d of clay.<\/p>\n
\nHe knew not, for the earth was gone for him,
\nAnd Time had nothing more of night nor day
\nFor his congealing blood, and senses dim;
\nAnd how this heavy faintness pass’d away
\nHe knew not, till each painful pulse and limb,
\nAnd tingling vein, seem’d throbbing back to life,
\nFor Death, though vanquish’d, still retired with strife.<\/p>\n
\nFor all was doubt and dizziness; he thought
\nHe still was in the boat and had but dozed,
\nAnd felt again with his despair o’erwrought,
\nAnd wish’d it death in which he had reposed;
\nAnd then once more his feelings back were brought,
\nAnd slowly by his swimming eyes was seen
\nA lovely female face of seventeen.<\/p>\n
\nSeem’d almost prying into his for breath;
\nAnd chafing him, the soft warm hand of youth
\nRecall’d his answering spirits back from death;
\nAnd, bathing his chill temples, tried to soothe
\nEach pulse to animation, till beneath
\nIts gentle touch and trembling care, a sigh
\nTo these kind efforts made a low reply.<\/p>\n
\nAround his scarce-clad limbs; and the fair arm
\nRaised higher the faint head which o’er it hung;
\nAnd her transparent cheek, all pure and warm,
\nPillow’d his death-like forehead; then she wrung
\nHis dewy curls, long drench’d by every storm;
\nAnd watch’d with eagerness each throb that drew
\nA sigh from his heaved bosom\u2014and hers, too.<\/p>\n
\nThe gentle girl and her attendant,\u2014one
\nYoung, yet her elder, and of brow less grave,
\nAnd more robust of figure,\u2014then begun
\nTo kindle fire, and as the new flames gave
\nLight to the rocks that roof’d them, which the sun
\nHad never seen, the maid, or whatsoe’er
\nShe was, appear’d distinct, and tall, and fair.<\/p>\n
\nThat sparkled o’er the auburn of her hair\u2014
\nHer clustering hair, whose longer locks were roll’d
\nIn braids behind; and though her stature were
\nEven of the highest for a female mould,
\nThey nearly reach’d her heel; and in her air
\nThere was a something which bespoke command,
\nAs one who was a lady in the land.<\/p>\n
\nWere black as death, their lashes the same hue,
\nOf downcast length, in whose silk shadow lies
\nDeepest attraction; for when to the view
\nForth from its raven fringe the full glance flies,
\nNe’er with such force the swiftest arrow flew;
\n‘T is as the snake late coil’d, who pours his length,
\nAnd hurls at once his venom and his strength.<\/p>\n
\nLike twilight rosy still with the set sun;
\nShort upper lip\u2014sweet lips! that make us sigh
\nEver to have seen such; for she was one
\nFit for the model of a statuary
\n(A race of mere impostors, when all ‘s done\u2014
\nI ‘ve seen much finer women, ripe and real,
\nThan all the nonsense of their stone ideal).<\/p>\n
\nOne should not rail without a decent cause:
\nThere was an Irish lady, to whose bust
\nI ne’er saw justice done, and yet she was
\nA frequent model; and if e’er she must
\nYield to stern Time and Nature’s wrinkling laws,
\nThey will destroy a face which mortal thought
\nNe’er compass’d, nor less mortal chisel wrought.<\/p>\n
\nHer dress was very different from the Spanish,
\nSimpler, and yet of colours not so grave;
\nFor, as you know, the Spanish women banish
\nBright hues when out of doors, and yet, while wave
\nAround them (what I hope will never vanish)
\nThe basquina and the mantilla, they
\nSeem at the same time mystical and gay.<\/p>\n
\nHer dress was many-colour’d, finely spun;
\nHer locks curl’d negligently round her face,
\nBut through them gold and gems profusely shone:
\nHer girdle sparkled, and the richest lace
\nFlow’d in her veil, and many a precious stone
\nFlash’d on her little hand; but, what was shocking,
\nHer small snow feet had slippers, but no stocking.<\/p>\n
\nBut of inferior materials: she
\nHad not so many ornaments to strike,
\nHer hair had silver only, bound to be
\nHer dowry; and her veil, in form alike,
\nWas coarser; and her air, though firm, less free;
\nHer hair was thicker, but less long; her eyes
\nAs black, but quicker, and of smaller size.<\/p>\n
