Is this a fancy which our reason scorns?
Ah, surely nothing dies but something mourns.
109
When Nero perished by the justest doom
Which ever the destroyer yet destroyed
Amidst the roar of liberated Rome,
Of nations freed, and the world overjoyed,
Some hands unseen strewed flowers upon his tomb –
Perhaps the weakness of a heart not void
Of feeling for some kindness done when power
Had left the wretch an uncorrupted hour.
110
But I’m digressing. What on earth has Nero
Or any such like sovereign buffoons
To do with the transactions of my hero,
More than such madmen’s fellow man – the moon’s?
Sure my invention must be down at zero,
And I grown one of many ‘wooden spoons’
Of verse (the name with which we Cantabs please
To dub the last of honours in degrees).
111
I feel this tediousness will never do;
’Tis being too epic, and I must cut down
(In copying) this long canto into two.
They’ll never find it out, unless I own
The fact, excepting some experienced few,
And then as an improvement’twill be shown.
I’ll prove that such the opinion of the critic is
From Aristotle passim. See II οιητιχης.
Canto IV
1
Nothing so difficult as a beginning
In poesy, unless perhaps the end;
For oftentimes when Pegasus seems winning
The race, he sprains a wing and down we tend,
Like Lucifer when hurled from heaven for sinning.
Our sin the same, and hard as his to mend,
Being pride, which leads the mind to soar too far,
Till our own weakness shows us what we are.
2
But time, which brings all beings to their level,
And sharp adversity will teach at last
Man and as we would hope, perhaps the devil
That neither of their intellects are vast.
While youth’s hot wishes in our red veins revel,
We know not this–the blood flows on too fast;
But as the torrent widens towards the ocean,
We ponder deeply on each past emotion.
3
As boy, I thought myself a clever fellow
And wished that others held the same opinion;
They took it up when my days grew more mellow,
And other minds acknowledged my dominion.
Now my sere fancy ‘falls into the yellow
Leaf’, and imagination droops her pinion;
And the sad truth which hovers o’er my desk
Turns what was once romantic to burlesque.
4
And if I laugh at any mortal thing,
’Tis that I may not weep; and if I weep,
’Tis that our nature cannot always bring
Itself to apathy, for we must steep
Our hearts first in the depths of Lethe’s spring,
Ere what we least wish to behold will sleep.
Thetis baptized her mortal son in Styx;
A mortal mother would on Lethe fix.
5
Some have accused me of a strange design
Against the creed and morals of the land
And trace it in this poem every line.
I don’t pretend that I quite understand
My own meaning when I would be very fine;
But the fact is that I have nothing planned,
Unless it were to be a moment merry,
A novel word in my vocabulary.
6
To the kind reader of our sober clime
This way of writing will appear exotic.
Pulci was sire of the half-serious rhyme,
Who sang when chivalry was more quixotic,
And revelled in the fancies of the time–
True knights, chaste dames, huge giants, kings despotic.
But all these, save the last, being obsolete,
I chose a modern subject as more meet.
7
How I have treated it, I do not know;
Perhaps no better than they have treated me
Who have imputed such designs as show
Not what they saw, but what they wished to see.
But if it gives them pleasure, be it so;
This is a liberal age, and thoughts are free.
Meantime Apollo plucks me by the ear
And tells me to resume my story here.
8
Young Juan and his ladylove were left
To their own hearts’ most sweet society.
Even Time the pitiless in sorrow cleft
With his rude scythe such gentle bosoms. He
Sighed to behold them of their hours bereft,
Though foe to love. And yet they could not be
Meant to grow old, but die in happy spring,
Before one charm or hope had taken wing.
9
Their faces were not made for wrinkles, their
Pure blood to stagnate, their great hearts to fail.
The blank grey was not made to blast their hair,
But like the climes that know nor snow nor hail
They were all summer. Lightning might assail
And shiver them to ashes, but to trail
A long and snake-like life of dull decay
Was not for them–they had too little clay.
10
They were alone once more; for them to be
Thus was another Eden. They were never
Weary, unless when separate. The tree
Cut from its forest root of years, the river
Dammed from its fountain, the child from the knee
And breast maternal weaned at once forever
Would wither less than these two torn apart.
Alas, there is no instinct like the heart–
11
The heart–which may be broken. Happy they,
Thrice fortunate who of that fragile mould,
The precious porcelain of human clay,
Break with the first fall. They can ne’er behold
The long year linked with heavy day on day
And all which must be borne and never told,
While life’s strange principle will often lie
Deepest in those who long the most to die.
