Don Juan
Page 48
Is difficult. Pray tell me, can you make fast
After due search your faith to any question?
Look back o’er ages ere unto the stake fast
You bind yourself and call some mode the best one.
Nothing more true than not to trust your senses,
And yet what are your other evidences?
3
For me, I know nought. Nothing I deny,
Admit, reject, contemn; and what know you,
Except perhaps that you were born to die?
And both may after all turn out untrue.
An age may come, font of eternity,
When nothing shall be either old or new.
Death, so called, is a thing which makes men weep,
And yet a third of life is passed in sleep.
4
A sleep without dreams, after a rough day
Of toil, is what we covet most; and yet
How clay shrinks back from more quiescent clay!
The very suicide that pays his debt
At once without instalments (an old way
Of paying debts, which creditors regret)
Lets out impatiently his rushing breath,
Less from disgust of life than dread of death.
5
’Tis round him, near him, here, there, everywhere;
And there’s a courage which grows out of fear,
Perhaps of all most desperate, which will dare
The worst to know it. When the mountains rear
Their peaks beneath your human foot, and there
You look down o’er the precipice, and drear
The gulf of rock yawns, you can’t gaze a minute
Without an awful wish to plunge within it.
6
’Tis true, you don’t, but pale and struck with terror,
Retire. But look into your past impression
And you will find, though shuddering at the mirror
Of your own thoughts in all their self-confession,
The lurking bias, be it truth or error,
To the unknown, a secret prepossession
To plunge with all your fears – but where? You know not
And that’s the reason why you do – or do not.
7
But what’s this to the purpose, you will say.
Gent, reader, nothing, a mere speculation,
For which my sole excuse is,’tis my way.
Sometimes with and sometimes without occasion
I write what’s uppermost without delay.
This narrative is not meant for narration,
But a mere airy and fantastic basis
To build up common things with commonplaces.
8
You know, or don’t know, that great Bacon saith,
‘Fling up a straw,’twill show the way the wind blows.’
And such a straw, borne on by human breath,
Is poesy, according as the mind glows –
A paper kite, which flies’twixt life and death,
A shadow which the onward soul behind throws.
And mine’s a bubble not blown up for praise,
But just to play with, as an infant plays.
9
The world is all before me or behind,
For I have seen a portion of that same,
And quite enough for me to keep in mind.
Of passions too I have proved enough to blame,
To the great pleasure of our friends, mankind,
Who like to mix some slight alloy with fame,
For I was rather famous in my time,
Until I fairly knocked it up with rhyme.
10
I have brought this world about my ears, and eke
The other; that’s to say, the clergy, who
Upon my head have bid their thunders break
In pious libels by no means a few.
And yet I can’t help scribbling once a week,
Tiring old readers, nor discovering new.
In youth I wrote because my mind was full,
And now because I feel it growing dull.
11
But ‘why then publish?’ There are no rewards
Of fame or profit when the world grows weary.
I ask in turn why do you play at cards?
Why drink? Why read? To make some hour less dreary.
It occupies me to turn back regards
On what I’ve seen or pondered, sad or cheery,
And what I write I cast upon the stream
To swim or sink. I have had at least my dream.
12
I think that were I certain of success,
I hardly could compose another line.
So long I’ve battled either more or less
That no defeat can drive me from the Nine.
This feeling’tis not easy to express
And yet’tis not affected, I opine.
In play there are two pleasures for your choosing:
The one is winning and the other losing.
13
Besides, my Muse by no means deals in fiction.
She gathers a repertory of facts,
Of course with some reserve and slight restriction,
But mostly sings of human things and acts,
And that’s one cause she meets with contradiction,
For too much truth at first sight ne’er attracts,
And were her object only what’s called glory,
With more ease too she’d tell a different story.
14
Love, war, a tempest – surely there’s variety,
Also a seasoning slight of lucubration,
A bird’s-eye view too of that wild, society,
A slight glance thrown on men of every station.
If you have nought else, here’s at least satiety
Both in performance and in preparation,
And though these lines should only line portmanteaus,
Trade will be all the better for these cantos.
15
The portion of this world which I at present
Have taken up to fill the following sermon
Is one of which there’s no description recent.
The reason why is easy to determine:
Although it seems both prominent and pleasant,
There is a sameness in its gems and ermine,
A dull and family likeness through all ages,
Of no great promise for poetic pages.
