Don Juan
Page 42
The horrid sin – and what’s still worse, the trouble.
47
But Juan was a bachelor – of arts
And parts and hearts. He danced and sung and had
An air as sentimental as Mozart’s
Softest of melodies and could be sad
Or cheerful without any ‘flaws or starts’
Just at the proper time, and though a lad
Had seen the world, which is a curious sight
And very much unlike what people write.
48
Fair virgins blushed upon him; wedded dames
Bloomed also in less transitory hues;
For both commodities dwell by the Thames,
The painting and the painted. Youth, ceruse
Against his heart preferred their usual claims,
Such as no gentleman can quite refuse.
Daughters admired his dress, and pious mothers
Inquired his income, and if he had brothers.
49
The milliners who furnish ‘drapery Misses’
Throughout the season, upon speculation
Of payment ere the honeymoon’s last kisses
Have waned into a crescent’s coruscation,
Thought such an opportunity as this is,
Of a rich foreigner’s initiation,
Not to be overlooked and gave such credit
That future bridegrooms swore and sighed and paid it.
50
The Blues, that tender tribe, who sigh o’er sonnets
And with the pages of the last Review
Line the interior of their heads or bonnets,
Advanced in all their azure’s highest hue.
They talked bad French of Spanish and upon its
Late authors asked him for a hint or two,
And which was softest, Russian or Castilian.
And whether in his travels he saw Ilion.
51
Juan, who was a little superficial
And not in literature a great Drawcansir,
Examined by this learned and especial
Jury of matrons, scarce knew what to answer.
His duties warlike, loving, or official,
His steady application as a dancer
Had kept him from the brink of Hippocrene,
Which now he found was blue instead of green.
52
However, he replied at hazard with
A modest confidence and calm assurance,
Which lent his learnèd lucubrations pith
And passed for arguments of good endurance.
That prodigy, Miss Araminta Smith
(Who at sixteen translated Hercules Furens
Into as furious English), with her best look
Set down his sayings in her commonplace book.
53
Juan knew several languages, as well
He might, and brought them up with skill in time
To save his fame with each accomplished belle,
Who still regretted that he did not rhyme.
There wanted but this requisite to swell
His qualities (with them) into sublime.
Lady Fitz-Frisky and Miss Maevia Mannish
Both longed extremely to be sung in Spanish.
54
However, he did pretty well and was
Admitted as an aspirant to all
The coteries, and as in Banquo’s glass,
At great assemblies or in parties small
He saw ten thousand living authors pass,
That being about their average numeral;
Also the eighty ‘greatest living poets’,
As every paltry magazine can show it’s.
55
In twice five years the ‘greatest living poet’,
Like to the champion in the fisty ring,
Is called on to support his claim or show it,
Although’tis an imaginary thing.
Even I, albeit I’m sure I did not know it
Nor sought of foolscap subjects to be king,
Was reckoned a considerable time
The grand Napoleon of the realms of rhyme.
56
But Juan was my Moscow, and Faliero
My Leipsic, and my Mont Saint Jean seems Cain.
‘La Belle Alliance’ of dunces down at zero,
Now that the lion’s fallen, may rise again.
But I will fall at least as fell my hero,
Nor reign at all, or as a monarch reign,
Or to some lonely isle of jailors go
With turncoat Southey for my turnkey Lowe.
57
Sir Walter reigned before me, Moore and Campbell
Before and after; but now grown more holy,
The Muses upon Sion’s hill must ramble
With poets almost clergymen, or wholly,
And Pegasus hath a psalmodic amble
Beneath the very Reverend Rowley Powley,
Who shoes the glorious animal with stilts,
A modern Ancient Pistol – by the hilts!
58
Still he excels that artificial hard
Labourer in the same vineyard – though the vine
Yields him but vinegar for his reward –
That neutralized dull Dorus of the Nine,
That swarthy Sporus, neither man nor bard,
That ox of verse, who ploughs for every line.
Cambyses’ roaring Romans beat at least
The howling Hebrews of Cybele’s priest.
59
Then there’s my gentle Euphues, who, they say,
Sets up for being a sort of moral me.
He’ll find it rather difficult some day
To turn out both, or either, it may be.
Some persons think that Coleridge hath the sway,
And Wordsworth has supporters, two or three,
And that deep-mouthed Boeotian, Savage Landor,
Has taken for a swan rogue Southey’s gander.
60
John Keats, who was killed off by one critique,
Just as he really promised something great,
If not intelligible, without Greek
Contrived to talk about the gods of late,
Much as they might have been supposed to speak.
