Don Juan
Page 18
In short it is the use of our own eyes,
With one or two small senses added, just
To hint that flesh is formed of fiery dust.
213
Yet’tis a painful feeling, and unwilling,
For surely if we always could perceive
In the same object graces quite as killing
As when she rose upon us like an Eve,
’Twould save us many a heartache, many a shilling
(For we must get them anyhow or grieve),
Whereas if one sole lady pleased forever,
How pleasant for the heart, as well as liver!
214
The heart is like the sky, a part of heaven,
But changes night and day too, like the sky.
Now o’er it clouds and thunder must be driven,
And darkness and destruction as on high,
But when it hath been scorched and pierced and riven,
Its storms expire in water drops. The eye
Pours forth at last the heart’s blood turned to tears,
Which make the English climate of our years.
215
The liver is the lazaret of bile,
But very rarely executes its function,
For the first passion stays there such a while
That all the rest creep in and form a junction,
Like knots of vipers on a dunghill’s soil –
Rage, fear, hate, jealousy, revenge, compunction –
So that all mischiefs spring up from this entrail,
Like earthquakes from the hidden fire called ‘central’.
216
In the meantime, without proceeding more
In this anatomy, I’ve finished now
Two hundred and odd stanzas as before,
That being about the number I’ll allow
Each canto of the twelve or twenty-four;
And laying down my pen, I make my bow,
Leaving Don Juan and Haidée to plead
For them and theirs with all who deign to read.
Canto III
1
Hail Muse! et cetera. We left Juan sleeping,
Pillowed upon a fair and happy breast,
And watched by eyes that never yet knew weeping,
And loved by a young heart, too deeply blest
To feel the poison through her spirit creeping,
Or know who rested there. A foe to rest
Had soiled the current of her sinless years
And turned her pure heart’s purest blood to tears.
2
Oh love, what is it in this world of ours
Which makes it fatal to be loved? Ah why
With cypress branches hast thou wreathed thy bowers
And made thy best interpreter a sigh?
As those who dote on odours pluck the flowers
And place them on their breast – but place to the;
Thus the frail beings we would fondly cherish
Are laid within our bosoms but to perish.
3
In her first passion woman loves her lover,
In all the others all she loves is love,
Which grows a habit she can ne’er get over
And fits her loosely like an easy glove,
As you may find whene’er you like to prove her.
One man alone at first her heart can move;
She then prefers him in the plural number,
Not finding that the additions much encumber.
4
I know not if the fault be men’s or theirs,
But one thing’s pretty sure: a woman planted
(Unless at once she plunge for life in prayers)
After a decent time must be gallanted,
Although no doubt her first of love affairs
Is that to which her heart is wholly granted.
Yet there are some, they say, who have had none,
But those who have ne’er end with only one.
5
’Tis melancholy and a fearful sign
Of human frailty, folly, also crime,
That love and marriage rarely can combine,
Although they both are born in the same clime.
Marriage from love, like vinegar from wine –
A sad, sour, sober beverage – by time
Is sharpened from its high celestial flavour
Down to a very homely household savour.
6
There’s something of antipathy, as’twere,
Between their present and their future state.
A kind of flattery that’s hardly fair
Is used until the truth arrives too late.
Yet what can people do, except despair?
The same things change their names at such a rate;
For instance, passion in a lover’s glorious,
But in a husband is pronounced uxorious.
7
Men grow ashamed of being so very fond;
They sometimes also get a little tired
(But that, of course, is rare) and then despond.
The same things cannot always be admired,
Yet’tis ‘so nominated in the bond’
That both are tied till one shall have expired.
Sad thought! to lose the spouse that was adorning
Our days, and put one’s servants into mourning.
8
There’s doubtless something in domestic doings,
Which forms in fact true love’s antithesis.
Romances paint at full length people’s wooings,
But only give a bust of marriages,
For no one cares for matrimonial cooings;
There’s nothing wrong in a connubial kiss.
Think you, if Laura had been Petrarch’s wife,
He would have written sonnets all his life?
9
All tragedies are finished by a death,
All comedies are ended by a marriage.
The future states of both are left to faith,
For authors fear description might disparage
The worlds to come of both, or fall beneath,
And then both worlds would punish their miscarriage.
So leaving each their priest and prayer book ready,
They say no more of death or of the lady.
