Extremely taken with his own religion,
Are what I found there – but the devil a Phrygian.
79
Don Juan, here permitted to emerge
From his dull cabin, found himself a slave,
Forlorn and gazing on the deep blue surge,
O’ershadowed there by many a hero’s grave.
Weak still with loss of blood, he scarce could urge
A few brief questions; and the answers gave
No very satisfactory information
About his past or present situation.
80
He saw some fellow captives, who appeared
To be Italians, as they were in fact.
From them at least their destiny he heard,
Which was an odd one. A troop going to act
In Sicily, all singers, duly reared
In their vocation, had not been attacked
In sailing from Livorno by the pirate,
But sold by the impresario at no high rate.
81
By one of these, the buffo of the party,
Juan was told about their curious case.
For although destined to the Turkish mart, he
Still kept his spirits up – at least his face;
The little fellow really looked quite hearty
And bore him with some gaiety and grace,
Showing a much more reconciled demeanour
Than did the prima donna and the tenor.
82
In a few words he told their hapless story,
Saying, ‘Our Machiavelian impresario,
Making a signal off some promontory,
Hailed a strange brig. Corpo di Caio Mario!
We were transferred on board her in a hurry
Without a single scudo of salario,
But if the Sultan has a taste for song,
We will revive our fortunes before long.
83
‘The prima donna, though a little old
And haggard with a dissipated life
And subject, when the house is thin, to cold,
Has some good notes; and then the tenor’s wife,
With no great voice, is pleasing to behold.
Last carnival she made a deal of strife
By carrying off Count Cesare Cicogna
From an old Roman princess at Bologna.
84
‘And then there are the dancers: there’s the Nini
With more than one profession gains by all.
Then there’s that laughing slut the Pelegrini;
She too was fortunate last carnival
And made at least five hundred good zecchini,
But spends so fast, she has not now a paul.
And then there’s the Grotesca – such a dancer!
Where men have souls or bodies she must answer.
85
‘As for the figuranti, they are like
The rest of all that tribe with here and there
A pretty person, which perhaps may strike;
The rest are hardly fitted for a fair.
There’s one, though tall and stiffer than a pike,
Yet has a sentimental kind of air
Which might go far, but she don’t dance with vigour,
The more’s the pity, with her face and figure.
86
‘As for the men, they are a middling set.
The Musico is but a cracked old basin,
But being qualified in one way yet,
May the seraglio do to set his face in
And as a servant some preferment get.
His singing I no further trust can place in.
From all the pope makes yearly’twould perplex
To find three perfect pipes of the third sex.
87
‘The tenor’s voice is spoilt by affectation,
And for the bass, the beast can only bellow;
In fact he had no singing education,
An ignorant, noteless, timeless, tuneless fellow,
But being the prima donna’s near relation,
Who swore his voice was very rich and mellow,
They hired him, though to hear him you’d believe
An ass was practising recitative.
88
‘’Twould not become myself to dwell upon
My own merits, and though young, I see, sir, you
Have got a travelled air, which shows you one
To whom the opera is by no means new.
You’ve heard of Raucocanti? I’m the man;
The time may come when you may hear me too.
You was not last year at the fair of Lugo?
But next, when I’m engaged to sing there – do go.
89
‘Our baritone I almost had forgot,
A pretty lad, but bursting with conceit.
With graceful action, science not a jot,
A voice of no great compass and not sweet,
He always is complaining of his lot,
Forsooth, scarce fit for ballads in the street.
In lovers’ parts his passion more to breathe,
Having no heart to show, he shows his teeth.’
90
Here Raucocanti’s eloquent recital
Was interrupted by the pirate crew,
Who came at stated moments to invite all
The captives back to their sad berths. Each threw
A rueful glance upon the waves (which bright all
From the blue skies derived a double blue,
Dancing all free and happy in the sun)
And then went down the hatchway one by one.
91
They heard next day that in the Dardanelles,
Waiting for his sublimity’s firmán,
The most imperative of sovereign spells,
Which everybody does without who can,
More to secure them in their naval cells,
Lady to lady, well as man to man,
Were to be chained and lotted out per couple
For the slave market of Constantinople.
92
It seems when this allotment was made out,
There chanced to be an odd male and odd female,
Who (after some discussion and some doubt,
If the soprano might be deemed to be male,
They placed him o’er the women as a scout)
Were linked together, and it happened the male
Was Juan, who – an awkward thing at his age –
Paired off with a bacchante blooming visage.