Poor fellow! His was an untoward fate.
’Tis strange the mind, that very fiery particle,
Should let itself be snuffed out by an article.
61
The list grows long of live and dead pretenders
To that which none will gain; or none will know
The conqueror at least, who, ere Time renders
His last award, will have the long grass grow
Above his burnt-out brain and sapless cinders.
If I might augur, I should rate but low
Their chances; they’re too numerous, like the thirty
Mock tyrants when Rome’s annals waxed but dirty.
62
This is the literary lower empire,
Where the Praetorian bands take up the matter,
A ‘dreadful trade’ like his who ‘gathers samphire’,
The insolent soldiery to soothe and flatter
With the same feelings as you’d coax a vampire.
Now were I once at home and in good satire,
I’d try conclusions with those Janizaries
And show them what an intellectual war is.
63
I think I know a trick or two would turn
Their flanks, but it is hardly worth my while
With such small gear to give myself concern.
Indeed I’ve not the necessary bile;
My natural temper’s really aught but stern,
And even my Muse’s worst reproof’s a smile,
And then she drops a brief and modern curtsy
And glides away, assured she never hurts ye.
64
My Juan, whom I left in deadly peril
Amo
ngst live poets and blue ladies, past
With some small profit through that field so sterile.
Being tired in time and neither least nor last,
Left it before he had been treated very ill
And henceforth found himself more gaily classed
Amongst the higher spirits of the day,
The sun’s true son, no vapour, but a ray.
65
His morns he passed in business, which dissected,
Was like all business, a laborious nothing
That leads to lassitude, the most infected
And Centaur-Nessus garb of mortal clothing,
And on our sofas makes us lie dejected
And talk in tender horrors of our loathing
All kinds of toil, save for our country’s good,
Which grows no better, though’tis time it should.
66
His afternoons he passed in visits, luncheons,
Lounging, and boxing; and the twilight hour
In riding round those vegetable puncheons
Called parks, where there is neither fruit nor flower
Enough to gratify a bee’s slight munchings.
But after all it is the only ‘bower’
(In Moore’s phrase), where the fashionable fair
Can form a slight acquaintance with fresh air.
67
Then dress, then dinner, then awakes the world!
Then glare the lamps, then whirl the wheels, then roar
Through street and square fast flashing chariots, hurled
Like harnessed meteors. Then along the floor
Chalk mimics painting, then festoons are twirled,
Then roll the brazen thunders of the door,
Which opens to the thousand happy few
An earthly paradise of ormolu.
68
There stands the noble hostess, nor shall sink
With the three-thousandth curtsy. There the waltz,
The only dance which teaches girls to think,
Makes one in love even with its very faults.
Saloon, room, hall o’erflow beyond their brink,
And long the latest of arrivals halts,
’Midst royal dukes and dames condemned to climb
And gain an inch of staircase at a time.
69
Thrice happy he who after a survey
Of the good company can win a corner,
A door that’s in or boudoir out of the way,
Where he may fix himself like small Jack Homer
And let the Babel round run as it may
And look on as a mourner or a scorner
Or an approver or a mere spectator,
Yawning a little as the night grows later.
70
But this won’t do, save by and by; and he
Who like Don Juan takes an active share
Must steer with care through all that glittering sea
Of gems and plumes and pearls and silks to where
He deems it is his proper place to be,
Dissolving in the waltz to some soft air,
Or proudlier prancing with mercurial skill
Where Science marshals forth her own quadrille.
71
Or if he dance not, but hath higher views
Upon an heiress or his neighbour’s bride,
Let him take care that that which he pursues
Is not at once too palpably descried.
Full many an eager gentleman oft rues
His haste; impatience is a blundering guide
Amongst a people famous for reflection,
Who like to play the fool with circumspection.
72
But if you can contrive, get next at supper;
Or if forestalled, get opposite and ogle.
Oh ye ambrosial moments! always upper
In mind, a sort of sentimental bogle,
Which sits forever upon memory’s crupper,
The ghost of vanished pleasures once in vogue. Ill
Can tender souls relate the rise and fall
Of hopes and fears which shake a single ball.
73
But these precautionary hints can touch
Only the common run, who must pursue
And watch and ward, whose plans a word too much
Or little overturns; and not the few
Or many (for the number’s sometimes such)
Whom a good mien, especially if new,
Or fame or name for wit, war, sense, or nonsense
Permits whate’er they please, or did not long since.
