Don Juan

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by Lord George Gordon Byron


  Was chosen from out an amatory score,

  Albeit my years were less discreet than few;

  But though I also had reformed before

  Those became one who soon were to be two,

  I’ll not gainsay the generous public’s voice

  That the young lady made a monstrous choice.

  39

  Oh pardon me digression, or at least

  Peruse.’Tis always with a moral end

  That I dissert, like grace before a feast.

  For like an agéd aunt or tiresome friend,

  A rigid guardian or a zealous priest,

  My Muse by exhortation means to mend

  All people at all times and in most places,

  Which puts my Pegasus to these grave paces.

  40

  But now I’m going to be immoral, now

  I mean to show things really as they are,

  Not as they ought to be, for I avow,

  That till we see what’s what in fact, we’re far

  From much improvement with that virtuous plough

  Which skims the surface, leaving scarce a scar

  Upon the black loam long manured by vice,

  Only to keep its corn at the old price.

  41

  But first of little Leila we’ll dispose;

  For like a day-dawn she was young and pure,

  Or like the old comparison of snows,

  Which are more pure than pleasant to be sure.

  Like many people everybody knows,

  Don Juan was delighted to secure

  A goodly guardian for his infant charge,

  Who might not profit much by being at large.

  42

  Besides he had found out that he was no tutor

  (I wish that others would find out the same)

  And rather wished in such things to stand neuter,

  For silly wards will bring their guardians blame.

  So when he saw each ancient dame a suitor

  To make his little wild Asiatic tame,

  Consulting the society for vice

  Suppression, Lady Pinchbeck was his choice.

  43

  Olden she was, but had been very young;

  Virtuous she was and had been, I believe.

  Although the world has such an evil tongue

  That – but my chaster ear will not receive

  An echo of a syllable that’s wrong.

  In fact there’s nothing makes me so much grieve

  As that abominable tittle-tattle,

  Which is the cud eschewed by human cattle.

  44

  Moreover I’ve remarked (and I was once

  A slight observer in a modest way)

  And so may everyone except a dunce

  That ladies in their youth a little gay,

  Besides their knowledge of the world and sense

  Of the sad consequence of going astray,

  Are wiser in their warnings ‘gainst the woe

  Which the mere passionless can never know.

  45

  While the harsh prude indemnifies her virtue

  By railing at the unknown and envied passion,

  Seeking far less to save you than to hurt you,

  Or what’s still worse, to put you out of fashion,

  The kinder veteran with calm words will court you,

  Entreating you to pause before you dash on,

  Expounding and illustrating the riddle

  Of epic love’s beginning, end, and middle.

  46

  Now whether it be thus or that they are stricter,

  As better knowing why they should be so,

  I think you’ll find from many a family picture

  That daughters of such mothers as may know

  The world by experience rather than by lecture

  Turn out much better for the Smithfield Show

  Of vestals brought into the marriage mart

  Than those bred up by prudes without a heart.

  47

  I said that Lady Pinchbeck had been talked about,

  As who has not, if female, young, and pretty?

  But now no more the ghost of Scandal stalked about.

  She merely was deemed amiable and witty,

  And several of her best bons mots were hawked about.

  Then she was given to charity and pity

  And passed (at least the latter years of life)

  For being a most exemplary wife.

  48

  High in high circles, gentle in her own,

  She was the mild reprover of the young

  Whenever – which means everyday – they’d shown

  An awkward inclination to go wrong.

  The quantity of good she did ‘s unknown

  Or at the least would lengthen out my song.

  In brief, the little orphan of the East

  Had raised an interest in her which increased.

  49

  Juan too was a sort of favourite with her,

  Because she thought him a good heart at bottom,

  A little spoilt, but not so altogether,

  Which was a wonder, if you think who got him

  And how he had been tossed, he scarce knew whither.

  Though this might ruin others, it did not him,

  At least entirely, for he had seen too many

  Changes in youth to be surprised at any.

  50

  And these vicissitudes tell best in youth;

  For when they happen at a riper age,

  People are apt to blame the Fates forsooth,

  And wonder Providence is not more sage.

  Adversity is the first path to truth.

  He who hath proved war, storm, or woman’s rage,

  Whether his winters be eighteen or eighty,

  Hath won the experience which is deemed so weighty.

  51

  How far it profits is another matter.

  Our hero gladly saw his little charge

  Safe with a lady, whose last grown-up daughter,

  Being long married and thus set at large,

  Had left all the accomplishments she taught her

  To be transmitted, like the Lord Mayor’s barge,

  To the next comer; or – as it will tell

  More Muse-like – say like Cytherea’s shell.