\nWith food and raiment, and those soft attentions,
\nWhich are (as I must own) of female growth,
\nAnd have ten thousand delicate inventions:
\nThey made a most superior mess of broth,
\nA thing which poesy but seldom mentions,
\nBut the best dish that e’er was cook’d since Homer’s
\nAchilles ordered dinner for new comers.<\/p>\n
\nLest they should seem princesses in disguise;
\nBesides, I hate all mystery, and that air
\nOf clap-trap which your recent poets prize;
\nAnd so, in short, the girls they really were
\nThey shall appear before your curious eyes,
\nMistress and maid; the first was only daughter
\nOf an old man who lived upon the water.<\/p>\n
\nAnd still a sort of fisherman was he;
\nBut other speculations were, in sooth,
\nAdded to his connection with the sea,
\nPerhaps not so respectable, in truth:
\nA little smuggling, and some piracy,
\nLeft him, at last, the sole of many masters
\nOf an ill-gotten million of piastres.<\/p>\n
\nLike Peter the Apostle,\u2014and he fish’d
\nFor wandering merchant-vessels, now and then,
\nAnd sometimes caught as many as he wish’d;
\nThe cargoes he confiscated, and gain
\nHe sought in the slave-market too, and dish’d
\nFull many a morsel for that Turkish trade,
\nBy which, no doubt, a good deal may be made.<\/p>\n
\n(One of the wild and smaller Cyclades)
\nA very handsome house from out his guilt,
\nAnd there he lived exceedingly at ease;
\nHeaven knows what cash he got or blood he spilt,
\nA sad old fellow was he, if you please;
\nBut this I know, it was a spacious building,
\nFull of barbaric carving, paint, and gilding.<\/p>\n
\nThe greatest heiress of the Eastern Isles;
\nBesides, so very beautiful was she,
\nHer dowry was as nothing to her smiles:
\nStill in her teens, and like a lovely tree
\nShe grew to womanhood, and between whiles
\nRejected several suitors, just to learn
\nHow to accept a better in his turn.<\/p>\n
\nThe cliff, towards sunset, on that day she found,
\nInsensible,\u2014not dead, but nearly so,\u2014
\nDon Juan, almost famish’d, and half drown’d;
\nBut being naked, she was shock’d, you know,
\nYet deem’d herself in common pity bound,
\nAs far as in her lay, ‘to take him in,
\nA stranger’ dying, with so white a skin.<\/p>\n
\nWas not exactly the best way to save,
\nBut like conveying to the cat the mouse,
\nOr people in a trance into their grave;
\nBecause the good old man had so much ‘nous,’
\nUnlike the honest Arab thieves so brave,
\nHe would have hospitably cured the stranger,
\nAnd sold him instantly when out of danger.<\/p>\n
\n(A virgin always on her maid relies)
\nTo place him in the cave for present rest:
\nAnd when, at last, he open’d his black eyes,
\nTheir charity increased about their guest;
\nAnd their compassion grew to such a size,
\nIt open’d half the turnpike-gates to heaven
\n(St. Paul says, ‘t is the toll which must be given).<\/p>\n
\nUpon the moment could contrive with such
\nMaterials as were cast up round the bay,\u2014
\nSome broken planks, and oars, that to the touch
\nWere nearly tinder, since so long they lay
\nA mast was almost crumbled to a crutch;
\nBut, by God’s grace, here wrecks were in such plenty,
\nThat there was fuel to have furnish’d twenty.<\/p>\n
\nFor Haidee stripped her sables off to make
\nHis couch; and, that he might be more at ease,
\nAnd warm, in case by chance he should awake,
\nThey also gave a petticoat apiece,
\nShe and her maid\u2014and promised by daybreak
\nTo pay him a fresh visit, with a dish
\nFor breakfast, of eggs, coffee, bread, and fish.<\/p>\n
\nJuan slept like a top, or like the dead,
\nWho sleep at last, perhaps (God only knows),
\nJust for the present; and in his lull’d head
\nNot even a vision of his former woes
\nThrobb’d in accursed dreams, which sometimes spread
\nUnwelcome visions of our former years,
\nTill the eye, cheated, opens thick with tears.<\/p>\n
\nWho smooth’d his pillow, as she left the den
\nLook’d back upon him, and a moment stay’d,
\nAnd turn’d, believing that he call’d again.