16
With much to excite, there’s little to exalt,
Nothing that speaks to all men and all times,
A sort of varnish over every fault,
A kind of commonplace even in their crimes,
Factitious passions, wit without much salt,
A want of that true nature which sublimes
Whate’er it shows with truth, a smooth monotony
Of character, in those at least who have got any.
17
Sometimes indeed like soldiers off parade,
They break their ranks and gladly leave the drill,
But then the roll call draws them back afraid,
And they must be or seem what they were. Still
Doubtless it is a brilliant masquerade,
But when of the first sight you have had your fill,
It palls; at least it did so upon me,
This paradise of pleasure and ennui.
18
When we have made our love and gamed our gaming,
Drest, voted, shone, and maybe something more;
With dandies dined, heard senators declaiming,
Seen beauties brought to market by the score,
Sad rakes to sadder husbands chastely taming,
There’s little left but to be bored or bore.
Witness those ci-devant jeunes hommes who stem
The stream, nor leave the world which leaveth them.
19
’Tis said (indeed a general complaint)
> That no one has succeeded in describing
The monde exactly as they ought to paint.
Some say that authors only snatch, by bribing
The porter, some slight scandals strange and quaint,
To furnish matter for their moral gibing
And that their books have but one style in common –
My lady’s prattle, filtered through her woman.
20
But this can’t well be true just now, for writers
Are grown of the beau-monde a part potential.
I’ve seen them balance even the scale with fighters,
Especially when young, for that’s essential.
Why do their sketches fail them as inditers
Of what they deem themselves most consequential,
The real portrait of the highest tribe?
’Tis that in fact there’s little to describe.
21
Haud ignara loquor; these are nugae, quorum
Pars parva fui, but still art and part.
Now I could much more easily sketch a harem,
A battle, wreck, or history of the heart
Than these things, and besides I wish to spare’em,
For reasons which I choose to keep apart.
Vetabo Cereris sacrum qui volgarit,
Which means that vulgar people must not share it.
22
And therefore what I throw off is ideal,
Lowered, leavened like a history of Freemasons,
Which bears the same relation to the real
As Captain Parry’s voyage may do to Jason’s.
The grand arcanum’s not for men to see all.
My music has some mystic diapasons,
And there is much which could not be appreciated
In any manner by the uninitiated.
23
Alas, worlds fall, and woman, since she felled
The world (as, since that history, less polite
Than true, hath been a creed so strictly held)
Has not yet given up the practice quite.
Poor thing of usages! Coerced, compelled,
Victim when wrong and martyr oft when right,
Condemned to childbed, as men for their sins
Have shaving too entailed upon their chins,
24
A daily plague, which in the aggregate
May average on the whole with parturition.
But as to women, who can penetrate
The real sufferings of their she-condition?
Man’s very sympathy with their estate
Has much of selfishness and more suspicion.
Their love, their virtue, beauty, education
But form good housekeepers to breed a nation.
25
All this were very well and can’t be better,
But even this is difficult, heaven knows.
So many troubles from her birth beset her,
Such small distinction between friends and foes,
The gilding wears so soon from off her fetter
That – but ask any woman if she’d choose
(Take her at thirty, that is) to have been
Female or male, a schoolboy or a queen?
26
‘Petticoat influence’ is a great reproach,
Which even those who obey would fain be thought
To fly from, as from hungry pikes a roach;
But since beneath it upon earth we are brought
By various joltings of life’s hackney coach,
I for one venerate a petticoat,
A garment of a mystical sublimity,
No matter whether russet, silk, or dimity.
27
Much I respect and much I have adored
In my young days that chaste and goodly veil,
Which holds a treasure like a miser’s hoard
And more attracts by all it doth conceal,
A golden scabbard on a damask sword,
A loving letter with a mystic seal,
A cure for grief – for what can ever rankle
Before a petticoat and peeping ankle?
28
And when upon a silent, sullen day
With a sirocco, for example, blowing,
When even the sea looks dim with all its spray
And sulkily the river’s ripple’s flowing
And the sky shows that very ancient grey,
The sober, sad antithesis to glowing,
’Tis pleasant, if then anything is pleasant,
To catch a glimpse even of a pretty peasant.
