(A virgin always on her maid relies)
To place him in the cave for present rest.
And when at last he opened his black eyes,
Their charity increased about their guest,
And their compassion grew to such a size
It opened half the turnpike gates to heaven
(St Paul says’tis the toll which must be given).
132
They made a fire, but such a fire as they
Upon the moment could contrive with such
Materials as were cast up round the bay,
Some broken planks and oars, that to the touch
Were nearly tinder, since so long they lay;
A mast was almost crumbled to a crutch,
But by God’s grace, here wrecks were in such plenty
That there was fuel to have furnished twenty.
133
He had a bed of furs and a pelisse,
For Haidée stripped her sables off to make
His couch, and that he might be more at ease
And warm, in case by chance he should awake,
They also gave a petticoat apiece,
She and her maid, and promised by daybreak
To pay him a fresh visit with a dish
For breakfast of eggs, coffee, bread, and fish.
134
And thus they left him to his lone repose.
Juan slept like a top or like the dead,
Who sleep at last perhaps (God only knows),
Just for the present. And in his lulled head
Not even a vision of his former woes
Throbbed in accurséd dreams, which sometimes spread
Unwelcome visions of our former years,
Till the eye, cheated, opens thick with tears.
135
Young Juan slept all dreamless, but the maid,
Who smoothed his pillow as she left the den,
Looked back upon him and a moment stayed
And turned, believing that he called again.
He slumbered, yet she thought, at least she said
(The heart will slip even as the tongue and pen),
He had pronounced her name, but she forgot
That at this moment Juan knew it not.
136
And pensive to her father’s house she went,
Enjoining silence strict to Zoe, who
Better than her knew what in fact she meant,
She being wiser by a year or two.
A year or two’s an age when rightly spent,
And Zoe spent hers, as most women do,
In gaining all that useful sort of knowledge
Which is acquired in Nature’s good old college.
137
The morn broke, and found Juan slumbering still
Fast in his cave, and nothing clashed upon
His rest. The rushing of the neighbouring rill
And the young beams of the excluded sun
Troubled him not, and he might sleep his fill.
And need he had of slumber yet, for none
Had suffered more; his hardships were comparative
To those related in my grand-dad’s narrative.
138
Not so Haidée; she sadly tossed and tumbled
And started from her sleep, and turning o’er,
Dreamed of a thousand wrecks, o’er which she stumbled,
And handsome corpses strewed upon the shore,
And woke her maid so early that she grumbled,
And called her father’s old slaves up, who swore
In several oaths – Armenian, Turk, and Greek –
They knew not what to think of such a freak.
139
But up she got and up she made them get,
With some pretence about the sun, that makes
Sweet skies just when he rises or is set.
And’tis no doubt a sight to see when breaks
Bright Phoebus while the mountains still are wet
With mist, and every bird with him awakes,
And night is flung off like a mourning suit
Worn for a husband, or some other brute.
140
I say, the sun is a most glorious sight.
I’ve seen him rise full oft; indeed of late
I have sate up on purpose all the night,
Which hastens, as physicians say, one’s fate.
And so all ye who would be in the right
In health and purse, begin your day to date
From daybreak, and when coffined at fourscore,
Engrave upon the plate, you rose at four.
141
And Haidée met the morning face to face.
Her own was freshest, though a feverish flush
Had dyed it with the headlong blood, whose race
From heart to cheek is curbed into a blush,
Like to a torrent which a mountain’s base,
That overpowers some alpine river’s rush,
Checks to a lake, whose waves in circles spread;
Or the Red Sea – but the sea is not red.
142
And down the cliff the island virgin came,
And near the cave her quick light footsteps drew,
While the sun smiled on her with his first flame,
And young Aurora kissed her lips with dew,
Taking her for a sister. Just the same
Mistake you would have made on seeing the two,
Although the mortal, quite as fresh and fair,
Had all the advantage too of not being air.
143
And when into the cavern Haidée stepped
All timidly, yet rapidly, she saw
That like an infant Juan sweetly slept.
And then she stopped and stood as if in awe
(For sleep is awful) and on tiptoe crept
And wrapt him closer, lest the air, too raw,
Should reach his blood, then o’er him still as death
Bent, with hushed lips, that drank his scarce drawn breath.
144
And thus like to an angel o’er the dying
Who die in righteousness she leaned; and there
All tranquilly the shipwrecked boy was lying,
As o’er him lay the calm and stirless air.