10
The only two that in my recollection
Have sung of heaven and hell, or marriage, are
Dante and Milton, and of both the affection
Was hapless in their nuptials, for some bar
Of fault or temper ruined the connexion
(Such things in fact it don’t ask much to mar);
But Dante’s Beatrice and Milton’s Eve
Were not drawn from their spouses, you conceive.
11
Some persons say that Dante meant theology
By Beatrice, and not a mistress. I,
Although my opinion may require apology,
Deem this a commentator’s phantasy,
Unless indeed it was from his own knowledge he
Decided thus and showed good reason why.
I think that Dante’s more abstruse ecstatics
Meant to personify the mathematics.
12
Haidée and Juan were not married, but
The fault was theirs, not mine. It is not fair,
Chaste reader, then in any way to put
The blame on me, unless you wish they were.
Then if you’d have them wedded, please to shut
The book which treats of this erroneous pair,
Before the consequences grow too awful;
’Tis dangerous to read of loves unlawful.
13
Yet they were happy – happy in the illicit
Indulgence of their innocent desires;
But more imprudent grown with every visit,
Haidée forgot the island was her sire’s.
When we have what we like,’tis hard to miss it,
Thus she came often, not a moment losing,
Whilst her piratical papa was cruising.
14
Let not his mode of raising cash seem strange,
Although he fleeced the flags of every nation,
For into a prime minister but change
His title, and’tis nothing but taxation.
But he, more modest, took an humbler range
Of life and in an honester vocation
Pursued o’er the high seas his watery journey
And merely practised as a sea-attorney.
15
The good old gentleman had been detained
By winds and waves and some important captures,
And in the hope of more, at sea remained,
Although a squall or two had damped his raptures
By swamping one of the prizes. He had chained
His prisoners, dividing them like chapters
In numbered lots; they all had cuffs and collars,
And averaged each from ten to a hundred dollars.
16
Some he disposed of off Cape Matapan
Among his friends the Mainots. Some he sold
To his Tunis correspondents, save one man
Tossed overboard unsaleable (being old).
The rest – save here and there some richer one,
Reserved for future ransom – in the hold
Were linked alike, as, for the common people, he
Had a large order from the Dey of Tripoli.
17
The merchandise was served in the same way,
Pieced out for different marts in the Levant,
Except some certain portions of the prey,
Light classic articles of female want –
French stuffs, lace, tweezers, toothpicks, teapot, tray,
Guitars and castanets from Alicant,
All which selected from the spoil he gathers,
Robbed for his daughter by the best of fathers.
18
A monkey, a Dutch mastiff, a macaw,
Two parrots, with a Persian cat and kittens,
He chose from several animals he saw –
A terrier too, which once had been a Briton’s,
Who dying on the coast of Ithaca,
The peasants gave the poor dumb thing a pittance.
These to secure in this strong blowing weather,
He caged in one huge hamper altogether.
19
Then having settled his marine affairs,
Dispatching single cruisers here and there,
His vessel having need of some repairs,
He shaped his course to where his daughter fair
Continued still her hospitable cares;
But that part of the coast being shoal and bare,
And rough with reefs which ran out many a mile,
His port lay on the other side o’ the isle.
20
And there he went ashore without delay,
Having no customhouse nor quarantine
To ask him awkward questions on the way
About the time and place where he had been.
He left his ship to be hove down next day
With orders to the people to careen,
So that all hands were busy beyond measure
In getting out goods, ballast, guns, and treasure.
21
Arriving at the summit of a hill
Which overlooked the white walls of his home,
He stopped. What singular emotions fill
Their bosoms who have been induced to roam!
With fluttering doubts if all be well or ill,
With love for many and with fears for some –
All feelings which o’erleap the years long lost
And bring our hearts back to their starting-post.
22
The approach of home to husbands and to sires,
After long travelling by land or water,
Most naturally some small doubt inspires.
A female family’s a serious matter
(None trusts the sex more or so much admires,
But they hate flattery, so I never flatter).
Wives in their husbands’ absences grow subtler,
And daughters sometimes run off with the butler.
23
An honest gentleman at his return
May not have the good fortune of Ulysses;
Not all lone matrons for their husbands mourn,
Or show the same dislike to suitors’ kisses.
The odds are that he finds a handsome urn
To his memory, and two or three young misses
Born to some friend, who holds his wife and riches,
And that his Argus bites him by the breeches.
