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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Canto the First</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">I<br>I want a hero: an uncommon want,<br> When every year and month sends forth a new one,<br>Till, after cloying the gazettes with cant,<br> The age discovers he is not the true one;<br>Of such as these I should not care to vaunt,<br> I'll therefore take our ancient friend Don Juan—<br>We all have seen him, in the pantomime,<br>Sent to the devil somewhat ere his time.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> II<br>Vernon, the butcher Cumberland, Wolfe, Hawke,<br> Prince Ferdinand, Granby, Burgoyne, Keppel, Howe,<br>Evil and good, have had their tithe of talk,<br> And fill'd their sign posts then, like Wellesley now;<br>Each in their turn like Banquo's monarchs stalk,<br> Followers of fame, "nine farrow" of that sow:<br>France, too, had Buonaparté and Dumourier<br>Recorded in the Moniteur and Courier.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> III<br>Barnave, Brissot, Condorcet, Mirabeau,<br> Petion, Clootz, Danton, Marat, La Fayette,<br>Were French, and famous people, as we know:<br> And there were others, scarce forgotten yet,<br>Joubert, Hoche, Marceau, Lannes, Desaix, Moreau,<br> With many of the military set,<br>Exceedingly remarkable at times,<br>But not at all adapted to my rhymes.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> IV<br>Nelson was once Britannia's god of war,<br> And still should be so, but the tide is turn'd;<br>There's no more to be said of Trafalgar,<br> 'T is with our hero quietly inurn'd;<br>Because the army's grown more popular,<br> At which the naval people are concern'd;<br>Besides, the prince is all for the land-service,<br>Forgetting Duncan, Nelson, Howe, and Jervis.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> V<br>Brave men were living before Agamemnon<br> And since, exceeding valorous and sage,<br>A good deal like him too, though quite the same none;<br> But then they shone not on the poet's page,<br>And so have been forgotten:—I condemn none,<br> But can't find any in the present age<br>Fit for my poem (that is, for my new one);<br>So, as I said, I'll take my friend Don Juan.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> VI<br>Most epic poets plunge "in medias res"<br> (Horace makes this the heroic turnpike road),<br>And then your hero tells, whene'er you please,<br> What went before—by way of episode,<br>While seated after dinner at his ease,<br> Beside his mistress in some soft abode,<br>Palace, or garden, paradise, or cavern,<br>Which serves the happy couple for a tavern.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> VII<br>That is the usual method, but not mine—<br> My way is to begin with the beginning;<br>The regularity of my design<br> Forbids all wandering as the worst of sinning,<br>And therefore I shall open with a line<br> (Although it cost me half an hour in spinning)<br>Narrating somewhat of Don Juan's father,<br>And also of his mother, if you'd rather.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> VIII<br>In Seville was he born, a pleasant city,<br> Famous for oranges and women—he<br>Who has not seen it will be much to pity,<br> So says the proverb—and I quite agree;<br>Of all the Spanish towns is none more pretty,<br> Cadiz perhaps—but that you soon may see;<br>Don Juan's parents lived beside the river,<br>A noble stream, and call'd the Guadalquivir.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> IX<br>His father's name was Jóse—Don, of course,—<br> A true Hidalgo, free from every stain<br>Of Moor or Hebrew blood, he traced his source<br> Through the most Gothic gentlemen of Spain;<br>A better cavalier ne'er mounted horse,<br> Or, being mounted, e'er got down again,<br>Than Jóse, who begot our hero, who<br>Begot—but that's to come—Well, to renew:</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> X<br>His mother was a learnéd lady, famed<br> For every branch of every science known<br>In every Christian language ever named,<br> With virtues equall'd by her wit alone,<br>She made the cleverest people quite ashamed,<br> And even the good with inward envy groan,<br>Finding themselves so very much exceeded<br>In their own way by all the things that she did.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XI<br>Her memory was a mine: she knew by heart<br> All Calderon and greater part of Lopé,<br>So that if any actor miss'd his part<br> She could have served him for the prompter's copy;<br>For her Feinagle's were an useless art,<br> And he himself obliged to shut up shop—he<br>Could never make a memory so fine as<br>That which adorn'd the brain of Donna Inez.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XII<br>Her favourite science was the mathematical,<br> Her noblest virtue was her magnanimity,<br>Her wit (she sometimes tried at wit) was Attic all,<br> Her serious sayings darken'd to sublimity;<br>In short, in all things she was fairly what I call<br> A prodigy—her morning dress was dimity,<br>Her evening silk, or, in the summer, muslin,<br>And other stuffs, with which I won't stay puzzling.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XIII<br>She knew the Latin—that is, "the Lord's prayer,"<br> And Greek—the alphabet—I'm nearly sure;<br>She read some French romances here and there,<br> Although her mode of speaking was not pure;<br>For native Spanish she had no great care,<br> At least her conversation was obscure;<br>Her thoughts were theorems, her words a problem,<br>As if she deem'd that mystery would ennoble 'em.