But Zoe the meantime some eggs was frying,
Since, after all, no doubt the youthful pair
Must breakfast; and betimes, lest they should ask it,
She drew out her provision from the basket.
145
She knew that the best feelings must have victual,
And that a shipwrecked youth would hungry be.
Besides, being less in love, she yawned a little
And felt her veins chilled by the neighbouring sea.
And so she cooked their breakfast to a tittle;
I can’t say that she gave them any tea,
But there were eggs, fruit, coffee, bread, fish, honey,
With Scio wine, and all for love, not money.
146
And Zoe, when the eggs were ready and
The coffee made, would fain have wakened Juan,
But Haidée stopped her with her quick small hand,
And without word, a sign her finger drew on
Her lip, which Zoe needs must understand,
And the first breakfast spoilt, prepared a new one,
Because her mistress would not let her break
That sleep which seemed as it would ne’er awake.
147
For still he lay, and on his thin worn cheek
A purple hectic played like dying day
On the snow-tops of distant hills. The streak
Of sufferance yet upon his forehead lay,
Where the blue veins looked shadowy, shrunk, and weak;
And his black curls were dewy with the spray,
Which weighed upon them yet, all damp and salt,
Mixed with the stony vapours of the vault.
> 148
And she bent o’er him, and he lay beneath,
Hushed as the babe upon its mother’s breast,
Drooped as the willow when no winds can breathe,
Lulled like the depth of ocean when at rest,
Fair as the crowning rose of the whole wreath,
Soft as the callow cygnet in its nest.
In short he was a very pretty fellow,
Although his woes had turned him rather yellow.
149
He woke and gazed and would have slept again,
But the fair face which met his eyes forbade
Those eyes to close, though weariness and pain
Had further sleep a further pleasure made;
For woman’s face was never formed in vain
For Juan, so that even when he prayed
He turned from grisly saints and martyrs hairy
To the sweet portraits of the Virgin Mary.
150
And thus upon his elbow he arose
And looked upon the lady, in whose cheek
The pale contended with the purple rose,
As with an effort she began to speak.
Her eyes were eloquent, her words would pose,
Although she told him in good modern Greek
With an Ionian accent, low and sweet,
That he was faint and must not talk, but eat.
151
Now Juan could not understand a word,
Being no Grecian, but he had an ear,
And her voice was the warble of a bird,
So soft, so sweet, so delicately clear
That finer, simpler music ne’er was heard,
The sort of sound we echo with a tear,
Without knowing why, an overpowering tone,
Whence melody descends as from a throne.
152
And Juan gazed as one who is awoke
By a distant organ, doubting if he be
Not yet a dreamer, till the spell is broke
By the watchman or some such reality,
Or by one’s early valet’s curséd knock.
At least it is a heavy sound to me,
Who like a morning slumber; for the night
Shows stars and women in a better light.
153
And Juan too was helped out from his dream
Or sleep, or whatsoe’er it was, by feeling
A most prodigious appetite. The steam
Of Zoe’s cookery no doubt was stealing
Upon his senses, and the kindling beam
Of the new fire, which Zoe kept up, kneeling
To stir her viands, made him quite awake
And long for food, but chiefly a beefsteak.
154
But beef is rare within these oxless isles;
Goat’s flesh there is, no doubt, and kid and mutton.
And when a holiday upon them smiles,
A joint upon their barbarous spits they put on.
But this occurs but seldom, between whiles,
For some of these are rocks with scarce a hut on;
Others are fair and fertile, among which
This, though not large, was one of the most rich.
155
I say that beef is rare, and can’t help thinking
That the old fable of the Minotaur –
From which our modern morals, rightly shrinking,
Condemn the royal lady’s taste who wore
A cow’s shape for a mask – was only (sinking
The allegory) a mere type, no more,
That Pasiphae promoted breeding cattle,
To make the Cretans bloodier in battle.
156
For we all know that English people are
Fed upon beef. I won’t say much of beer,
Because’tis liquor only, and being far
From this my subject, has no business here.
We know too they are very fond of war,
A pleasure, like all pleasures, rather dear;
So were the Cretans, from which I infer
That beef and battles both were owing to her.
157
But to resume. The languid Juan raised
His head upon his elbow and he saw
A sight on which he had not lately gazed,
As all his latter meals had been quite raw,
Three or four things, for which the Lord he praised,
And feeling still the famished vulture gnaw,
He fell upon whate’er was offered, like
A priest, a shark, an alderman, or pike.