29
We left our heroes and our heroines
In that fair clime which don’t depend on climate,
Quite independent of the zodiac’s signs,
Though certainly more difficult to rhyme at,
Because the sun and stars and aught that shines,
Mountains and all we can be most sublime at
Are there oft dull and dreary as a dun,
Whether a sky’s or tradesman’s is all one.
30
And indoor life is less poetical,
And out-of-door hath showers and mists and sleet,
With which I could not brew a pastoral,
But be it as it may, a bard must meet
All difficulties, whether great or small,
To spoil his undertaking or complete,
And work away like spirit upon matter,
Embarrassed somewhat both with fire and water.
31
Juan – in this respect at least like saints –
Was all things unto people of all sorts
And lived contentedly without complaints
In camps, in ships, in cottages, or courts,
Born with that happy soul which seldom faints,
And mingling modestly in toils or sports.
He likewise could be most things to all women
Without the coxcombry of certain she-men.
32
A fox-hunt to a foreigner is strange;
’Tis also subject to the double danger
Of tumbling first and having in exchange
Some pleasant jesting at the awkward stranger.
But Juan had been early taught to range
The wilds, as doth an Arab turned avenger,
So that his horse or charger, hunter, hack
Knew that he had a rider on his back.
33
And now in this new field, with some applause,
He cleared hedge, ditch and double post and rail
And never craned and made but few faux pas
And only fretted when the scent’gan fail.
He broke,’tis true, some statutes of the laws
Of hunting, for the sagest youth is frail,
Rode o’er the hounds, it may be, now and then,
And once o’er several country gentlemen.
34
But on the whole to general admiration
He acquitted both himself and horse. The squires
Marvelled at merit of another nation.
The boors cried, ‘Dang it, who’d have thought it?’ Sires,
The Nestors of the sporting generation,
Swore praises and recalled their former fires.
The huntsman’s self relented to a grin
And rated him almost a whipper-in.
35
Such were his trophies, not of spear and shield,
But leaps and bursts and sometimes fox’s brushes.
Yet I must own – although in this I yield
To patriot sympathy a Briton’s blushes –
He thought at heart like courtly Chesterfield,
Who after a long chase o’er hills, dales, bushes,
And what not, though he rode beyond all price,
Asked next day, ‘If men ever hunted twice?’
36
He also had a quality uncommon
To early risers after a long chase –
Who wake in wi
nter ere the cock can summon
December’s drowsy day to his dull race –
A quality agreeable to woman,
When her soft, liquid words run on apace,
Who likes a listener, whether saint or sinner –
He did not fall asleep just after dinner.
37
But light and airy stood on the alert
And shone in the best part of dialogue
By humouring always what they might assert
And listening to the topics most in vogue;
Now grave, now gay, but never dull or pert,
And smiling but in secret – cunning rogue.
He ne’er presumed to make an error clearer;
In short there never was a better hearer.
38
And then he danced – all foreigners excel
The serious Angles in the eloquence
Of pantomime – he danced, I say, right well,
With emphasis and also with good sense,
A thing in footing indispensable.
He danced without theatrical pretence,
Not like a ballet master in the van
Of his drilled nymphs, but like a gentleman.
39
Chaste were his steps, each kept within due bound,
And elegance was sprinkled o’er his figure.
Like swift Camilla, he scarce skimmed the ground
And rather held in than put forth his vigour;
And then he had an ear for music’s sound,
Which might defy a crotchet critic’s rigour.
Such classic pas, sans flaws, set off our hero,
He glanced like a personified bolero;
40
Or like a flying Hour before Aurora
In Guido’s famous fresco, which alone
Is worth a tour to Rome, although no more a
Remnant were there of the old world’s sole throne.
The tout ensemble of his movements wore a
Grace of the soft ideal, seldom shown
And ne’er to be described, for to the dolour
Of bards and prosers words are void of colour.
41
No marvel then he was a favourite,
A full-grown Cupid, very much admired,
A little spoilt, but by no means so quite;
At least he kept his vanity retired.
Such was his tact, he could alike delight
The chaste and those who are not so much inspired.
The Duchess of Fitz-Fulke, who loved tracasserie,
Began to treat him with some small agacerie.
42
She was a fine and somewhat full-blown blonde,
Desirable, distinguished, celebrated
For several winters in the grand, grand monde.
I’d rather not say what might be related
Of her exploits, for this were ticklish ground.
Besides there might be falsehood in what’s stated.
Her late performance had been a dead set
At Lord Augustus Fitz-Plantagenet.