74
Our hero, as a hero, young and handsome,
Noble, rich, celebrated, and a stranger,
Like other slaves of course must pay his ransom
Before he can escape from so much danger
As will environ a conspicuous man. Some
Talk about poetry and ‘rack and manger’
And ugliness, disease, as toil and trouble –
I wish they knew the life of a young noble.
75
They are young, but know not youth (it is anticipated),
Handsome but wasted, rich without a sou.
Their vigour in a thousand arms is dissipated.
Their cash comes from, their wealth goes to a Jew.
Both senates see their nightly votes participated
Between the tyrant’s and the tribunes’ crew.
And having voted, dined, drank, gamed, and whored,
The family vault receives another lord.
76
‘Where is the world?’ cries Young at eighty. ‘Where
The world in which a man was born?’ Alas!
Where is the world of eight years past? ‘Twas there –
I look for it –’tis gone, a globe of glass,
Cracked, shivered, vanished, scarcely gazed on, ere
A silent change dissolves the glittering mass.
Statesmen, chiefs, orators, queens, patriots, kings,
And dandies, all are gone on the wind’s wings.
77
Where is Napoleon the Grand? God knows.
Where little Castlereagh? The devil can tell.
Where Grattan, Curran, Sheridan, all those
Who bound the bar or senate in their spell?
Where is the unhappy Queen with all her woes?
And where the daughter, whom the isles loved well?
Where are those martyred saints the five per cents?
And where, oh where the devil are the rents?
78
Where’s Brummell? Dished. Where’s Long Pole Wellesley? Diddled.
Where’s Whitbread? Romilly? Where’s George the Third?
Where is his will? That’s not so soon unriddled.
And where is ‘Fum’ the Fourth, our ‘royal bird’?
Gone down it seems to Scotland to be fiddled
Unto by Sawney’s violin, we have heard.
‘Caw me, caw thee.’ For six months hath been hatching
This scene of royal itch and loyal scratching.
79
Where is Lord This? And where my Lady That?
The Honourable Mistresses and Misses?
Some laid aside like an old opera hat,
Married, unmarried, and remarried (this is
An evolution oft performed of late).
Where are the Dublin shouts and London hisses?
Where are the Grenvilles? Turned as usual. Where
My friends the Whigs? Exactly where they were.
80
Where are the Lady Carolines and Franceses?
Divorced or doing thereanent. Ye annals
So brilliant, where the list of routs and dances is,
Thou Morning Post, sole record of the panels
Broken in carriages and all the phantasies
Of fashion, say what streams now fill those channels?
Some die, some fly, some languish on the Continent,
Because the times have hardly left them one tenant.
81
Some who once set their caps at cautious dukes
Have taken up at length with younger brothers.
Some heiresses have bit at sharpers’ hooks;
Some maids have been made wives, some merely mothers;
Others have lost their fresh and fairy looks.
In short, the list of alterations bothers.
There’s little strange in this, but something strange is
The unusual quickness of these common changes.
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Talk not of seventy years as age. In seven
I have seen more changes, down from monarchs to
The humblest individual under heaven,
Than might suffice a moderate century through.
I knew that nought was lasting, but now even
Change grows too changeable without being new.
Nought’s permanent among the human race,
Except the Whigs not getting into place.
83
I have seen Napoleon, who seemed quite a Jupiter,
Shrink to a Saturn. I have seen a duke
(No matter which) turn politician stupider,
If that can well be, than his wooden look.
But it is time that I should hoist my blue peter
And sail for a new theme. I have seen – and shook
To see it – the King hissed and then carest,
But don’t pretend to settle which was best.
84
I have seen the landholders without a rap,
I have seen Johanna Southcote. I have seen
The House of Commons turned to a tax-trap.
I have seen that sad affair of the late Queen.
I have seen crowns worn instead of a fool’s cap.
I have seen a congress doing all that’s mean.
I have seen some nations like o’erloaded asses
Kick off their burdens – meaning the high classes.
85
I have seen small poets and great prosers and
Interminable, not eternal, speakers.
I have seen the Funds at war with house and land.
I’ve seen the country gentlemen turn squeakers.
I’ve seen the people ridden o’er like sand
By slaves on horseback. I have seen malt liquors
Exchanged for ‘thin potations’ by John Bull.
I have seen John half detect himself a fool.
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But carpe diem, Juan, carpe, carpe!
Tomorrow sees another race as gay
And transient and devoured by the same harpy.
‘Life’s a poor player.’ Then ‘play out the play,
Ye villains!’ And above all keep a sharp eye
Much less on what you do than what you say.
Be hypocritical, be cautious, be
Not what you seem, but always what you see.
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But how shall I relate in other cantos
Of what befell our hero in the land,