158
He ate, and he was well supplied, and she,
Who watched him like a mother, would have fed
Him past all bounds, because she smiled to see
Such appetite in one she had deemed dead.
But Zoe, being older than Haidée,
Knew (by tradition, for she ne’er had read)
That famished people must be slowly nurst
And fed by spoonfuls, else they always burst.
159
And so she took the liberty to state,
Rather by deeds than words, because the case
Was urgent, that the gentleman whose fate
Had made her mistress quit her bed to trace
The seashore at this hour must leave his plate,
Unless he wished to die upon the place.
She snatched it and refused another morsel,
Saying, he had gorged enough to make a horse ill.
160
Next they – he being naked, save a tattered
Pair of scarce decent trousers – went to work
And in the fire his recent rags they scattered,
And dressed him, for the present, like a Turk
Or Greek; that is, although it not much mattered,
Omitting turban, slippers, pistols, dirk,
They furnished him, entire except some stitches,
With a clean shirt and very spacious breeches.
161
And then fair Haidée tried her tongue at speaking,
But not a word could Juan comprehend,
Although he listened so that the young Greek in
Her earnestness would ne’er have made an end,
And as he interrupted not, went eking
Her speech out to her protégé and friend,
Till pausing at the last her breath to take,
She saw he did not understand Romaic.
162
And then she had recourse to nods and signs
And smiles and sparkles of the speaking eye,
And read (the only book she could) the lines
Of his fair face and found, by sympathy,
The answer eloquent, where the soul shines
And darts in one quick glance a long reply;
And thus in every look she saw exprest
A world of words, and things at which she guessed.
163
And now by dint of fingers and of eyes
And words repeated after her, he took
A lesson in her tongue, but by surmise
No doubt less of her language than her look.
As he who studies fervently the skies
Turns oftener to the stars than to his book,
Thus Juan learned his alpha beta better
From Haidée’s glance than any graven letter.
164
’Tis pleasing to be schooled in a strange tongue
By female lips and eyes, that is, I mean,
When both the teacher and the taught are young,
As was the case at least where I have been.
They smile so when one’s right, and when one’s wrong
They smile still more, and then there intervene
Pressure of hands, perhaps even a chaste kiss.
I learned the little that I know by this;
165
That is, some words of Spanish, Turk, and Greek,
Italian not at all, having no
teachers.
Much English I cannot pretend to speak,
Learning that language chiefly from its preachers,
Barrow, South, Tillotson, whom every week
I study, also Blair, the highest reachers
Of eloquence in piety and prose.
I hate your poets, so read none of those.
166
As for the ladies, I have nought to say,
A wanderer from the British world of fashion,
Where I, like other ‘dogs, have had my day’,
Like other men too, may have had my passion,
But that, like other things, has passed away,
And all her fools whom I could lay the lash on,
Foes, friends, men, women, now are nought to me
But dreams of what has been, no more to be.
167
Return we to Don Juan. He begun
To hear new words and to repeat them; but
Some feelings, universal as the sun,
Were such as could not in his breast be shut
More than within the bosom of a nun.
He was in love, as you would be no doubt,
With a young benefactress; so was she,
Just in the way we very often see.
168
And every day by daybreak, rather early
For Juan, who was somewhat fond of rest,
She came into the cave, but it was merely
To see her bird reposing in his nest.
And she would softly stir his locks so curly,
Without disturbing her yet slumbering guest,
Breathing all gently o’er his cheek and mouth,
As o’er a bed of roses the sweet south.
169
And every morn his colour freshlier came,
And every day helped on his convalescence.
’Twas well, because health in the human frame
Is pleasant, besides being true love’s essence,
For health and idleness to passion’s flame
Are oil and gunpowder; and some good lessons
Are also learnt from Ceres and from Bacchus,
Without whom Venus will not long attack us.
170
While Venus fills the heart (without heart really
Love, though good always, is not quite so good),
Ceres presents a plate of vermicelli
(For love must be sustained like flesh and blood),
While Bacchus pours out wine or hands a jelly.
Eggs, oysters too, are amatory food,
But who is their purveyor from above
Heaven knows; it may be Neptune, Pan, or Jove.
171
When Juan woke he found some good things ready,
A bath, a breakfast, and the finest eyes
That ever made a youthful heart less steady,
Besides her maid’s, as pretty for their size;
But I have spoken of all this already,
And repetition’s tiresome and unwise.
Well, Juan, after bathing in the sea,
Don Juan Page 16