Lord Byron - Delphi Poets Series

by Lord Byron

  No doubt his sensibilities were less.

  LXXXII

  He also had been busy seeing sights —

  The Parliament and all the other houses;

  Had sat beneath the gallery at nights,

  To hear debates whose thunder roused (not rouses)

  The world to gaze upon those northern lights

  Which flash’d as far as where the musk-bull browses; [*]

  He had also stood at times behind the throne —

  But Grey was not arrived, and Chatham gone.

  LXXXIII

  He saw, however, at the closing session,

  That noble sight, when really free the nation,

  A king in constitutional possession

  Of such a throne as is the proudest station,

  Though despots know it not — till the progression

  Of freedom shall complete their education.

  ‘T is not mere splendour makes the show august

  To eye or heart — it is the people’s trust.

  LXXXIV

  There, too, he saw (whate’er he may be now)

  A Prince, the prince of princes at the time,

  With fascination in his very bow,

  And full of promise, as the spring of prime.

  Though royalty was written on his brow,

  He had then the grace, too, rare in every clime,

  Of being, without alloy of fop or beau,

  A finish’d gentleman from top to toe.

  LXXXV

  And Juan was received, as hath been said,

  Into the best society: and there

  Occurr’d what often happens, I’m afraid,

  However disciplined and debonnaire: —

  The talent and good humour he display’d,

  Besides the mark’d distinction of his air,

  Exposed him, as was natural, to temptation,

  Even though himself avoided the occasion.

  LXXXVI

  But what, and where, with whom, and when, and why,

  Is not to be put hastily together;

  And as my object is morality

  (Whatever people say), I don’t know whether

  I’ll leave a single reader’s eyelid dry,

  But harrow up his feelings till they wither,

  And hew out a huge monument of pathos,

  As Philip’s son proposed to do with Athos. [*]

  LXXXVII

  Here the twelfth Canto of our introduction

  Ends. When the body of the book’s begun,

  You’ll find it of a different construction

  From what some people say ‘t will be when done:

  The plan at present’s simply in concoction,

  I can’t oblige you, reader, to read on;

  That’s your affair, not mine: a real spirit

  Should neither court neglect, nor dread to bear it.

  LXXXVIII

  And if my thunderbolt not always rattles,

  Remember, reader! you have had before

  The worst of tempests and the best of battles

  That e’er were brew’d from elements or gore,

  Besides the most sublime of — Heaven knows what else:

  An usurer could scarce expect much more —

  But my best canto, save one on astronomy,

  Will turn upon “political economy.”

  LXXXIX

  That is your present theme for popularity:

  Now that the public hedge hath scarce a stake,

  It grows an act of patriotic charity,

  To show the people the best way to break.

  My plan (but I, if but for singularity,

  Reserve it) will be very sure to take.

  Meantime, read all the national debt-sinkers,

  And tell me what you think of your great thinkers.

  DON JUAN: CANTO THE THIRTEENTH

  I

  I now mean to be serious; — it is time,

  Since laughter now-a-days is deem’d too serious.

  A jest at Vice by Virtue’s call’d a crime,

  And critically held as deleterious:

  Besides, the sad’s a source of the sublime,

  Although when long a little apt to weary us;

  And therefore shall my lay soar high and solemn,

  As an old temple dwindled to a column.

  II

  The Lady Adeline Amundeville

  (‘T is an old Norman name, and to be found

  In pedigrees, by those who wander still

  Along the last fields of that Gothic ground)

  Was high-born, wealthy by her father’s will,

  And beauteous, even where beauties most abound,

  In Britain — which of course true patriots find

  The goodliest soil of body and of mind.

  III

  I’ll not gainsay them; it is not my cue;

  I’ll leave them to their taste, no doubt the best:

  An eye’s an eye, and whether black or blue,

  Is no great matter, so ‘t is in request,

  ‘T is nonsense to dispute about a hue —

  The kindest may be taken as a test.

  The fair sex should be always fair; and no man,

  Till thirty, should perceive there’s a plain woman.

  IV

  And after that serene and somewhat dull

  Epoch, that awkward corner turn’d for days

  More quiet, when our moon’s no more at full,

  We may presume to criticise or praise;

  Because indifference begins to lull

  Our passions, and we walk in wisdom’s ways;

  Also because the figure and the face

  Hint, that ‘t is time to give the younger place.

  V

  I know that some would fain postpone this era,

  Reluctant as all placemen to resign

  Their post; but theirs is merely a chimera,

  For they have pass’d life’s equinoctial line:

  But then they have their claret and Madeira

  To irrigate the dryness of decline;

  And county meetings, and the parliament,

  And debt, and what not, for their solace sent.