12
‘Whom the gods love die young’ was said of yore,
And many deaths do they escape by this:
The death of friends and that which slays even more,
The death of friendship, love, youth, all that is,
Except mere breath. And since the silent shore
Awaits at last even those whom longest miss
The old archer’s shafts, perhaps the early grave,
Which men weep over, may be meant to save.
13
Haidée and Juan thought not of the dead.
The heavens and earth and air seemed made for them.
They found no fault with Time, save that he fled.
They saw not in themselves aught to condemn;
Each was the other’s mirror, and but read
Joy sparkling in their dark eyes like a gem,
And knew such brightness was but the reflection
Of their exchanging glances of affection.
14
The gentle pressure and the thrilling touch,
The least glance better understood than words,
Which still said all and ne’er could say too much,
A language too, but like to that of birds,
Known but to them, at least appearing such
As but to lovers a true sense affords,
Sweet playful phrases, which would seem absurd
To those who have cease
d to hear such, or ne’er heard.
15
All these were theirs, for they were children still
And children still they should have ever been.
They were not made in the real world to fill
A busy character in the dull scene,
But like two beings born from out a rill,
A nymph and her belovèd, all unseen
To pass their lives in fountains and on flowers
And never know the weight of human hours.
16
Moons changing had rolled on, and changeless found
Those their bright rise had lighted to such joys
As rarely they beheld throughout their round.
And these were not of the vain kind which cloys,
For theirs were buoyant spirits, never bound
By the mere senses. And that which destroys
Most love, possession, unto them appeared
A thing which each endearment more endeared.
17
Oh beautiful and rare as beautiful!
But theirs was love in which the mind delights
To lose itself, when the old world grows dull
And we are sick of its hack sounds and sights,
Intrigues, adventures of the common school,
Its petty passions, marriages, and flights,
Where Hymen’s torch but brands one strumpet more,
Whose husband only knows her not a whore.
18
Hard words, harsh truth–a truth which many know.
Enough. The faithful and the fairy pair,
Who never found a single hour too slow,
What was it made them thus exempt from care?
Young innate feelings all have felt below,
Which perish in the rest, but in them were
Inherent; what we mortals call romantic
And always envy, though we deem it frantic.
19
This is in others a factitious state,
An opium dream of too much youth and reading,
But was in them their nature or their fate.
No novels e’er had set their young hearts bleeding,
For Haidée’s knowledge was by no means great,
And Juan was a boy of saintly breeding,
So that there was no reason for their loves
More than for those of nightingales or doves.
20
They gazed upon the sunset;’tis an hour
Dear unto all, but dearest to their eyes,
For it had made them what they were. The power
Of love had first o’erwhelmed them from such skies,
When happiness had been their only dower,
And twilight saw them linked in passion’s ties.
Charmed with each other, all things charmed that brought
The past still welcome as the present thought.
21
I know not why, but in that hour tonight
Even as they gazed, a sudden tremor came
And swept, as’twere, across their heart’s delight,
Like the wind o’er a harpstring or a flame,
When one is shook in sound, and one in sight;
And thus some boding flashed through either frame
And called from Juan’s breast a faint low sigh,
While one new tear arose in Haidée’s eye.
22
That large black prophet eye seemed to dilate
And follow far the disappearing sun,
As if their last day of a happy date
With his broad, bright, and dropping orb were gone.
Juan gazed on her as to ask his fate;
He felt a grief, but knowing cause for none,
His glance inquired of hers for some excuse
For feelings causeless, or at least abstruse.
23
She turned to him and smiled, but in that sort
Which makes not others smile, then turned aside.
Whatever feeling shook her, it seemed short
And mastered by her wisdom or her pride.
When Juan spoke too–it might be in sport–
Of this their mutual feeling, she replied,
‘If it should be so, but–it cannot be–
Or I at least shall not survive to see.’
24
Juan would question further, but she pressed
His lip to hers and silenced him with this,
And then dismissed the omen from her breast,
Defying augury with that fond kiss.
And no doubt of all methods’tis the best;
Some people prefer wine–’tis not amiss.
I have tried both; so those who would a part take
May choose between the headache and the heartache.
25
One of the two, according to your choice,
Woman or wine, you’ll have to undergo.