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XIV<br>She liked the English and the Hebrew tongue,<br> And said there was analogy between 'em;<br>She proved it somehow out of sacred song,<br> But I must leave the proofs to those who've seen 'em;<br>But this I heard her say, and can't be wrong<br> And all may think which way their judgments lean 'em,<br>"'T is strange—the Hebrew noun which means 'I am,'<br>The English always used to govern d—n."</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XV<br>Some women use their tongues—she look'd a lecture,<br> Each eye a sermon, and her brow a homily,<br>An all-in-all sufficient self-director,<br> Like the lamented late Sir Samuel Romilly,<br>The Law's expounder, and the State's corrector,<br> Whose suicide was almost an anomaly—<br>One sad example more, that "All is vanity"<br>(The jury brought their verdict in "Insanity").</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XVI<br>In short, she was a walking calculation,<br> Miss Edgeworth's novels stepping from their covers,<br>Or Mrs. Trimmer's books on education,<br> Or "Coelebs' Wife" set out in quest of lovers,<br>Morality's prim personification,<br> In which not Envy's self a flaw discovers;<br>To others' share let "female errors fall,"<br>For she had not even one—the worst of all.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XVII<br>Oh! she was perfect past all parallel—<br> Of any modern female saint's comparison;<br>So far above the cunning powers of hell,<br> Her guardian angel had given up his garrison;<br>Even her minutest motions went as well<br> As those of the best time-piece made by Harrison:<br>In virtues nothing earthly could surpass her,<br>Save thine "incomparable oil," Macassar!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XVIII<br>Perfect she was, but as perfection is<br> Insipid in this naughty world of ours,<br>Where our first parents never learn'd to kiss<br> Till they were exiled from their earlier bowers,<br>Where all was peace, and innocence, and bliss<br> (I wonder how they got through the twelve hours),<br>Don Jóse, like a lineal son of Eve,<br>Went plucking various fruit without her leave.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XIX<br>He was a mortal of the careless kind,<br> With no great love for learning, or the learn'd,<br>Who chose to go where'er he had a mind,<br> And never dream'd his lady was concern'd;<br>The world, as usual, wickedly inclined<br> To see a kingdom or a house o'erturn'd,<br>Whisper'd he had a mistress, some said two—<br>But for domestic quarrels one will do.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XX<br>Now Donna Inez had, with all her merit,<br> A great opinion of her own good qualities;<br>Neglect, indeed, requires a saint to bear it,<br> And such, indeed, she was in her moralities;<br>But then she had a devil of a spirit,<br> And sometimes mix'd up fancies with realities,<br>And let few opportunities escape<br>Of getting her liege lord into a scrape.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XXI<br>This was an easy matter with a man<br> Oft in the wrong, and never on his guard;<br>And even the wisest, do the best they can,<br> Have moments, hours, and days, so unprepared,<br>That you might "brain them with their lady's fan;"<br> And sometimes ladies hit exceeding hard,<br>And fans turn into falchions in fair hands,<br>And why and wherefore no one understands.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XXII<br>'T is pity learnéd virgins ever wed<br> With persons of no sort of education,<br>Or gentlemen, who, though well born and bred,<br> Grow tired of scientific conversation:<br>I don't choose to say much upon this head,<br> I'm a plain man, and in a single station,<br>But—Oh! ye lords of ladies intellectual,<br>Inform us truly, have they not hen-peck'd you all?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XXIII<br>Don Jóse and his lady quarrell'd—why,<br> Not any of the many could divine,<br>Though several thousand people chose to try,<br> 'T was surely no concern of theirs nor mine;<br>I loathe that low vice—curiosity;<br> But if there's anything in which I shine,<br>'T is in arranging all my friends' affairs,<br>Not having of my own domestic cares.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XXIV<br>And so I interfered, and with the best<br> Intentions, but their treatment was not kind;<br>I think the foolish people were possess'd,<br> For neither of them could I ever find,<br>Although their porter afterwards confess'd—<br> But that's no matter, and the worst's behind,<br>For little Juan o'er me threw, down stairs,<br>A pail of housemaid's water unawares.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XXV<br>A little curly-headed, good-for-nothing,<br> And mischief-making monkey from his birth;<br>His parents ne'er agreed except in doting<br> Upon the most unquiet imp on earth;<br>Instead of quarrelling, had they been but both in<br> Their senses, they'd have sent young master forth<br>To school, or had him soundly whipp'd at home,<br>To teach him manners for the time to come.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XXVI<br>Don Jóse and the Donna Inez led<br> For some time an unhappy sort of life,<br>Wishing each other, not divorced, but dead;<br> They lived respectably as man and wife,<br>Their conduct was exceedingly well-bred,<br> And gave no outward signs of inward strife,<br>Until at length the smother'd fire broke out,<br>And put the business past all kind of doubt.