by Lord Byron
In foolscap uniforms turned up with ink,
So very anxious, clever, fine, and jealous,
One don’t know what to say to them, or think,
Unless to puff them with a pair of bellows;
Of Coxcombry’s worst coxcombs e’en the pink
Are preferable to these shreds of paper,
These unquenched snuffings of the midnight taper.
LXXVI.
Of these same we see several, and of others.
Men of the world, who know the World like Men,
Scott, Rogers, Moore, and all the better brothers,
Who think of something else besides the pen;
But for the children of the “Mighty Mother’s,”
The would-be wits, and can’t-be gentlemen,
I leave them to their daily “tea is ready,”
Smug coterie, and literary lady.
LXXVII.
The poor dear Mussulwomen whom I mention
Have none of these instructive pleasant people,
And one would seem to them a new invention,
Unknown as bells within a Turkish steeple;
I think ‘twould almost be worth while to pension
(Though best-sown projects very often reap ill)
A missionary author — just to preach
Our Christian usage of the parts of speech.
LXXVIII.
No Chemistry for them unfolds her gases,
No Metaphysics are let loose in lectures,
No Circulating Library amasses
Religious novels, moral tales, and strictures
Upon the living manners, as they pass us;
No Exhibition glares with annual pictures;
They stare not on the stars from out their attics,
Nor deal (thank God for that!) in Mathematics.
LXXIX.
Why I thank God for that is no great matter,
I have my reasons, you no doubt suppose,
And as, perhaps, they would not highly flatter,
I’ll keep them for my life (to come) in prose;
I fear I have a little turn for Satire,
And yet methinks the older that one grows
Inclines us more to laugh than scold, though Laughter
Leaves us so doubly serious shortly after.
LXXX.
Oh, Mirth and Innocence! Oh, Milk and Water!
Ye happy mixtures of more happy days!
In these sad centuries of sin and slaughter,
Abominable Man no more allays
His thirst with such pure beverage. No matter,
I love you both, and both shall have my praise:
Oh, for old Saturn’s reign of sugar-candy! — –
Meantime I drink to your return in brandy.
LXXXI.
Our Laura’s Turk still kept his eyes upon her,
Less in the Mussulman than Christian way,
Which seems to say, “Madam, I do you honour,
And while I please to stare, you’ll please to stay.”
Could staring win a woman, this had won her,
But Laura could not thus be led astray;
She had stood fire too long and well, to boggle
Even at this Stranger’s most outlandish ogle.
LXXXII.
The morning now was on the point of breaking,
A turn of time at which I would advise
Ladies who have been dancing, or partaking
In any other kind of exercise,
To make their preparations for forsaking
The ball-room ere the Sun begins to rise,
Because when once the lamps and candles fail,
His blushes make them look a little pale.
LXXXIII.
I’ve seen some balls and revels in my time,
And stayed them over for some silly reason,
And then I looked (I hope it was no crime)
To see what lady best stood out the season;
And though I’ve seen some thousands in their prime
Lovely and pleasing, and who still may please on,
I never saw but one (the stars withdrawn)
Whose bloom could after dancing dare the Dawn.
LXXXIV.
The name of this Aurora I’ll not mention,
Although I might, for she was nought to me
More than that patent work of God’s invention,
A charming woman, whom we like to see;
But writing names would merit reprehension,
Yet if you like to find out this fair She,
At the next London or Parisian ball
You still may mark her cheek, out-blooming all.
LXXXV.
Laura, who knew it would not do at all
To meet the daylight after seven hours’ sitting
Among three thousand people at a ball,
To make her curtsey thought it right and fitting;
The Count was at her elbow with her shawl,
And they the room were on the point of quitting,
When lo! those curséd Gondoliers had got
Just in the very place where they should not.
LXXXVI.
In this they’re like our coachmen, and the cause
Is much the same — the crowd, and pulling, hauling,
With blasphemies enough to break their jaws,
They make a never intermitted bawling.
At home, our Bow-street gem’men keep the laws,
And here a sentry stands within your calling;
But for all that, there is a deal of swearing,
And nauseous words past mentioning or bearing.
LXXXVII.
The Count and Laura found their boat at last,
And homeward floated o’er the silent tide,
Discussing all the dances gone and past;
The dancers and their dresses, too, beside;
Some little scandals eke; but all aghast
(As to their palace-stairs the rowers glide)
Sate Laura by the side of her adorer,
When lo! the Mussulman was there before her!
LXXXVIII.
“Sir,” said the Count, with brow exceeding grave,
“Your unexpected presence here will make
It necessary for myself to crave
Its import? But perhaps ‘tis a mistake;
I hope it is so; and, at once to waive
All compliment, I hope so for your sake;
You understand my meaning, or you shall.”
