No matter; we should ne'er too much inquire, But facts are facts: no Knight could be more true, And firmer faith no Ladye-love desire; We will omit the proofs, save one or two: 'T is said no one in hand "can hold a fire By thought of frosty Caucasus"[257]--but few, I really think--yet Juan's then ordeal Was more triumphant, and not much less real.
XCVII.
Here I might enter on a chaste description, Having withstood temptation in my youth,[ei]
But hear that several people take exception At the first two books having too much truth; Therefore I'll make Don Juan leave the ship soon, Because the publisher declares, in sooth, Through needles' eyes it easier for the camel is To pass, than those two cantos into families.
XCVIII.
'T is all the same to me; I'm fond of yielding, And therefore leave them to the purer page Of Smollett, Prior, Ariosto, Fielding, Who say strange things for so correct an age;[258]
I once had great alacrity in wielding My pen, and liked poetic war to wage, And recollect the time when all this cant Would have provoked remarks--which now it shan't.
XCIX.
As boys love rows, my boyhood liked a squabble; But at this hour I wish to part in peace, Leaving such to the literary rabble; Whether my verse's fame be doomed to cease While the right hand which wrote it still is able, Or of some centuries to take a lease, The grass upon my grave will grow as long, And sigh to midnight winds, but not to song.
C.
Of poets who come down to us through distance Of time and tongues, the foster-babes of Fame, Life seems the smallest portion of existence; Where twenty ages gather o'er a name, 'T is as a snowball which derives assistance From every flake, and yet rolls on the same, Even till an iceberg it may chance to grow; But, after all, 't is nothing but cold snow.
CI.
And so great names are nothing more than nominal, And love of Glory's but an airy lust, Too often in its fury overcoming all Who would as 't were identify their dust From out the wide destruction, which, entombing all, Leaves nothing till "the coming of the just"-- Save change: I've stood upon Achilles' tomb, And heard Troy doubted;[259] Time will doubt of Rome.
CII.
The very generations of the dead Are swept away, and tomb inherits tomb, Until the memory of an Age is fled, And, buried, sinks beneath its offspring's doom: Where are the epitaphs our fathers read?
Save a few gleaned from the sepulchral gloom Which once-named myriads nameless lie beneath, And lose their own in universal Death.
CIII.
I canter by the spot each afternoon Where perished in his fame the hero-boy, Who lived too long for men, but died too soon For human vanity, the young De Foix!
A broken pillar, not uncouthly hewn, But which Neglect is hastening to destroy, Records Ravenna's carnage on its face, While weeds and ordure rankle round the base.[260]
CIV.
I pass each day where Dante's bones are laid:[261]
A little cupola, more neat than solemn, Protects his dust, but reverence here is paid[ej]
To the Bard's tomb, and not the Warrior's column: The time must come, when both alike decayed, The Chieftain's trophy, and the Poet's volume, Will sink where lie the songs and wars of earth, Before Pelides' death, or Homer's birth.
CV.
With human blood that column was cemented, With human filth that column is defiled, As if the peasant's coarse contempt were vented To show his loathing of the spot he soiled:[ek]
Thus is the trophy used, and thus lamented Should ever be those blood-hounds, from whose wild Instinct of gore and glory Earth has known Those sufferings Dante saw in Hell alone.[el]
CVI.
Yet there will still be bards: though Fame is smoke, Its fumes are frankincense to human thought; And the unquiet feelings, which first woke Song in the world, will seek what then they sought;[em]
As on the beach the waves at last are broke, Thus to their extreme verge the passions brought Dash into poetry, which is but Passion, Or, at least, was so ere it grew a fashion.
CVII.
If in the course of such a life as was At once adventurous and contemplative, Men who partake all passions as they pass, Acquire the deep and bitter power to give[en]
Their images again as in a glass, And in such colours that they seem to live; You may do right forbidding them to show 'em, But spoil (I think) a very pretty poem.[262]
CVIII.
Oh! ye, who make the fortunes of all books!
Benign Ceruleans of the second sex!
Who advertise new poems by your looks, Your "Imprimatur" will ye not annex?
What! must I go to the oblivious cooks,[eo]
Those Cornish plunderers of Parnassian wrecks?
Ah! must I then the only minstrel be, Proscribed from tasting your Castalian tea![263]
CIX.
What! can I prove "a lion" then no more?
A ball-room bard, a foolscap, hot-press darling?
To bear the compliments of many a bore, And sigh, "I can't get out," like Yorick's starling;[264]
Why then I'll swear, as poet Wordy swore (Because the world won't read him, always snarling), That Taste is gone, that Fame is but a lottery, Drawn by the blue-coat misses of a coterie.[265]
CX.
Oh! "darkly, deeply, beautifully blue,"[266]
As some one somewhere sings about the sky, And I, ye learned ladies, say of you; They say your stockings are so--(Heaven knows why, I have examined few pair of that hue); Blue as the garters which serenely lie Round the Patrician left-legs, which adorn The festal midnight, and the levee morn.[ep]
CXI.
Yet some of you are most seraphic creatures-- But times are altered since, a rhyming lover, You read my stanzas, and I read your features: And--but no matter, all those things are over; Still I have no dislike to learned natures, For sometimes such a world of virtues cover; I knew one woman of that purple school, The loveliest, chastest, best, but--quite a fool.[267]
CXIII.
Humboldt, "the first of travellers," but not The last, if late accounts be accurate, Invented, by some name I have forgot, As well as the sublime discovery's date, An airy instrument, with which he sought To ascertain the atmospheric state, By measuring "the _intensity of blue:_"[268]
Oh, Lady Daphne! let me measure you![eq]
CXIII.
But to the narrative:--The vessel bound With slaves to sell off in the capital, After the usual process, might be found At anchor under the seraglio wall; Her cargo, from the plague being safe and sound, Were landed in the market,[269] one and all; And, there, with Georgians, Russians, and Circassians, Bought up for different purposes and passions.
CXIV.
Some went off dearly; fifteen hundred dollars For one Circassian, a sweet girl, were given, Warranted virgin; Beauty's brightest colours Had decked her out in all the hues of heaven: Her sale sent home some disappointed bawlers, Who bade on till the hundreds reached eleven; But when the offer went beyond, they knew 'T was for the Sultan, and at once withdrew.
CXV.
Twelve negresses from Nubia brought a price Which the West Indian market scarce could bring-- Though Wilberforce, at last, has made it twice What 't was ere Abolition; and the thing Need not seem very wonderful, for Vice Is always much more splendid than a King: The Virtues, even the most exalted, Charity, Are saving--Vice spares nothing for a rarity.
CXVI.