by Lord Byron
He sate with feelings awkward to express
(By those who have not had such visitations),
Expectant of the ghost’s fresh operations.
CXII
And not in vain he listen’d; — Hush! what’s that?
I see — I see — Ah, no! — ‘t is not — yet ‘t is —
Ye powers! it is the — the — the — Pooh! the cat!
The devil may take that stealthy pace of his!
So like a spiritual pit-a-pat,
Or tiptoe of an amatory Miss,
Gliding the first time to a rendezvous,
And dreading the chaste echoes of her shoe.
CXIII
Again — what is ‘t? The wind? No, no — this time
It is the sable friar as before,
With awful footsteps regular as rhyme,
Or (as rhymes may be in these days) much more.
Again through shadows of the night sublime,
When deep sleep fell on men, and the world wore
The starry darkness round her like a girdle
Spangled with gems — the monk made his blood curdle.
CXIV
A noise like to wet fingers drawn on glass,
Which sets the teeth on edge; and a slight clatter,
Like showers which on the midnight gusts will pass,
Sounding like very supernatural water,
Came over Juan’s ear, which throbb’d, alas!
For immaterialism’s a serious matter;
So that even those whose faith is the most great
In souls immortal, shun them tête-à-tête.
CXV
Were his eyes open? — Yes! and his mouth too.
Surprise has this effect — to make one dumb,
Yet leave the gate which eloquence slips through
As wide as if a long speech were to come.
Nigh and more nigh the awful echoes drew,
Tremendous to a mortal tympanum:
His eyes were open, and (as was before
Stated) his mouth. What open’d next? — the door.
CXVI
It open’d with a most infernal creak,
Like that of hell. “Lasciate ogni speranza
Voi che entrate!” The hinge seem’d to speak,
Dreadful as Dante’s rima, or this stanza;
Or — but all words upon such themes are weak:
A single shade’s sufficient to entrance
Hero — for what is substance to a spirit?
Or how is ‘t matter trembles to come near it?
CXVII
The door flew wide, — not swiftly, but, as fly
The sea-gulls, with a steady, sober flight, —
And then swung back; nor close — but stood awry,
Half letting in long shadows on the light,
Which still in Juan’s candlesticks burn’d high,
For he had two, both tolerably bright,
And in the door-way, darkening darkness, stood
The sable friar in his solemn hood.
CXVIII
Don Juan shook, as erst he had been shaken
The night before; but being sick of shaking,
He first inclined to think he had been mistaken;
And then to be ashamed of such mistaking;
His own internal ghost began to awaken
Within him, and to quell his corporal quaking —
Hinting that soul and body on the whole
Were odds against a disembodied soul.
CXIX
And then his dread grew wrath, and his wrath fierce,
And he arose, advanced — the shade retreated;
But Juan, eager now the truth to pierce,
Follow’d, his veins no longer cold, but heated,
Resolved to thrust the mystery carte and tierce,
At whatsoever risk of being defeated:
The ghost stopp’d, menaced, then retired, until
He reach’d the ancient wall, then stood stone still.
CXX
Juan put forth one arm — Eternal powers!
It touched no soul, nor body, but the wall,
On which the moonbeams fell in silvery showers,
Chequer’d with all the tracery of the hall;
He shudder’d, as no doubt the bravest cowers
When he can’t tell what ‘t is that doth appal.
How odd, a single hobgoblin’s non-entity
Should cause more fear than a whole host’s identity.
CXXI
But still the shade remain’d: the blue eyes glared,
And rather variably for stony death:
Yet one thing rather good the grave had spared,
The ghost had a remarkably sweet breath.
A straggling curl show’d he had been fair-hair’d;
A red lip, with two rows of pearls beneath,
Gleam’d forth, as through the casement’s ivy shroud
The moon peep’d, just escaped from a grey cloud.
CXXII
And Juan, puzzled, but still curious, thrust
His other arm forth — Wonder upon wonder!
It press’d upon a hard but glowing bust,
Which beat as if there was a warm heart under.
He found, as people on most trials must,
That he had made at first a silly blunder,
And that in his confusion he had caught
Only the wall, instead of what he sought.
CXXIII
The ghost, if ghost it were, seem’d a sweet soul
As ever lurk’d beneath a holy hood:
A dimpled chin, a neck of ivory, stole
Forth into something much like flesh and blood;
Back fell the sable frock and dreary cowl,
And they reveal’d — alas! that e’er they should!
In full, voluptuous, but not o’ergrown bulk,
The phantom of her frolic Grace — Fitz-Fulke!
DON JUAN: CANTO THE SEVENTEENTH
I
The world is full of orphans: firstly, those
Who are so in the strict sense of the phrase
(But many a lonely tree the loftier grows
Than others crowded in the forest’s maze);
The next are such as are not doomed to lose
Their tender parents in their budding days,
But merely their parental tenderness,
Which leaves them orphans of the heart no less.