“Sir,” (quoth the Turk) “‘tis no mistake at all:
LXXXIX.
“That Lady is my wife!” Much wonder paints
The lady’s changing cheek, as well it might;
But where an Englishwoman sometimes faints,
Italian females don’t do so outright;
They only call a little on their Saints,
And then come to themselves, almost, or quite;
Which saves much hartshorn, salts, and sprinkling faces,
And cutting stays, as usual in such cases.
XC.
She said, — what could she say? Why, not a word;
But the Count courteously invited in
The Stranger, much appeased by what he heard:
“Such things, perhaps, we’d best discuss within,”
Said he; “don’t let us make ourselves absurd
In public, by a scene, nor raise a din,
For then the chief and only satisfaction
Will be much quizzing on the whole transaction.”
XCI.
They entered, and for Coffee called — it came,
A beverage for Turks and Christians both,
Although the way they make it’s not the same.
Now Laura, much recovered, or less loth
To speak, cries “Beppo! what’s your pagan name?
Bless me! your beard is of amazing growth!
And how came you to keep away so long?
Are you not sensible ‘twas very wrong?
XCII.
“And are you really, truly, now a Turk?
With any other women did you wive?
Is’t true they use their fingers for a fork?
Well, that’s the prettiest Shawl — as I’m alive!
You’ll give it me? They say you eat no pork.
And how so many years did you contrive
To — Bless me! did I ever? No, I never
Saw a man grown so yellow! How’s your liver?
XCIII.
“Beppo! that beard of yours becomes you not;
It shall be shaved before you’re a day older:
Why do you wear it? Oh! I had forgot —
Pray don’t you think the weather here is colder?
How do I look? You shan’t stir from this spot
In that queer dress, for fear that some beholder
Should find you out, and make the story known.
How short your hair is! Lord! how grey it’s grown!”
XCIV.
What answer Beppo made to these demands
Is more than I know. He was cast away
About where Troy stood once, and nothing stands;
Became a slave of course, and for his pay
Had bread and bastinadoes, till some bands
Of pirates landing in a neighbouring bay,
He joined the rogues and prospered, and became
A renegade of indifferent fame.
XCV.
But he grew rich, and with his riches grew so
Keen the desire to see his home again,
He thought himself in duty bound to do so,
And not be always thieving on the main;
Lonely he felt, at times, as Robin Crusoe,
And so he hired a vessel come from Spain,
Bound for Corfu: she was a fine polacca,
Manned with twelve hands, and laden with tobacco.
XCVI.
Himself, and much (heaven knows how gotten!) cash,
He then embarked, with risk of life and limb,
And got clear off, although the attempt was rash;
He said that Providence protected him —
For my part, I say nothing — lest we clash
In our opinions: — well — the ship was trim,
Set sail, and kept her reckoning fairly on,
Except three days of calm when off Cape Bonn.
XCVII.
They reached the Island, he transferred his lading,
And self and live stock to another bottom,
And passed for a true Turkey-merchant, trading
With goods of various names — but I’ve forgot ‘em.
However, he got off by this evading,
Or else the people would perhaps have shot him;
And thus at Venice landed to reclaim
His wife, religion, house, and Christian name.
XCVIII.
His wife received, the Patriarch re-baptised him,
(He made the Church a present, by the way;)
He then threw off the garments which disguised him,
And borrowed the Count’s smallclothes for a day:
His friends the more for his long absence prized him,
Finding he’d wherewithal to make them gay,
With dinners, where he oft became the laugh of them,
For stories — but I don’t believe the half of them.
XCIX.
Whate’er his youth had suffered, his old age
With wealth and talking made him some amends;
Though Laura sometimes put him in a rage,
I’ve heard the Count and he were always friends.
My pen is at the bottom of a page,
Which being finished, here the story ends:
‘Tis to be wished it had been sooner done,
But stories somehow lengthen when begun.
DON JUAN
Byron’s masterpiece Don Juan is part epic, part satirical poem, in which the poet portrays the traditional character as a man easily seduced by women, rather than a womaniser himself. The poet began the first canto in the autumn of 1818, and he was still at work on a seventeenth canto in the spring of 1823. The poem was issued in parts, with intervals of unequal duration. Interruptions in the composition and publication of Don Juan were caused by the discouragement of friends, as well as the publisher’s hesitation.
Like the previous poem Beppo, Don Juan is written in ottava rima, a stanza that consists of eight iambic pentameters. Each stanza consists of three alternate rhymes and one double rhyme, following the a-b-a-b-a-b-c-c pattern. Byron completed 16 cantos, leaving the 17th canto unfinished before his death in 1824. He claimed he had no idea as to what would happen in the end of the poem. On the anonymous publication of the first two cantos in 1819, the poem was very popular, although criticised by many for its immorality, fuelling more interest in the work.