Both maladies are taxes on our joys;
But which to choose, I really hardly know,
And if I had to give a casting voice,
For both sides I could many reasons show,
And then decide, without great wrong to either,
It were much better to have both than neither.
26
Juan and Haidée gazed upon each other
With swimming looks of speechless tenderness,
Which mixed all feelings, friend, child, lover, brother,
All that the best can mingle and express
When two pure hearts are poured in one another
And love too much and yet cannot love less,
But almost sanctify the sweet excess
By the immortal wish and power to bless.
27
Mixed in each other’s arms and heart in heart,
Why did they not then die? They had lived too long
Should an hour come to bid them breathe apart.
Years could but bring them cruel things or wrong;
The world was not for them, nor the world’s art
For beings passionate as Sappho’s song.
Love was born with them, in them, so intense,
It was their very spirit–not a sense.
28
They should have lived together deep in woods,
Unseen as sings the nightingale. They were
Unfit to mix in these thick solitudes
Called social, haunts of hate and vice and care.
How lonely every freeborn creature broods!
The sweetest songbirds nestle in a pair;
The eagle soars alone; the gull and crow
Flock o’er their carrion, just like men below.
29
Now pillowed cheek to cheek in loving sleep,
Haidée and Juan their siesta took,
A gentle slumber, but it was not deep,
For ever and anon a something shook
Juan and shuddering o’er his frame would creep;
And Haidée’s sweet lips murmured like a brook
A wordless music, and her face so fair
Stirred with her dream as rose leaves with the air.
30
Or as the stirring of a deep clear stream
Within an Alpine hollow when the wind
Walks o’er it, was she shaken by the dream,
The mystical usurper of the mind,
O’erpowering us to be whate’er may seem
Good to the soul which we no more can bind.
Strange state of being (for’tis still to be),
Senseless to feel and with sealed eyes to see!
31
She dreamed of being alone on the seashore,
Chained to a rock. She knew not how, but stir
She could not from the spot, and the loud roar
Grew, and each wave rose roughly, threatening her,
And o’er her upper lip they seemed to pour,
Until she sobbed for breath, and soon they were
Foaming o’er her lone head, so fier
ce and high
Each broke to drown her, yet she could not die.
32
Anon she was released, and then she strayed
O’er the sharp shingles with her bleeding feet,
And stumbled almost every step she made.
And something rolled before her in a sheet,
Which she must still pursue howe’er afraid.
’Twas white and indistinct, nor stopped to meet
Her glance nor grasp, for still she gazed and grasped
And ran, but it escaped her as she clasped.
33
The dream changed. In a cave she stood, its walls
Were hung with marble icicles, the work
Of ages on its water-fretted halls,
Where waves might wash, and seals might breed and lurk.
Her hair was dripping, and the very balls
Of her black eyes seemed turned to tears, and murk
The sharp rocks looked below each drop they caught,
Which froze to marble as it fell, she thought.
34
And wet and cold and lifeless at her feet,
Pale as the foam that frothed on his dead brow,
Which she essayed in vain to clear (how sweet
Were once her cares, how idle seemed they now),
Lay Juan, nor could aught renew the beat
Of his quenched heart. And the sea dirges low
Rang in her sad ears like a mermaid’s song,
And that brief dream appeared a life too long.
35
And gazing on the dead, she thought his face
Faded, or altered into something new,
Like to her father’s features, till each trace
More like and like to Lambro’s aspect grew
With all his keen worn look and Grecian grace.
And starting, she awoke, and what to view?
Oh powers of heaven! What dark eye meets she there?
’Tis–’tis her father’s–fixed upon the pair!
36
Then shrieking, she arose and shrieking fell,
With joy and sorrow, hope and fear, to see
Him whom she deemed a habitant where dwell
The ocean-buried, risen from death, to be
Perchance the death of one she loved too well.
Dear as her father had been to Haidée,
It was a moment of that awful kind–
I have seen such, but must not call to mind.
37
Up Juan sprung to Haidée’s bitter shriek
And caught her falling, and from off the wall
Snatched down his sabre in hot haste to wreak
Vengeance on him who was the cause of all.
Then Lambro, who till now forbore to speak,
Smiled scornfully and said, ‘Within my call,
A thousand scimitars await the word.
Put up, young man, put up your silly sword.’
38
And Haidée clung around him. ‘Juan,’tis–
’Tis Lambro–’tis my father! Kneel with me–
Don Juan Page 21