  VI

  And is there not religion, and reform,

  Peace, war, the taxes, and what’s call’d the “Nation”?

  The struggle to be pilots in a storm?

  The landed and the monied speculation?

  The joys of mutual hate to keep them warm,

  Instead of love, that mere hallucination?

  Now hatred is by far the longest pleasure;

  Men love in haste, but they detest at leisure.

  VII

  Rough Johnson, the great moralist, profess’d,

  Right honestly, “he liked an honest hater!” —

  The only truth that yet has been confest

  Within these latest thousand years or later.

  Perhaps the fine old fellow spoke in jest: —

  For my part, I am but a mere spectator,

  And gaze where’er the palace or the hovel is,

  Much in the mode of Goethe’s Mephistopheles;

  VIII

  But neither love nor hate in much excess;

  Though ‘t was not once so. If I sneer sometimes,

  It is because I cannot well do less,

  And now and then it also suits my rhymes.

  I should be very willing to redress

  Men’s wrongs, and rather check than punish crimes,

  Had not Cervantes, in that too true tale

  Of Quixote, shown how all such efforts fail.

  IX

  Of all tales ‘t is the saddest — and more sad,

  Because it makes us smile: his hero’s right,

  And still pursues the right; — to curb the bad

  His only object, and ‘gainst odds to fight


  His guerdon: ‘t is his virtue makes him mad!

  But his adventures form a sorry sight;

  A sorrier still is the great moral taught

  By that real epic unto all who have thought.

  X

  Redressing injury, revenging wrong,

  To aid the damsel and destroy the caitiff;

  Opposing singly the united strong,

  From foreign yoke to free the helpless native: —

  Alas! must noblest views, like an old song,

  Be for mere fancy’s sport a theme creative,

  A jest, a riddle, Fame through thin and thick sought!

  And Socrates himself but Wisdom’s Quixote?

  XI

  Cervantes smiled Spain’s chivalry away;

  A single laugh demolish’d the right arm

  Of his own country; — seldom since that day

  Has Spain had heroes. While Romance could charm,

  The world gave ground before her bright array;

  And therefore have his volumes done such harm,

  That all their glory, as a composition,

  Was dearly purchased by his land’s perdition.

  XII

  I’m “at my old lunes” — digression, and forget

  The Lady Adeline Amundeville;

  The fair most fatal Juan ever met,

  Although she was not evil nor meant ill;

  But Destiny and Passion spread the net

  (Fate is a good excuse for our own will),

  And caught them; — what do they not catch, methinks?

  But I’m not Oedipus, and life’s a Sphinx.

  XIII

  I tell the tale as it is told, nor dare

  To venture a solution: “Davus sum!”

  And now I will proceed upon the pair.

  Sweet Adeline, amidst the gay world’s hum,

  Was the Queen-Bee, the glass of all that’s fair;

  Whose charms made all men speak, and women dumb.

  The last’s a miracle, and such was reckon’d,

  And since that time there has not been a second.

  XIV

  Chaste was she, to detraction’s desperation,

  And wedded unto one she had loved well —

  A man known in the councils of the nation,

  Cool, and quite English, imperturbable,

  Though apt to act with fire upon occasion,

  Proud of himself and her: the world could tell

  Nought against either, and both seem’d secure —

  She in her virtue, he in his hauteur.

  XV

  It chanced some diplomatical relations,

  Arising out of business, often brought

  Himself and Juan in their mutual stations

  Into close contact. Though reserved, nor caught

  By specious seeming, Juan’s youth, and patience,

  And talent, on his haughty spirit wrought,

  And form’d a basis of esteem, which ends

  In making men what courtesy calls friends.

  XVI

  And thus Lord Henry, who was cautious as

  Reserve and pride could make him, and full slow

  In judging men — when once his judgment was

  Determined, right or wrong, on friend or foe,

  Had all the pertinacity pride has,

  Which knows no ebb to its imperious flow,

  And loves or hates, disdaining to be guided,

  Because its own good pleasure hath decided.

  XVII

  His friendships, therefore, and no less aversions,

  Though oft well founded, which confirm’d but more

  His prepossessions, like the laws of Persians

  And Medes, would ne’er revoke what went before.

  His feelings had not those strange fits, like tertians,

  Of common likings, which make some deplore

  What they should laugh at — the mere ague still

  Of men’s regard, the fever or the chill.

  XVIII

  “‘T is not in mortals to command success:

  But do you more, Sempronius — don’t deserve it,”

  And take my word, you won’t have any less.

  Be wary, watch the time, and always serve it;

  Give gently way, when there’s too great a press;

  And for your conscience, only learn to nerve it,

  For, like a racer, or a boxer training,

  ‘T will make, if proved, vast efforts without paining.