The poem opens in Seville, where Don Juan lives with his father José and his mother Doña Inez, a well-read scholarly woman in an unhappy marriage. Doña Julia, 23 years old and married to a much older Don Alfonso, desires Don Juan when he is 16 years old, heralding the protagonist’s first misadventure.
‘La Barque de don Juan’ by Eugène Delacroix, 1840
‘The Finding of Don Juan by Haidee’ by Ford Madox Brown, 1873
CONTENTS
DON JUAN: DEDICATION
DON JUAN: CANTO THE FIRST
DON JUAN: CANTO THE SECOND
DON JUAN: CANTO THE THIRD
DON JUAN: CANTO THE FOURTH
DON JUAN: CANTO THE FIFTH
DON JUAN: CANTO THE SIXTH
DON JUAN: CANTO THE SEVENTH
DON JUAN: CANTO THE EIGHTH
DON JUAN: CANTO THE NINTH
DON JUAN: CANTO THE TENTH
DON JUAN: CANTO THE ELEVENTH
DON JUAN: CANTO THE TWELFTH
DON JUAN: CANTO THE THIRTEENTH
DON JUAN: CANTO THE FOURTEENTH
DON JUAN: CANTO THE FIFTEENTH
DON JUAN: CANTO THE SIXTEENTH
DON JUAN: CANTO THE SEVENTEENTH
A page of the original manuscript — Byron had a fluent hand, making minimal revisions, in spite of the complex ottava rima form
FRAGMENT ON THE BACK OF THE MS. OF CANTO I.
I would to Heaven that I were so much clay,
As I am blood, bone, marrow, passion, feeling —
Because at least the past were passed away,
And for the future — (but I write this reeling,
Having got drunk exceedingly to-day,
So that I seem to stand upon the ceiling)
I say — the future is a serious matter —
And so — for God’s sake — hock and soda-water!
DON JUAN: DEDICATION
I
Bob Southey! You’re a poet — Poet-laureate,
And representative of all the race,
Although ‘t is true that you turn’d out a Tory at
Last, — yours has lately been a common case;
And now, my Epic Renegade! what are ye at?
With all the Lakers, in and out of place?
A nest of tuneful persons, to my eye
Like “four and twenty Blackbirds in a pye;
II
“Which pye being open’d they began to sing”
(This old song and new simile holds good),
“A dainty dish to set before the King,”
Or Regent, who admires such kind of food; —
And Coleridge, too, has lately taken wing,
But like a hawk encumber’d with his hood, —
Explaining metaphysics to the nation —
I wish he would explain his Explanation.
III
At being disappointed in your wish
To supersede all warblers here below,
And be the only Blackbird in the dish;
And then you overstrain yourself, or so,
And tumble downward like the flying fish
Gasping on deck, because you soar too high, Bob,
And fall, for lack of moisture, quite a-dry, Bob!
IV
And Wordsworth, in a rather long Excursion
(I think the quarto holds five hundred pages),
Has given a sample from the vasty version
Of his new system to perplex the sages;
‘T is poetry — at least by his assertion,
And may appear so when the dog-star rages —
And he who understands it would be able
To add a story to the Tower of Babel.
V
You — Gentlemen! by dint of long seclusion
From better company, have kept your own
At Keswick, and, through still continued fusion
Of one another’s minds, at last have grown
To deem as a most logical conclusion,
That Poesy has wreaths for you alone:
There is a narrowness in such a notion,
Which makes me wish you’d change your lakes for ocean.
VI
I would not imitate the petty thought,
Nor coin my self-love to so base a vice,
For all the glory your conversion brought,
Since gold alone should not have been its price.
You have your salary; was ‘t for that you wrought?
And Wordsworth has his place in the Excise.
You’re shabby fellows — true — but poets still,
And duly seated on the immortal hill.
VII
Your bays may hide the baldness of your brows —
Perhaps some virtuous blushes; — let them go —
To you I envy neither fruit nor boughs —
And for the fame you would engross below,
The field is universal, and allows
Scope to all such as feel the inherent glow:
Scott, Rogers, Campbell, Moore, and Crabbe will try
‘Gainst you the question with posterity.
VIII
For me, who, wandering with pedestrian Muses,
Contend not with you on the winged steed,
I wish your fate may yield ye, when she chooses,
The fame you envy and the skill you need;
And recollect a poet nothing loses
In giving to his brethren their full meed
Of merit, and complaint of present days
Is not the certain path to future praise.
IX
He that reserves his laurels for posterity
(Who does not often claim the bright reversion)
Has generally no great crop to spare it, he