\nHe slumber’d; yet she thought, at least she said
\n(The heart will slip, even as the tongue and pen),
\nHe had pronounced her name\u2014but she forgot
\nThat at this moment Juan knew it not.<\/p>\n
\nEnjoining silence strict to Zoe, who
\nBetter than her knew what, in fact, she meant,
\nShe being wiser by a year or two:
\nA year or two ‘s an age when rightly spent,
\nAnd Zoe spent hers, as most women do,
\nIn gaining all that useful sort of knowledge
\nWhich is acquired in Nature’s good old college.<\/p>\n
\nFast in his cave, and nothing clash’d upon
\nHis rest; the rushing of the neighbouring rill,
\nAnd the young beams of the excluded sun,
\nTroubled him not, and he might sleep his fill;
\nAnd need he had of slumber yet, for none
\nHad suffer’d more\u2014his hardships were comparative
\nTo those related in my grand-dad’s ‘Narrative.’<\/p>\n
\nAnd started from her sleep, and, turning o’er
\nDream’d of a thousand wrecks, o’er which she stumbled,
\nAnd handsome corpses strew’d upon the shore;
\nAnd woke her maid so early that she grumbled,
\nAnd call’d her father’s old slaves up, who swore
\nIn several oaths\u2014Armenian, Turk, and Greek\u2014
\nThey knew not what to think of such a freak.<\/p>\n
\nWith some pretence about the sun, that makes
\nSweet skies just when he rises, or is set;
\nAnd ‘t is, no doubt, a sight to see when breaks
\nBright Phoebus, while the mountains still are wet
\nWith mist, and every bird with him awakes,
\nAnd night is flung off like a mourning suit
\nWorn for a husband,\u2014or some other brute.<\/p>\n
\nI ‘ve seen him rise full oft, indeed of late
\nI have sat up on purpose all the night,
\nWhich hastens, as physicians say, one’s fate;
\nAnd so all ye, who would be in the right
\nIn health and purse, begin your day to date
\nFrom daybreak, and when coffin’d at fourscore,
\nEngrave upon the plate, you rose at four.<\/p>\n
\nHer own was freshest, though a feverish flush
\nHad dyed it with the headlong blood, whose race
\nFrom heart to cheek is curb’d into a blush,
\nLike to a torrent which a mountain’s base,
\nThat overpowers some Alpine river’s rush,
\nChecks to a lake, whose waves in circles spread;
\nOr the Red Sea\u2014but the sea is not red.<\/p>\n
\nAnd near the cave her quick light footsteps drew,
\nWhile the sun smiled on her with his first flame,
\nAnd young Aurora kiss’d her lips with dew,
\nTaking her for a sister; just the same
\nMistake you would have made on seeing the two,
\nAlthough the mortal, quite as fresh and fair,
\nHad all the advantage, too, of not being air.<\/p>\n
\nAll timidly, yet rapidly, she saw
\nThat like an infant Juan sweetly slept;
\nAnd then she stopp’d, and stood as if in awe
\n(For sleep is awful), and on tiptoe crept
\nAnd wrapt him closer, lest the air, too raw,
\nShould reach his blood, then o’er him still as death
\nBent with hush’d lips, that drank his scarce-drawn breath.<\/p>\n
\nWho die in righteousness, she lean’d; and there
\nAll tranquilly the shipwreck’d boy was lying,
\nAs o’er him the calm and stirless air:
\nBut Zoe the meantime some eggs was frying,
\nSince, after all, no doubt the youthful pair
\nMust breakfast\u2014and betimes, lest they should ask it,
\nShe drew out her provision from the basket.<\/p>\n
\nAnd that a shipwreck’d youth would hungry be;
\nBesides, being less in love, she yawn’d a little,
\nAnd felt her veins chill’d by the neighbouring sea;
\nAnd so, she cook’d their breakfast to a tittle;
\nI can’t say that she gave them any tea,
\nBut there were eggs, fruit, coffee, bread, fish, honey,