II
The next are ‘only children’, as they are styled,
Who grow up children only, since the old saw
Pronounces that an ‘only’ ‘s a spoilt child.
But not to go too far, I hold it law
That where their education, harsh or mild,
‘Transgresses the great bounds of love or awe,
The sufferers, be’t in heart or intellect,
Whate’er the cause are orphans in effect.
III
But to return unto the stricter rule
(As far as words make rules), our common notion
Of orphans paints at once a parish school,
A half-starved babe, a wreck upon life’s ocean,
A human (what the Italians nickname) ‘mule’,
A theme for pity or some worse emotion;
Yet, if examined, it might be admitted
The wealthiest orphans are to be more pitied.
IV
Too soon they are parents to themselves; for what
Are tutors, guardians, and so forth, compared
With Nature’s genial genitors, so that
A child of Chancery, that Star Chamber ward
(I’ll take the likeness I can first come at),
Is like a duckling by Dame Partlett reared
And frights, especially if ‘tis a daughter,
The old hen by running h
eadlong to the water.
V
There is a commonplace book argument,
Which glibly glides from every vulgar tongue
When any dare a new light to present:
‘If you are right, then everybody’s wrong.’
Suppose the converse of this precedent
So often urged, so loudly and so long:
‘If you are wrong, then everybody’s right.’
Was ever everybody yet so quite?
VI
Therefore I would solicit free discussion
Upon all points, no matter what or whose,
Because as ages upon ages push on,
The last is apt the former to accuse
Of pillowing its head on a pincushion,
Heedless of pricks because it was obtuse.
What was a paradox becomes a truth or
A something like it, as bear witness Luther.
VII
The sacraments have been reduced to two
And witches unto none, though somewhat late
Since burning aged women (save a few,
Not witches, only bitches, who create
Mischief in families, as some know or knew,
Should still be singed, but slightly let me state)
Has been declared an act of inurbanity,
Malgé Sir Matthew Hale’s great humanity.
VIII
Great Galileo was debarred the sun,
Because he fixed it, and to stop his talking
How earth could round the solar orbit run,
Found his own legs embargoed from mere walking.
The man was well nigh dead, ere men begun
To think his skull had not some need of caulking,
But now it seems he’s right, his notion just,
No doubt a consolation to his dust.
IX
Pythagoras, Locke, Socrates – but pages
Might be filled up, as vainly as before,
With the sad usage of all sorts of sages,
Who in his lifetime each was deemed a bore.
The loftiest minds outrun their tardy ages;
This they must bear with and perhaps much more.
The wise man’s sure when he no more can share it, he
Will have a firm post~obit on posterity.
X
If such doom waits each intellectual giant,
We little people in our lesser way
To life’s small rubs should surely be more pliant,
And so for one will I, as well I may.
Would that I were less bilious – but oh fie on’t!
Just as I make my mind up everyday
To be a totus teres stoic, sage,
The wind shifts and I fly into a rage.
XI
Temperate I am, yet never had a temper;
Modest I am, yet with some slight assurance;
Changeable too, yet somehow idem semper;
Patient, but not enamoured of endurance;
Cheerful, but sometimes rather apt to whimper;
Mild, but at times a sort of Hercules furens;
So that I almost think that the same skin
For one without has two or three within.
XII
Our hero was in canto the sixteenth
Left in a tender moonlight situation,
Such as enables man to show his strength
Moral or physical On this occasion
Whether his virtue triumphed, or at length
His vice – for he was of a kindling nation –
Is more than I shall venture to describe,
Unless some beauty with a kiss should bribe.
XIII
I leave the thing a problem, like all things.
The morning came, and breakfast, tea and toast,
Of which most men partake, but no one sings.
The company, whose birth, wealth, worth have cost
My trembling lyre already several strings,
Assembled with our hostess and mine host.
The guests dropped in, the last but one, Her Grace,
The latest, Juan with his virgin face.
XIV
Which best is to encounter, ghost or none,
‘Twere difficult to say, but Juan looked
As if he had combated with more than one,
Being wan and worn, with eyes that hardly brooked
The light that through the Gothic windows shone.
Her Grace too had a sort of air rebuked,
Seemed pale and shivered, as if she had kept
A vigil or dreamt rather more than slept.
MINOR POEMS
The following 18 poems were published for the first time in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, after they were discovered in letters, journals and various other unpublished manuscripts.
CONTENTS
A VERSION OF OSSIAN’S ADDRESS TO THE SUN.
FAREWELL PETITION TO R. C. H., ESQ.
TO THE HONBLE MRS GEORGE LAMB.
ON A ROYAL VISIT TO THE VAULTS.