  52

  I call such things transmission, for there is

  A floating balance of accomplishment

  Which forms a pedigree from Miss to Miss,

  According as their minds or backs are bent.

  Some waltz, some draw, some fathom the abyss

  Of metaphysics, others are content

  With music, the most moderate shine as wits,

  While others have a genius turned for fits.

  53

  But whether fits or wits or harpsichords,

  Theology, fine arts, or finer stays

  May be the baits for gentlemen or lords,

  With regular descent in these our days

  The last year to the new transfers its hoards.

  New vestals claim men’s eyes with the same praise

  Of elegant et cetera in fresh batches,

  All matchless creatures and yet bent on matches.

  54

  But now I will begin my poem.’Tis

  Perhaps a little strange, if not quite new,

  That from the first of cantos up to this

  I’ve not begun what we have to go through.

  These first twelve books are merely flourishes,

  Preludios, trying just a string or two

  Upon my lyre or making the pegs sure;

  And when so, you shall have the overture.

  55

  My Muses do not care a pinch of rosin

  About what’s called success or not succeeding.

  Such thoughts are quite below the strain they have chosen;

  ’Tis a ‘great moral lesson’ they are reading.

  I thought, at
setting off, about two dozen

  Cantos would do; but at Apollo’s pleading,

  If that my Pegasus should not be foundered,

  I think to canter gently through a hundred.

  56

  Don Juan saw that microcosm on stilts,

  Yclept the great world; for it is the least,

  Although the highest. But as swords have hilts

  By which their power of mischief is increased,

  When man in battle or in quarrel tilts,

  Thus the low world, North, South, or West, or East,

  Must still obey the high, which is their handle,

  Their moon, their sun, their gas, their farthing candle.

  57

  He had many friends who had many wives and was

  Well looked upon by both to that extent

  Of friendship which you may accept or pass.

  It does nor good nor harm, being merely meant

  To keep the wheels going of the higher class

  And draw them nightly when a ticket’s sent.

  And what with masquerades and fêtes and balls,

  For the first season such a life scarce palls.

  58

  A young unmarried man with a good name

  And fortune has an awkward part to play;

  For good society is but a game,

  The royal game of goose, as I may say,

  Where everybody has some separate aim,

  An end to answer or a plan to lay:

  The single ladies wishing to be double,

  The married ones to save the virgins trouble.

  59

  I don’t mean this as general, but particular

  Examples may be found of such pursuits,

  Though several also keep their perpendicular

  Like poplars, with good principles for roots;

  Yet many have a method more reticular –

  ‘Fishers for men’, like sirens with soft lutes.

  For talk six times with the same single lady,

  And you may get the wedding dresses ready.

  60

  Perhaps you’ll have a letter from the mother,

  To say her daughter’s feelings are trepanned;

  Perhaps you’ll have a visit from the brother,

  All strut and stays and whiskers, to demand

  What ‘your intentions are’. One way or other

  It seems the virgin’s heart expects your hand;

  And between pity for her case and yours,

  You’ll add to matrimony’s list of cures.

  61

  I’ve known a dozen weddings made even thus,

  And some of them high names. I have also known

  Young men who, though they hated to discuss

  Pretensions which they never dreamed to have shown,

  Yet neither frightened by a female fuss

  Nor by mustachios moved, were let alone

  And lived, as did the brokenhearted fair,

  In happier plight than if they formed a pair.

  62

  There’s also nightly, to the uninitiated,

  A peril, not indeed like love or marriage,

  But not the less for this to be depreciated.

  It is – I meant and mean not to disparage

  The show of virtue even in the vitiated –

  It adds an outward grace unto their carriage –

  But to denounce the amphibious sort of harlot,

  Couleur de rose, who’s neither white nor scarlet.

  63

  Such is your cold coquette, who can’t say no

  And won’t say yes and keeps you on-and off-ing

  On a lee shore till it begins to blow,

  Then sees your heart wrecked with an inward scoffing.

  This works a world of sentimental woe

  And sends new Werters yearly to their coffin;

  But yet is merely innocent flirtation,

  Not quite adultery, but adulteration.

  64

  ‘Ye gods, I grow a talker!’ Let us prate.

  The next of perils, though I place it sternest,

  Is when, without regard to church or state,

  A wife makes or takes love in upright earnest.

  Abroad, such things decide few women’s fate

  (Such, early traveller, is the truth thou learnest),

  But in old England when a young bride errs,

  Poor thing, Eve’s was a trifling case to hers.

  65

  For’tis a low, newspaper, humdrum, lawsuit

  Country, where a young couple of the same ages

  Can’t form a friendship but the world o’erawes it.

  Then there’s the vulgar trick of those damned damages.