\nWith Scio wine,\u2014and all for love, not money.<\/p>\n
\nThe coffee made, would fain have waken’d Juan;
\nBut Haidee stopp’d her with her quick small hand,
\nAnd without word, a sign her finger drew on
\nHer lip, which Zoe needs must understand;
\nAnd, the first breakfast spoilt, prepared a new one,
\nBecause her mistress would not let her break
\nThat sleep which seem’d as it would ne’er awake.<\/p>\n
\nA purple hectic play’d like dying day
\nOn the snow-tops of distant hills; the streak
\nOf sufferance yet upon his forehead lay,
\nWhere the blue veins look’d shadowy, shrunk, and weak;
\nAnd his black curls were dewy with the spray,
\nWhich weigh’d upon them yet, all damp and salt,
\nMix’d with the stony vapours of the vault.<\/p>\n
\nHush’d as the babe upon its mother’s breast,
\nDroop’d as the willow when no winds can breathe,
\nLull’d like the depth of ocean when at rest,
\nFair as the crowning rose of the whole wreath,
\nSoft as the callow cygnet in its nest;
\nIn short, he was a very pretty fellow,
\nAlthough his woes had turn’d him rather yellow.<\/p>\n
\nBut the fair face which met his eyes forbade
\nThose eyes to close, though weariness and pain
\nHad further sleep a further pleasure made;
\nFor woman’s face was never form’d in vain
\nFor Juan, so that even when he pray’d
\nHe turn’d from grisly saints, and martyrs hairy,
\nTo the sweet portraits of the Virgin Mary.<\/p>\n
\nAnd look’d upon the lady, in whose cheek
\nThe pale contended with the purple rose,
\nAs with an effort she began to speak;
\nHer eyes were eloquent, her words would pose,
\nAlthough she told him, in good modern Greek,
\nWith an Ionian accent, low and sweet,
\nThat he was faint, and must not talk, but eat.<\/p>\n
\nBeing no Grecian; but he had an ear,
\nAnd her voice was the warble of a bird,
\nSo soft, so sweet, so delicately clear,
\nThat finer, simpler music ne’er was heard;
\nThe sort of sound we echo with a tear,
\nWithout knowing why\u2014an overpowering tone,
\nWhence Melody descends as from a throne.<\/p>\n
\nBy a distant organ, doubting if he be
\nNot yet a dreamer, till the spell is broke
\nBy the watchman, or some such reality,
\nOr by one’s early valet’s cursed knock;
\nAt least it is a heavy sound to me,
\nWho like a morning slumber\u2014for the night
\nShows stars and women in a better light.<\/p>\n
\nOr sleep, or whatso’er it was, by feeling
\nA most prodigious appetite: the steam
\nOf Zoe’s cookery no doubt was stealing
\nUpon his senses, and the kindling beam
\nOf the new fire, which Zoe kept up, kneeling
\nTo stir her viands, made him quite awake
\nAnd long for food, but chiefly a beef-steak.<\/p>\n
\nGoat’s flesh there is, no doubt, and kid, and mutton;
\nAnd, when a holiday upon them smiles,
\nA joint upon their barbarous spits they put on:
\nBut this occurs but seldom, between whiles,
\nFor some of these are rocks with scarce a hut on;
\nOthers are fair and fertile, among which
\nThis, though not large, was one of the most rich.<\/p>\n
\nThat the old fable of the Minotaur\u2014
\nFrom which our modern morals rightly shrinking
\nCondemn the royal lady’s taste who wore
\nA cow’s shape for a mask\u2014was only (sinking
\nThe allegory) a mere type, no more,
\nThat Pasiphae promoted breeding cattle,
\nTo make the Cretans bloodier in battle.<\/p>\n
\nFed upon beef\u2014I won’t say much of beer,
\nBecause ‘t is liquor only, and being far
\nFrom this my subject, has no business here;
\nWe know, too, they very fond of war,
\nA pleasure\u2014like all pleasures\u2014rather dear;
\nSo were the Cretans\u2014from which I infer