ICH DIEN.
ANSWER TO — S PROFESSIONS OF AFFECTION.
QUEM DEUS VULT PERDERE PRIUS DEMENTAT.
E NIHILO NIHIL
BALLAD TO THE TUNE OF “SALLEY IN OUR ALLEY.”
ANOTHER SIMPLE BALLAT.
EPILOGUE.
MY BOY HOBBIE O.
A VOLUME OF NONSENSE.
LUCIETTA. A FRAGMENT.
JOURNAL IN CEPHALONIA.
SONG TO THE SULIOTES.
LOVE AND DEATH.
LAST WORDS ON GREECE.
A VERSION OF OSSIAN’S ADDRESS TO THE SUN.
FROM THE POEM “CARTHON.”
O thou! who rollest in yon azure field,
Round as the orb of my forefather’s shield,
Whence are thy beams? From what eternal store
Dost thou, O Sun! thy vast effulgence pour?
In awful grandeur, when thou movest on high,
The stars start back and hide them in the sky;
The pale Moon sickens in thy brightening blaze,
And in the western wave avoids thy gaze.
Alone thou shinest forth — for who can rise
Companion of thy splendour in the skies!
The mountain oaks are seen to fall away —
Mountains themselves by length of years decay —
With ebbs and flows is the rough Ocean tost;
In heaven the Moon is for a season lost,
But thou, amidst the fullness of thy joy,
The same art ever, blazing in the sky!
When tempests wrap the world from pole to pole,
When vivid lightnings flash and thunders roll,
Thou far above their utmost fury borne,
Look’st forth in beauty, laughing them to scorn.
But vainly now on me thy beauties blaze —
Ossian no longer can enraptured gaze!
Whether at morn, in lucid lustre gay,
On eastern clouds thy yellow tresses play,
Or else at eve, in radiant glory drest,
Thou tremblest at the portals of the west,
I see no more! But thou mayest fail at length,
Like Ossian lose thy beauty and thy strength,
Like him — but for a season — in thy sphere
To shine with splendour, then to disappear!
Thy years shall have an end, and thou no more
Bright through the world enlivening radiance pour,
But sleep within thy clouds, and fail to rise,
Heedless when Morning calls thee to the skies!
Then now exult, O Sun! and gaily shine,
While Youth and Strength and Beauty all are thine.
For Age is dark, unlovely, as the light
Shed by the Moon when clouds deform the night,
Glimmering uncertain as
they hurry past.
Loud o’er the plain is heard the northern blast,
Mists shroud the hills, and ‘neath the growing gloom,
The weary traveller shrinks and sighs for home.
1806.
First published, Atlantic Monthly, December, 1898
FAREWELL PETITION TO R. C. H., ESQ.
O thou yclep’d by vulgar sons of Men
Cam Hobhouse! but by wags Byzantian Ben!
Twin sacred titles, which combined appear
To grace thy volume’s front, and gild its rear,
Since now thou put’st thyself and work to Sea
And leav’st all Greece to Fletcher and to me,
Oh, hear my single muse our sorrows tell,
One song for self and Fletcher quite as well —
First to the Castle of that man of woes
Dispatch the letter which I must enclose,
And when his lone Penelope shall say
Why, where, and wherefore doth my William stay?
Spare not to move her pity, or her pride —
By all that Hero suffered, or defied;
The chicken’s toughness, and the lack of ale
The stoney mountain and the miry vale
The Garlick steams, which half his meals enrich,
The impending vermin, and the threatened Itch,
That ever breaking Bed, beyond repair!
The hat too old, the coat too cold to wear,
The Hunger, which repulsed from Sally’s door
Pursues her grumbling half from shore to shore,
Be these the themes to greet his faithful Rib
So may thy pen be smooth, thy tongue be glib!
This duty done, let me in turn demand
Some friendly office in my native land,
Yet let me ponder well, before I ask,
And set thee swearing at the tedious task.
First the Miscellany! — to Southwell town
Per coach for Mrs. Pigot frank it down,
So may’st them prosper in the paths of Sale,
And Longman smirk and critics cease to rail.
All hail to Matthews! wash his reverend feet,
And in my name the man of Method greet, —
Tell him, my Guide, Philosopher, and Friend,
Who cannot love me, and who will not mend,
Tell him, that not in vain I shall assay
To tread and trace our “old Horatian way,”
And be (with prose supply my dearth of rhymes)
What better men have been in better times.
Here let me cease, for why should I prolong
My notes, and vex a Singer with a Song?
Oh thou with pen perpetual in thy fist!
Dubbed for thy sins a stark Miscellanist,
So pleased the printer’s orders to perform
For Messrs. Longman, Hurst and Rees and Orme.
Go — Get thee hence to Paternoster Row,