93
With Raucocanti lucklessly was chained
The tenor. These two hated with a hate
Found only on the stage, and each more pained
With this his tuneful neighbour than his fate.
Sad strife arose, for they were so cross-grained,
Instead of bearing up without debate,
That each pulled different ways with many an oath,
Arcades ambo, id est blackguards both.
94
Juan’s companion was a Romagnole,
But bred within the March of old Ancona,
With eyes that looked into the very soul
(And other chief points of a bella donna),
Bright and as black and burning as a coal.
And through her clear brunette complexion shone a
Great wish to please, a most attractive dower,
Especially when added to the power.
95
But all that power was wasted upon him,
For sorrow o’er each sense held stern command.
Her eye might flash on his, but found it dim.
And though thus chained, as natural her hand
Touched his, nor that nor any handsome limb
(And she had some not easy to withstand)
Could stir his pulse or make his faith feel brittle.
Perhaps his recent wounds might help a little.
96
No
matter. We should ne’er too much inquire,
But facts are facts, no knight could be more true,
And firmer faith no ladylove desire.
We will omit the proofs, save one or two.
’Tis said no one in hand ‘can hold a fire
By thought of frosty Caucasus’, but few
I really think; yet Juan’s then ordeal
Was more triumphant, and not much less real.
97
Here I might enter on a chaste description,
Having withstood temptation in my youth,
But hear that several people take exception
At the first two books having too much truth.
Therefore I’ll make Don Juan leave the ship soon,
Because the publisher declares in sooth,
Through needles’ eyes it easier for the camel is
To pass than those two cantos into families.
98
’Tis all the same to me; I’m fond of yielding
And therefore leave them to the purer page
Of Smollett, Prior, Ariosto, Fielding,
Who say strange things for so correct an age.
I once had great alacrity in wielding
My pen and liked poetic war to wage
And recollect the time when all this cant
Would have provoked remarks, which now it shan’t
99
As boys love rows, my boyhood liked a squabble,
But at this hour I wish to part in peace,
Leaving such to the literary rabble,
Whether my verse’s fame be doomed to cease,
While the right hand which wrote it still is able,
Or of some centuries to take a lease.
The grass upon my grave will grow as long
And sigh to midnight winds, but not to song.
100
Of poets who come down to us through distance
Of time and tongues, the foster babes of Fame,
Life seems the smallest portion of existence.
Where twenty ages gather o’er a name,
’Tis as a snowball which derives assistance
From every flake and yet rolls on the same,
Even till an iceberg it may chance to grow,
But after all’tis nothing but cold snow.
101
And so great names are nothing more than nominal,
And love of glory’s but an airy lust,
Too often in its fury overcoming all
Who would as’twere identify their dust
From out the wide destruction, which, entombing all,
Leaves nothing ‘till the coming of the just’,
Save change. I’ve stood upon Achilles’ tomb
And heard Troy doubted; time will doubt of Rome.
102
The very generations of the dead
Are swept away and tomb inherits tomb
Until the memory of an age is fled
And, buried, sinks beneath its offspring’s doom.
Where are the epitaphs our fathers read?
Save a few gleaned from the sepulchral gloom,
Which once-named myriads nameless lie beneath
And lose their own in universal death.
103
I canter by the spot each afternoon
Where perished in his fame the hero-boy,
Who lived too long for men, but died too soon
For human vanity, the young De Foix.
A broken pillar, not uncouthly hewn,
But which neglect is hastening to destroy,
Records Ravenna’s carnage on its face,
While weeds and ordure rankle round the base.
104
I pass each day where Dante’s bones are laid.
A little cupola, more neat than solemn,
Protects his dust, but reverence here is paid
To the bard’s tomb, and not the warrior’s column.
The time must come, when both alike decayed,
The chieftain’s trophy and the poet’s volume
Will sink where lie the songs and wars of earth
Before Pelides’ death or Homer’s birth.
105
With human blood that column was cemented,
With human filth that column is defiled,
As if the peasant’s coarse contempt were vented
To show his loathing of the spot he soiled.
Thus is the trophy used, and thus lamented
Should ever be those bloodhounds, from whose wild
Instinct of gore and glory earth has known
Those sufferings Dante saw in hell alone.
106
Yet there will still be bards. Though fame is smoke,
Its fumes are frankincense to human thought;
And the unquiet feelings, which first woke
Song in the world, will seek what then they sought.