\nThat beef and battles both were owing to her.<\/p>\n
\nHis head upon his elbow, and he saw
\nA sight on which he had not lately gazed,
\nAs all his latter meals had been quite raw,
\nThree or four things, for which the Lord he praised,
\nAnd, feeling still the famish’d vulture gnaw,
\nHe fell upon whate’er was offer’d, like
\nA priest, a shark, an alderman, or pike.<\/p>\n
\nWho watch’d him like a mother, would have fed
\nHim past all bounds, because she smiled to see
\nSuch appetite in one she had deem’d dead;
\nBut Zoe, being older than Haidee,
\nKnew (by tradition, for she ne’er had read)
\nThat famish’d people must be slowly nurst,
\nAnd fed by spoonfuls, else they always burst.<\/p>\n
\nRather by deeds than words, because the case
\nWas urgent, that the gentleman, whose fate
\nHad made her mistress quit her bed to trace
\nThe sea-shore at this hour, must leave his plate,
\nUnless he wish’d to die upon the place\u2014
\nShe snatch’d it, and refused another morsel,
\nSaying, he had gorged enough to make a horse ill.<\/p>\n
\nPair of scarce decent trowsers\u2014went to work,
\nAnd in the fire his recent rags they scatter’d,
\nAnd dress’d him, for the present, like a Turk,
\nOr Greek\u2014that is, although it not much matter’d,
\nOmitting turban, slippers, pistols, dirk,\u2014
\nThey furnish’d him, entire, except some stitches,
\nWith a clean shirt, and very spacious breeches.<\/p>\n
\nBut not a word could Juan comprehend,
\nAlthough he listen’d so that the young Greek in
\nHer earnestness would ne’er have made an end;
\nAnd, as he interrupted not, went eking
\nHer speech out to her protege and friend,
\nTill pausing at the last her breath to take,
\nShe saw he did not understand Romaic.<\/p>\n
\nAnd smiles, and sparkles of the speaking eye,
\nAnd read (the only book she could) the lines
\nOf his fair face, and found, by sympathy,
\nThe answer eloquent, where soul shines
\nAnd darts in one quick glance a long reply;
\nAnd thus in every look she saw exprest
\nA world of words, and things at which she guess’d.<\/p>\n
\nAnd words repeated after her, he took
\nA lesson in her tongue; but by surmise,
\nNo doubt, less of her language than her look:
\nAs he who studies fervently the skies
\nTurns oftener to the stars than to his book,
\nThus Juan learn’d his alpha beta better
\nFrom Haidee’s glance than any graven letter.<\/p>\n
\nBy female lips and eyes\u2014that is, I mean,
\nWhen both the teacher and the taught are young,
\nAs was the case, at least, where I have been;
\nThey smile so when one ‘s right, and when one ‘s wrong
\nThey smile still more, and then there intervene
\nPressure of hands, perhaps even a chaste kiss;\u2014
\nI learn’d the little that I know by this:<\/p>\n
\nItalian not at all, having no teachers;
\nMuch English I cannot pretend to speak,
\nLearning that language chiefly from its preachers,
\nBarrow, South, Tillotson, whom every week
\nI study, also Blair, the highest reachers
\nOf eloquence in piety and prose\u2014
\nI hate your poets, so read none of those.<\/p>\n
\nA wanderer from the British world of fashion,
\nWhere I, like other ‘dogs, have had my day,’
\nLike other men, too, may have had my passion\u2014
\nBut that, like other things, has pass’d away,
\nAnd all her fools whom I could lay the lash on:
\nFoes, friends, men, women, now are nought to me
\nBut dreams of what has been, no more to be.<\/p>\n
\nTo hear new words, and to repeat them; but
\nSome feelings, universal as the sun,
\nWere such as could not in his breast be shut
\nMore than within the bosom of a nun:
\nHe was in love,\u2014as you would be, no doubt,
\nWith a young benefactress,\u2014so was she,
\nJust in the way we very often see.<\/p>\n
\nFor Juan, who was somewhat fond of rest\u2014
\nShe came into the cave, but it was merely
\nTo see her bird reposing in his nest;
\nAnd she would softly stir his locks so curly,
\nWithout disturbing her yet slumbering guest,
\nBreathing all gently o’er his cheek and mouth,
\nAs o’er a bed of roses the sweet south.<\/p>\n
\nAnd every day help’d on his convalescence;
\n‘T was well, because health in the human frame
\nIs pleasant, besides being true love’s essence,
\nFor health and idleness to passion’s flame
\nAre oil and gunpowder; and some good lessons
\nAre also learnt from Ceres and from Bacchus,
\nWithout whom Venus will not long attack us.<\/p>\n
\nLove, though good always, is not quite so good),
\nCeres presents a plate of vermicelli,\u2014
\nFor love must be sustain’d like flesh and blood,\u2014
\nWhile Bacchus pours out wine, or hands a jelly:
\nEggs, oysters, too, are amatory food;
\nBut who is their purveyor from above
\nHeaven knows,\u2014it may be Neptune, Pan, or Jove.<\/p>\n
\nA bath, a breakfast, and the finest eyes
\nThat ever made a youthful heart less steady,
\nBesides her maid’s as pretty for their size;
\nBut I have spoken of all this already\u2014
\nAnd repetition ‘s tiresome and unwise,\u2014
\nWell\u2014Juan, after bathing in the sea,
\nCame always back to coffee and Haidee.<\/p>\n
\nThat bathing pass’d for nothing; Juan seem’d
\nTo her, as ’twere, the kind of being sent,
\nOf whom these two years she had nightly dream’d,
\nA something to be loved, a creature meant
\nTo be her happiness, and whom she deem’d
\nTo render happy; all who joy would win
\nMust share it,\u2014Happiness was born a twin.<\/p>\n
\nEnlargement of existence to partake
\nNature with him, to thrill beneath his touch,
\nTo watch him slumbering, and to see him wake:
\nTo live with him forever were too much;
\nBut then the thought of parting made her quake;
\nHe was her own, her ocean-treasure, cast
\nLike a rich wreck\u2014her first love, and her last.<\/p>\n
\nPaid daily visits to her boy, and took
\nSuch plentiful precautions, that still he
\nRemain’d unknown within his craggy nook;
\nAt last her father’s prows put out to sea
\nFor certain merchantmen upon the look,
\nNot as of yore to carry off an Io,
\nBut three Ragusan vessels, bound for Scio.<\/p>\n
\nSo that, her father being at sea, she was
\nFree as a married woman, or such other
\nFemale, as where she likes may freely pass,
\nWithout even the incumbrance of a brother,
\nThe freest she that ever gazed on glass;
\nI speak of Christian lands in this comparison,
\nWhere wives, at least, are seldom kept in garrison.<\/p>\n
\n(For they must talk), and he had learnt to say
\nSo much as to propose to take a walk,\u2014
\nFor little had he wander’d since the day
\nOn which, like a young flower snapp’d from the stalk,
\nDrooping and dewy on the beach he lay,\u2014
\nAnd thus they walk’d out in the afternoon,
\nAnd saw the sun set opposite the moon.<\/p>\n
\nWith cliffs above, and a broad sandy shore,
\nGuarded by shoals and rocks as by an host,
\nWith here and there a creek, whose aspect wore
\nA better welcome to the tempest-tost;
\nAnd rarely ceased the haughty billow’s roar,
\nSave on the dead long summer days, which make
\nThe outstretch’d ocean glitter like a lake.<\/p>\n
\nScarcely o’erpass’d the cream of your champagne,
\nWhen o’er the brim the sparkling bumpers reach,
\nThat spring-dew of the spirit! the heart’s rain!