24
If single, probably his plighted fair
Has in his absence wedded some rich miser;
But all the better, for the happy pair
May quarrel, and the lady growing wiser,
He may resume his amatory care
As cavalier servente, or despise her,
And that his sorrow may not be a dumb one,
Write odes on the inconstancy of woman.
25
And oh ye gentlemen who have already
Some chaste liaison of the kind – I mean
An honest friendship with a married lady,
The only thing of this sort ever seen
To last – of all connexions the most steady,
And the true Hymen (the first’s but a screen).
Yet for all that keep not too long away;
I’ve known the absent wronged four times a day.
26
Lambro, our sea-solicitor, who had
Much less experience of dry land than ocean,
On seeing his own chimney smoke, felt glad,
But not knowing metaphysics, had no notion
Of the true reason of his not being sad,
Or that of any other strong emotion.
He loved his child and would have wept the loss of her,
But knew the cause no more than a philosopher.
27
He saw his white walls shining in the sun,
His garden trees all shadowy and green.
He heard his rivulet’s light bubbling run,
The distant dog bark, and perceived between
The umbrage of the wood so cool and dun
The moving figures and the sparkling sheen
Of arms (in the East all arm) and various dyes
Of coloured garbs, as bright as butterflies.
28
And as the spot where they appear he nears,
Surprised at these unwonted signs of idling,
He hears, alas, no music of the spheres,
But an unhallowed, earthly sound of fiddling,
A melody which made him doubt his ears,
The cause being past his guessing or unriddling,
A pipe too and a drum, and shortly after,
A most unoriental roar of laughter.
29
And still more nearly to the place advancing,
Descending rather quickly the declivity
Through the waved branches, o’er the greensward glancing,
’Midst other indications of festivity,
Seeing a troop of his domestics dancing
Like dervises, who turn as on a pivot, he
Perceived it was the Pyrrhic dance so martial,
To which the Levantines are very partial.
30
And further on a group of Grecian girls,
The first and tallest her white kerchief waving,
Were strung together like a row of pearls,
Linked hand in hand and dancing, each too having
Down her white neck long floating auburn curls
(The least of which would set ten poets raving).
Their leader sang; and bounded to her
song
With choral step and voice, the virgin throng.
31
And here assembled cross-legged round their trays,
Small social parties just begun to dine.
Pilaus and meats of all sorts met the gaze,
And flasks of Samian and of Chian wine,
And sherbet cooling in the porous vase.
Above them their dessert grew on its vine,
The orange and pomegranate nodding o’er,
Dropped in their laps, scarce plucked, their mellow store.
32
A band of children round a snow-white ram
There wreathe his venerable horns with flowers,
While peaceful as if still an unweaned lamb,
The patriarch of the flock all gently cowers
His sober head, majestically tame,
Or eats from out the palm or playful lowers
His brow as if in act to butt, and then
Yielding to their small hands, draws back again.
33
Their classical profiles and glittering dresses,
Their large black eyes and soft seraphic cheeks,
Crimson as cleft pomegranates, their long tresses,
The gesture which enchants, the eye that speaks,
The innocence which happy childhood blesses
Made quite a picture of these little Greeks,
So that the philosophical beholder
Sighed for their sakes, that they should e’er grow older.
34
Afar, a dwarf buffoon stood telling tales
To a sedate grey circle of old smokers,
Of secret treasures found in hidden vales,
Of wonderful replies from Arab jokers,
Of charms to make good gold and cure bad ails,
Of rocks bewitched that open to the knockers,
Of magic ladies who by one sole act
Transformed their lords to beasts (but that’s a fact).
35
Here was no lack of innocent diversion
For the imagination or the senses,
Song, dance, wine, music, stories from the Persian,
All pretty pastimes in which no offence is.
But Lambro saw all these things with aversion,
Perceiving in his absence such expenses,
Dreading that climax of all human ills,
The inflammation of his weekly bills.
36
Ah, what is man? What perils still environ
The happiest mortals even after dinner!
A day of gold from out an age of iron
Is all that life allows the luckiest sinner.
Pleasure (whene’er she sings, at least)’s a siren,
That lures to flay alive the young beginner.
Lambro’s reception at his people’s banquet
Was such as fire accords to a wet blanket.
37
He – being a man who seldom used a word
Too much and wishing gladly to surprise
(In general he surprised men with the sword)
His daughter – had not sent before to advise