As on the beach the waves at last are broke,
Thus to their extreme verge the passions brought
Dash into poetry, which is but passion,
Or at least was so ere it grew a fashion.
107
If in the course of such a life as was
At once adventurous and contemplative,
Men who partake all passions as they pass
Acquire the deep and bitter power to give
Their images again as in a glass,
And in such colours that they seem to live.
You may do right forbidding them to show’em,
But spoil (I think) a very pretty poem.
108
Oh ye, who make the fortunes of all books,
Benign ceruleans of the second sex!
Who advertise new poems by your looks,
Your imprimatur will ye not annex?
What, must I go to the oblivious cooks,
Those Cornish plunderers of Parnassian wrecks?
Ah, must I then the only minstrel be
Proscribed from tasting your Castalian tea?
109
What, can I prove a lion then no more?
A ballroom bard, a foolscap, hot-press darling?
To bear the compliments of many a bore
And sigh, ‘I can’t get out’, like Yorick’s starling.
Why then I’ll swear, as poet Wordy swore
(Because the world won’t read him, always snarling),
That taste is gone, that fame is but a lottery,
Drawn by the bluecoat misses of a coterie.
110
Oh ‘darkly, deeply, beautifully blue’,
As someone somewhere sings about the sky,
And I, ye learnèd ladies, say of you.
They say your stockings are so (heaven knows why,
I have examined few pair of that hue),
Blue as the garters which serenely lie
Round the patrician left legs, which adorn
The festal midnight and the levee morn.
111
Yet some of you are most seraphic creatures,
But times are altered since, a rhyming lover
You read my stanzas, and I read your features;
And – but no matter, all those things are over.
Still I have no dislike to learnèd natures,
For sometimes such a world of virtues cover.
I know one woman of that purple school,
The loveliest, chastest, best, but – quite a fool.
112
Humboldt, ‘the first of travellers’, but not
The last, if late accounts be accurate,
Invented, by some name I have forgot,
As well as the sublime discovery’s date,
An airy instrument, with which he sought
To ascertain the atmospheric state,
By measuring the intensity of blue.
Oh Lady Daphne, let me measure you!
113
But to the narrative. The vessel bound
With slaves to sell off in the capita
l,
After the usual process, might be found
At anchor under the seraglio wall.
Her cargo, from the plague being safe and sound,
Were landed in the market, one and all,
And there with Georgians, Russians, and Circassians,
Bought up for different purposes and passions.
114
Some went off dearly; fifteen hundred dollars
For one Circassian, a sweet girl, were given,
Warranted virgin. Beauty’s brightest colours
Had decked her out in all the hues of heaven.
Her sale sent home some disappointed bawlers,
Who bade on till the hundreds reached eleven,
But when the offer went beyond, they knew
’Twas for the Sultan and at once withdrew.
115
Twelve negresses from Nubia brought a price
Which the West Indian market scarce would bring,
Though Wilberforce at last has made it twice
What’twas ere abolition; and the thing
Need not seem very wonderful, for vice
Is always much more splendid than a king.
The virtues, even the most exalted, charity,
Are saving; vice spares nothing for a rarity.
116
But for the destiny of this young troop,
How some were bought by pashas, some by Jews,
How some to burdens were obliged to stoop,
And others rose to the command of crews
As renegadoes; while in hapless group,
Hoping no very old vizier might choose,
The females stood, as one by one they picked’em,
To make a mistress or fourth wife or victim –
117
All this must be reserved for further song,
Also our hero’s lot, howe’er unpleasant
(Because this canto has become too long),
Must be postponed discreetly for the present.
I’m sensible redundancy is wrong,
But could not for the Muse of me put less in’t
And now delay the progress of Don Juan
Till what is called in Ossian the fifth duan.
Canto V
1
When amatory poets sing their loves
In liquid lines mellifluously bland,
And pair their rhymes as Venus yokes her doves,
They little think what mischief is in hand.
The greater their success the worse it proves,
As Ovid’s verse may give to understand.
Even Petrarch’s self, if judged with due severity,
Is the Platonic pimp of all posterity.
2
I therefore do denounce all amorous writing,
Except in such a way as not to attract;
Plain, simple, short, and by no means inviting,
But with a moral to each error tacked,
Formed rather for instructing than delighting,
And with all passions in their turn attacked.
Now if my Pegasus should not be shod ill,
Don Juan Page 23