\nFew things surpass old wine; and they may preach
\nWho please,\u2014the more because they preach in vain,\u2014
\nLet us have wine and women, mirth and laughter,
\nSermons and soda-water the day after.<\/p>\n
\nThe best of life is but intoxication:
\nGlory, the grape, love, gold, in these are sunk
\nThe hopes of all men, and of every nation;
\nWithout their sap, how branchless were the trunk
\nOf life’s strange tree, so fruitful on occasion:
\nBut to return,\u2014Get very drunk; and when
\nYou wake with headache, you shall see what then.<\/p>\n
\nSome hock and soda-water, then you ‘ll know
\nA pleasure worthy Xerxes the great king;
\nFor not the bless’d sherbet, sublimed with snow,
\nNor the first sparkle of the desert-spring,
\nNor Burgundy in all its sunset glow,
\nAfter long travel, ennui, love, or slaughter,
\nVie with that draught of hock and soda-water.<\/p>\n
\nWas just describing\u2014Yes, it was the coast\u2014
\nLay at this period quiet as the sky,
\nThe sands untumbled, the blue waves untost,
\nAnd all was stillness, save the sea-bird’s cry,
\nAnd dolphin’s leap, and little billow crost
\nBy some low rock or shelve, that made it fret
\nAgainst the boundary it scarcely wet.<\/p>\n
\nAs I have said, upon an expedition;
\nAnd mother, brother, guardian, she had none,
\nSave Zoe, who, although with due precision
\nShe waited on her lady with the sun,
\nThought daily service was her only mission,
\nBringing warm water, wreathing her long tresses,
\nAnd asking now and then for cast-off dresses.<\/p>\n
\nRed sun sinks down behind the azure hill,
\nWhich then seems as if the whole earth it bounded,
\nCircling all nature, hush’d, and dim, and still,
\nWith the far mountain-crescent half surrounded
\nOn one side, and the deep sea calm and chill
\nUpon the other, and the rosy sky,
\nWith one star sparkling through it like an eye.<\/p>\n
\nOver the shining pebbles and the shells,
\nGlided along the smooth and harden’d sand,
\nAnd in the worn and wild receptacles
\nWork’d by the storms, yet work’d as it were plann’d,
\nIn hollow halls, with sparry roofs and cells,
\nThey turn’d to rest; and, each clasp’d by an arm,
\nYielded to the deep twilight’s purple charm.<\/p>\n
\nSpread like a rosy ocean, vast and bright;
\nThey gazed upon the glittering sea below,
\nWhence the broad moon rose circling into sight;
\nThey heard the wave’s splash, and the wind so low,
\nAnd saw each other’s dark eyes darting light
\nInto each other\u2014and, beholding this,
\nTheir lips drew near, and clung into a kiss;<\/p>\n
\nAnd beauty, all concentrating like rays
\nInto one focus, kindled from above;
\nSuch kisses as belong to early days,
\nWhere heart, and soul, and sense, in concert move,
\nAnd the blood ‘s lava, and the pulse a blaze,
\nEach kiss a heart-quake,\u2014for a kiss’s strength,
\nI think, it must be reckon’d by its length.<\/p>\n
\nHeaven knows how long\u2014no doubt they never reckon’d;
\nAnd if they had, they could not have secured
\nThe sum of their sensations to a second:
\nThey had not spoken; but they felt allured,
\nAs if their souls and lips each other beckon’d,
\nWhich, being join’d, like swarming bees they clung\u2014
\nTheir hearts the flowers from whence the honey sprung.<\/p>\n
\nWho shut in chambers think it loneliness;
\nThe silent ocean, and the starlight bay,
\nThe twilight glow which momently grew less,
\nThe voiceless sands and dropping caves, that lay
\nAround them, made them to each other press,
\nAs if there were no life beneath the sky
\nSave theirs, and that their life could never die.<\/p>\n
\nThey felt no terrors from the night, they were
\nAll in all to each other: though their speech
\nWas broken words, they thought a language there,\u2014
\nAnd all the burning tongues the passions teach
\nFound in one sigh the best interpreter
\nOf nature’s oracle\u2014first love,\u2014that all
\nWhich Eve has left her daughters since her fall.<\/p>\n
\nNor offer’d any; she had never heard
\nOf plight and promises to be a spouse,
\nOr perils by a loving maid incurr’d;
\nShe was all which pure ignorance allows,
\nAnd flew to her young mate like a young bird;
\nAnd, never having dreamt of falsehood, she
\nHad not one word to say of constancy.<\/p>\n
\nAnd she was worshipp’d; after nature’s fashion,
\nTheir intense souls, into each other pour’d,
\nIf souls could die, had perish’d in that passion,\u2014
\nBut by degrees their senses were restored,
