Lord Byron - Delphi Poets Series

by Lord Byron

  Consulting “the Society for Vice

  Suppression,” Lady Pinchbeck was his choice.

  XLIII

  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 eschew’d by human cattle.

  XLIV

  Moreover I’ve remark’d (and I was once

  A slight observer in a modest way),

  And so may every one 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.

  XLV

  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.

  XLVI

  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.

  XLVII

  I said that Lady Pinchbeck had been talk’d about —

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

  But now no more the ghost of Scandal stalk’d about;

  She merely was deem’d amiable and witty,

  And several of her best bons-mots were hawk’d about:

  Then she was given to charity and pity,

  And pass’d (at least the latter years of life)

  For being a most exemplary wife.

  XLVIII

  High in high circles, gentle in her own,

  She was the mild reprover of the young,

  Whenever — which means every day — 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.

  XLIX

  Juan, too, was a sort of favourite with her,

  Because she thought him a good heart at bottom,

  A little spoil’d, but not so altogether;

  Which was a wonder, if you think who got him,

  And how he had been toss’d, 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.

  L

  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 deem’d so weighty.

  LI

  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 — like to Cytherea’s shell.

  LII

  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 turn’d for fits.

  LIII

  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 cætera, in fresh batches —

  All matchless creatures, and yet bent on matches.

  LIV

  But now I will begin my poem. ‘T is

  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.

  LV

  My Muses do not care a pinch of rosin

  About what’s call’d success, or not succeeding:

  Such thoughts are quite below the strain they have chosen;

  ’T is 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 founder’d,

  I think to canter gently through a hundred.

  LVI

  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.

  LVII

  He had many friends who had many wives, and was

  Well look’d 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 fetes, and balls,

  For the first season such a life scarce palls.

  LVIII

  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 every body 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.

  LIX

  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.

  LX

  Perhaps you’ll have a letter from the mother,

  To say her daughter’s feelings are trepann’d;

  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.

  LXI

  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 dream’d to have shown —

  Yet neither frighten’d by a female fuss,

  Nor by mustachios moved, were let alone,

  And lived, as did the broken-hearted fair,

  In happier plight than if they form’d a pair.

  LXII

  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.

  LXIII

  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 wreck’d, 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.

  LXIV

  “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.

  LXV

  For ‘t is 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.

  LXVI

  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.

  LXVII

  Juan, who did not stand in the predicament

  Of a mere novice, had one safeguard more;

  For he was sick — no, ‘t was not the word sick I meant —

  But he had seen so much 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 knockings.

  LXVIII

  But coming young from lands and scenes romantic,

  Where lives, not lawsuits, must be risk’d for Passion,

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

  Into a country where ‘t is half a fashion,

  Seem’d 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.

  LXIX

  I say at 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.

  LXX

  Though travell’d, 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.

  LXXI

  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 seest thou? A dubious spark.

  LXXII

  But I’m relapsing into metaphysics,

  That labyrinth, whose clue is of the same

  Construction as your cures for hectic phthisics,

  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.

  LXXIII

  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.

  LXXIV

  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.

  LXXV

  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 n
ot so fit to warb-

  le 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); —

  LXXVI

  She cannot do these things, nor one or two

  Others, in that off-hand 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.

  LXXVII

  And if in fact she takes to a “grande passion,”

  It is a very serious thing indeed:

  Nine times in ten ‘t is 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.

  LXXVIII

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

  They lose their caste at once, as do the Parias;

  And when the delicacies of the law

  Have fill’d 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.

  LXXIX

  Perhaps this is as it should be; — it is

  A comment on the Gospel’s “Sin no more,

  And be thy sins forgiven:” — but upon this

  I leave the saints to settle their own score.

  Abroad, though doubtless they do much amiss,

  An erring woman finds an opener door

  For her return to Virtue — as they call

  That lady, who should be at home to all.

  LXXX

  For me, I leave the matter where I find it,

  Knowing that such uneasy virtue leads

  People some ten times less in fact to mind it,

  And care but for discoveries and not deeds.

  And as for chastity, you’ll never bind it

  By all the laws the strictest lawyer pleads,

  But aggravate the crime you have not prevented,

  By rendering desperate those who had else repented.

  LXXXI

  But Juan was no casuist, nor had ponder’d

  Upon the moral lessons of mankind:

  Besides, he had not seen of several hundred

  A lady altogether to his mind.

  A little “blasé” — ‘t is not to be wonder’d

  At, that his heart had got a tougher rind:

  And though not vainer from his past success,