  A verdict, grievous foe to those who cause it,

  Forms a sad climax to romantic homages,

  Besides those soothing speeches of the pleaders

  And evidences which regale all readers.

  66

  But they who blunder thus are raw beginners.

  A little genial sprinkling of hypocrisy

  Has saved the fame of thousand splendid sinners,

  The loveliest oligarchs of our gynocracy.

  You may see such at all the balls and dinners

  Among the proudest of our aristocracy,

  So gentle, charming, charitable, chaste,

  And all by having tact as well as taste.

  67

  Juan, who did not stand in the predicament

  Of a mere novice, had one safeguard more,

  For he was sick – no, ‘twas not the word sick I meant –

  But he had seen so much good love before

  That he was not in heart so very weak. I meant

  But thus much and no sneer against the shore

  Of white cliffs, white necks, blue eyes, bluer stockings,

  Tithes, taxes, duns, and doors with double Klockings.

  68

  But coming young from lands and scenes romantic,

  Where lives not lawsuits must be risked for passion,

  And passion’s self must have a spice of frantic,

  Into a country where’tis half a fashion

  Seemed to him half commercial, half pedantic,

  Howe’er he might esteem this moral nation.

  Besides (alas, his taste forgive and pity)

  At first he did not think the women pretty.

  69

  I say it first, for he found out at last,

  But by degrees, that they were fairer far

  Than the more glowing dames whose lot is cast

  Beneath the influence of the Eastern star.

  A further proof we should not judge in haste;

  Yet inexperience could not be his bar

  To taste. The truth is, if men would confess,

  That novelties please less than they impress.

  70

  Though travelled, I have never had the luck to

  Trace up those shuffling Negroes, Nile or Niger,

  To that impracticable place Timbuctoo,

  Where Geography finds no one to oblige her

  With such a chart as may be safely stuck to,

  For Europe ploughs in Afric like bos piger;

  But if I had been at Timbuctoo, there

  No doubt I should be told that black is fair.

  71

  It is. I will not swear that black is white,

  But I suspect in fact that white is black,

  And the whole matter rests upon eyesight.

  Ask a blind man, the best judge. You’ll attack

  Perhaps this new position, but I’m right;

  Or if I’m wrong, I’ll not be ta’en aback.

  He hath no morn nor night, but all is dark

  Within; and what sees’t thou? A dubious spark.

  72

  But I’m relapsing into metaphysics,

  That labyrinth, whose clue is of the same

  Construction as your cures for hectic phthisics,
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  Those bright moths fluttering round a dying flame.

  And this reflection brings me to plain physics

  And to the beauties of a foreign dame,

  Compared with those of our pure pearls of price,

  Those polar summers, all sun and some ice.

  73

  Or say they are like virtuous mermaids, whose

  Beginnings are fair faces, ends mere fishes.

  Not that there’s not a quantity of those

  Who have a due respect for their own wishes.

  Like Russians rushing from hot baths to snows

  Are they, at bottom virtuous even when vicious.

  They warm into a scrape, but keep of course,

  As a reserve, a plunge into remorse.

  74

  But this has nought to do with their outsides.

  I said that Juan did not think them pretty

  At the first blush, for a fair Briton hides

  Half her attractions, probably from pity,

  And rather calmly into the heart glides

  Than storms it as a foe would take a city,

  But once there (if you doubt this, prithee try)

  She keeps it for you like a true ally.

  75

  She cannot step as does an Arab barb,

  Or Andalusian girl from mass returning,

  Nor wear as gracefully as Gauls her garb,

  Nor in her eye Ausonia’s glance is burning.

  Her voice, though sweet, is not so fit to warble those bravuras (which I still am learning

  To like, though I have been seven years in Italy

  And have or had an ear that served me prettily).

  76

  She cannot do these things nor one or two

  Others in that offhand and dashing style

  Which takes so much (to give the devil his due),

  Nor is she quite so ready with her smile,

  Nor settles all things in one interview

  (A thing approved as saving time and toil),

  But though the soil may give you time and trouble,

  Well cultivated, it will render double.

  77

  And if in fact she takes to a grande passion,

  It is a very serious thing indeed.

  Nine times in ten’tis but caprice or fashion,

  Coquetry or a wish to take the lead,

  The pride of a mere child with a new sash on,

  Or wish to make a rival’s bosom bleed;

  But the tenth instance will be a tornado,

  For there’s no saying what they will or may do.

  78

  The reason’s obvious; if there’s an éclat,

  They lose their caste at once, as do the pariahs.

  And when the delicacies of the law

  Have filled their papers with their comments various,

  Society, that china without flaw

  (The hypocrite), will banish them like Marius

  To sit amidst the ruins of their guilt.

  For Fame’s a Carthage not so soon rebuilt.

 

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