\nAgain to be o’ercome, again to dash on;
\nAnd, beating ‘gainst his bosom, Haidee’s heart
\nFelt as if never more to beat apart.<\/p>\n
\nSo lonely, loving, helpless, and the hour
\nWas that in which the heart is always full,
\nAnd, having o’er itself no further power,
\nPrompts deeds eternity can not annul,
\nBut pays off moments in an endless shower
\nOf hell-fire\u2014all prepared for people giving
\nPleasure or pain to one another living.<\/p>\n
\nSo loving and so lovely\u2014till then never,
\nExcepting our first parents, such a pair
\nHad run the risk of being damn’d for ever;
\nAnd Haidee, being devout as well as fair,
\nHad, doubtless, heard about the Stygian river,
\nAnd hell and purgatory\u2014but forgot
\nJust in the very crisis she should not.<\/p>\n
\nGleam in the moonlight; and her white arm clasps
\nRound Juan’s head, and his around her lies
\nHalf buried in the tresses which it grasps;
\nShe sits upon his knee, and drinks his sighs,
\nHe hers, until they end in broken gasps;
\nAnd thus they form a group that ‘s quite antique,
\nHalf naked, loving, natural, and Greek.<\/p>\n
\nAnd Juan sunk to sleep within her arms,
\nShe slept not, but all tenderly, though fast,
\nSustain’d his head upon her bosom’s charms;
\nAnd now and then her eye to heaven is cast,
\nAnd then on the pale cheek her breast now warms,
\nPillow’d on her o’erflowing heart, which pants
\nWith all it granted, and with all it grants.<\/p>\n
\nA child the moment when it drains the breast,
\nA devotee when soars the Host in sight,
\nAn Arab with a stranger for a guest,
\nA sailor when the prize has struck in fight,
\nA miser filling his most hoarded chest,
\nFeel rapture; but not such true joy are reaping
\nAs they who watch o’er what they love while sleeping.<\/p>\n
\nAll that it hath of life with us is living;
\nSo gentle, stirless, helpless, and unmoved,
\nAnd all unconscious of the joy ‘t is giving;
\nAll it hath felt, inflicted, pass’d, and proved,
\nHush’d into depths beyond the watcher’s diving:
\nThere lies the thing we love with all its errors
\nAnd all its charms, like death without its terrors.<\/p>\n
\nOf Love’s, and Night’s, and Ocean’s solitude,
\nO’erflow’d her soul with their united power;
\nAmidst the barren sand and rocks so rude
\nShe and her wave-worn love had made their bower,
\nWhere nought upon their passion could intrude,
\nAnd all the stars that crowded the blue space
\nSaw nothing happier than her glowing face.<\/p>\n
\nTo be a lovely and a fearful thing;
\nFor all of theirs upon that die is thrown,
\nAnd if ‘t is lost, life hath no more to bring
\nTo them but mockeries of the past alone,
\nAnd their revenge is as the tiger’s spring,
\nDeadly, and quick, and crushing; yet, as real
\nTorture is theirs, what they inflict they feel.<\/p>\n
\nIs always so to women; one sole bond
\nAwaits them, treachery is all their trust;
\nTaught to conceal, their bursting hearts despond
\nOver their idol, till some wealthier lust
\nBuys them in marriage\u2014and what rests beyond?
\nA thankless husband, next a faithless lover,
\nThen dressing, nursing, praying, and all ‘s over.<\/p>\n
\nSome mind their household, others dissipation,
\nSome run away, and but exchange their cares,
\nLosing the advantage of a virtuous station;
\nFew changes e’er can better their affairs,
\nTheirs being an unnatural situation,
\nFrom the dull palace to the dirty hovel:
\nSome play the devil, and then write a novel.<\/p>\n
\nHaidee was Passion’s child, born where the sun
\nShowers triple light, and scorches even the kiss
\nOf his gazelle-eyed daughters; she was one
\nMade but to love, to feel that she was his
\nWho was her chosen: what was said or done
\nElsewhere was nothing. She had naught to fear,
\nHope, care, nor love, beyond, her heart beat here.<\/p>\n
\nHow much it costs us! yet each rising throb
\nIs in its cause as its effect so sweet,
\nThat Wisdom, ever on the watch to rob
\nJoy of its alchymy, and to repeat
\nFine truths; even Conscience, too, has a tough job
\nTo make us understand each good old maxim,
\nSo good\u2014I wonder Castlereagh don’t tax ’em.<\/p>\n
\nTheir hearts; the stars, their nuptial torches, shed
\nBeauty upon the beautiful they lighted:
\nOcean their witness, and the cave their bed,
\nBy their own feelings hallow’d and united,
\nTheir priest was Solitude, and they were wed:
\nAnd they were happy, for to their young eyes
\nEach was an angel, and earth paradise.<\/p>\n