  XIX

  Lord Henry also liked to be superior,

  As most men do, the little or the great;

  The very lowest find out an inferior,

  At least they think so, to exert their state

  Upon: for there are very few things wearier

  Than solitary Pride’s oppressive weight,

  Which mortals generously would divide,

  By bidding others carry while they ride.

  XX

  In birth, in rank, in fortune likewise equal,

  O’er Juan he could no distinction claim;

  In years he had the advantage of time’s sequel;

  And, as he thought, in country much the same —

  Because bold Britons have a tongue and free quill,

  At which all modern nations vainly aim;

  And the Lord Henry was a great debater,

  So that few members kept the house up later.

  XXI

  These were advantages: and then he thought —

  It was his foible, but by no means sinister —

  That few or none more than himself had caught

  Court mysteries, having been himself a minister:

  He liked to teach that which he had been taught,

  And greatly shone whenever there had been a stir;

  And reconciled all qualities which grace man,

  Always a patriot, and sometimes a placeman.

  XXII

  He liked the gentle Spaniard for his gravity;

  He almost honour’d him for his docility;

  Because, though young, he acquiesced with suavity,

  Or contradicted but with proud humility.

  He knew the world, and would not see depravity

  In faults which sometimes show the soil’s fertility,

  If that the weeds o’erlive not the first crop —

  For then they are very difficult to stop.

  XXIII

  And then he talk’d with him about Madrid,

  Constantinople, and such distant places;

  Where people always did as they were bid,

  Or did what they should not with foreign graces.

  Of coursers also spake they: Henry rid

  Well, like most Englishmen, and loved the races;

  And Juan, like a true-born Andalusian,

  Could back a horse, as despots ride a Russian.

  XXIV

  And thus acquaintance grew, at noble routs,

  And diplomatic dinners, or at other —

  For Juan stood well both with Ins and Outs,

  As in freemasonry a higher brother.

  Upon his talent Henry had no doubts;

  His manner show’d him sprung from a high mother;

  And all men like to show their hospitality

  To him whose breeding matches with his quality.

  XXV

  At Blank-Blank Square; — for we will break no squares

  By naming streets: since men are so censorious,

  And apt to sow an author’s wheat with tares,

  Reaping allusions private and inglorious,

  Where none were dreamt of, unto love’s affairs,

  Which were, or are, or are to be notorious,

  That therefore do I previously declare,

  Lord Henry’s mansion was in Blank-Blank Square.

  XXVI
r />   Also there bin another pious reason

  For making squares and streets anonymous;

  Which is, that there is scarce a single season

  Which doth not shake some very splendid house

  With some slight heart-quake of domestic treason —

  A topic scandal doth delight to rouse:

  Such I might stumble over unawares,

  Unless I knew the very chastest squares.

  XXVII

  ‘T is true, I might have chosen Piccadilly,

  A place where peccadillos are unknown;

  But I have motives, whether wise or silly,

  For letting that pure sanctuary alone.

  Therefore I name not square, street, place, until I

  Find one where nothing naughty can be shown,

  A vestal shrine of innocence of heart:

  Such are — but I have lost the London Chart.

  XXVIII

  At Henry’s mansion then, in Blank-Blank Square,

  Was Juan a recherchè, welcome guest,

  As many other noble scions were;

  And some who had but talent for their crest;

  Or wealth, which is a passport every where;

  Or even mere fashion, which indeed’s the best

  Recommendation; and to be well drest

  Will very often supersede the rest.

  XXIX

  And since “there’s safety in a multitude

  Of counsellors,” as Solomon has said,

  Or some one for him, in some sage, grave mood; —

  Indeed we see the daily proof display’d

  In senates, at the bar, in wordy feud,

  Where’er collective wisdom can parade,

  Which is the only cause that we can guess

  Of Britain’s present wealth and happiness; —

  XXX

  But as “there’s safety” grafted in the number

  ”Of counsellors” for men, thus for the sex

  A large acquaintance lets not Virtue slumber;

  Or should it shake, the choice will more perplex —

  Variety itself will more encumber.

  ’Midst many rocks we guard more against wrecks;

  And thus with women: howsoe’er it shocks some’s

  Self-love, there’s safety in a crowd of coxcombs.

  XXXI

  But Adeline had not the least occasion

  For such a shield, which leaves but little merit

  To virtue proper, or good education.

  Her chief resource was in her own high spirit,

  Which judged mankind at their due estimation;

  And for coquetry, she disdain’d to wear it:

  Secure of admiration, its impression

  Was faint, as of an every-day possession.

  XXXII

  To all she was polite without parade;

  To some she show’d attention of that kind

  Which flatters, but is flattery convey’d

  In such a sort as cannot leave behind