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XXVII<br>For Inez call'd some druggists and physicians,<br> And tried to prove her loving lord was mad;<br>But as he had some lucid intermissions,<br> She next decided he was only bad;<br>Yet when they ask'd her for her depositions,<br> No sort of explanation could be had,<br>Save that her duty both to man and God<br>Required this conduct—which seem'd very odd.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XXVIII<br>She kept a journal, where his faults were noted,<br> And open'd certain trunks of books and letters,<br>All which might, if occasion served, be quoted;<br> And then she had all Seville for abettors,<br>Besides her good old grandmother (who doted);<br> The hearers of her case became repeaters,<br>Then advocates, inquisitors, and judges,<br>Some for amusement, others for old grudges.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XXIX<br>And then this best and weakest woman bore<br> With such serenity her husband's woes,<br>Just as the Spartan ladies did of yore,<br> Who saw their spouses kill'd, and nobly chose<br>Never to say a word about them more—<br> Calmly she heard each calumny that rose,<br>And saw his agonies with such sublimity,<br>That all the world exclaim'd, "What magnanimity!"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XXX<br>No doubt this patience, when the world is damning us,<br> Is philosophic in our former friends;<br>'T is also pleasant to be deem'd magnanimous,<br> The more so in obtaining our own ends;<br>And what the lawyers call a "malus animus"<br> Conduct like this by no means comprehends;<br>Revenge in person's certainly no virtue,<br>But then 't is not my fault, if others hurt you.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XXXI<br>And if your quarrels should rip up old stories,<br> And help them with a lie or two additional,<br>I'm not to blame, as you well know—no more is<br> Any one else—they were become traditional;<br>Besides, their resurrection aids our glories<br> By contrast, which is what we just were wishing all:<br>And science profits by this resurrection—<br>Dead scandals form good subjects for dissection.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XXXII<br>Their friends had tried at reconciliation,<br> Then their relations, who made matters worse.<br>('T were hard to tell upon a like occasion<br> To whom it may be best to have recourse—<br>I can't say much for friend or yet relation):<br> The lawyers did their utmost for divorce,<br>But scarce a fee was paid on either side<br>Before, unluckily, Don Jóse died.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XXXIII<br>He died: and most unluckily, because,<br> According to all hints I could collect<br>From counsel learnéd in those kinds of laws<br> (Although their talk's obscure and circumspect),<br>His death contrived to spoil a charming cause;<br> A thousand pities also with respect<br>To public feeling, which on this occasion<br>Was manifested in a great sensation.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XXXIV<br>But, ah! he died; and buried with him lay<br> The public feeling and the lawyers' fees:<br>His house was sold, his servants sent away,<br> A Jew took one of his two mistresses,<br>A priest the other—at least so they say:<br> I ask'd the doctors after his disease—<br>He died of the slow fever call'd the tertian,<br>And left his widow to her own aversion.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XXXV<br>Yet Jóse was an honourable man,<br> That I must say who knew him very well;<br>Therefore his frailties I'll no further scan<br> Indeed there were not many more to tell;<br>And if his passions now and then outran<br> Discretion, and were not so peaceable<br>As Numa's (who was also named Pompilius),<br>He had been ill brought up, and was born bilious.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XXXVI<br>Whate'er might be his worthlessness or worth,<br> Poor fellow! he had many things to wound him.<br>Let's own—since it can do no good on earth—<br> It was a trying moment that which found him<br>Standing alone beside his desolate hearth,<br> Where all his household gods lay shiver'd round him:<br>No choice was left his feelings or his pride,<br>Save death or Doctors' Commons- so he died.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XXXVII<br>Dying intestate, Juan was sole heir<br> To a chancery suit, and messuages, and lands,<br>Which, with a long minority and care,<br> Promised to turn out well in proper hands:<br>Inez became sole guardian, which was fair,<br> And answer'd but to nature's just demands;<br>An only son left with an only mother<br>Is brought up much more wisely than another.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XXXVIII<br>Sagest of women, even of widows, she<br> Resolved that Juan should be quite a paragon,<br>And worthy of the noblest pedigree<br> (His sire was of Castile, his dam from Aragon):<br>Then for accomplishments of chivalry,<br> In case our lord the king should go to war again,<br>He learn'd the arts of riding, fencing, gunnery,<br>And how to scale a fortress—or a nunnery.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XXXIX<br>But that which Donna Inez most desired,<br> And saw into herself each day before all<br>The learnéd tutors whom for him she hired,<br> Was, that his breeding should be strictly moral;<br>Much into all his studies she inquired,<br> And so they were submitted first to her, all,<br>Arts, sciences, no branch was made a mystery<br>To Juan's eyes, excepting natural history.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XL<br>The languages, especially the dead,<br> The sciences, and most of all the abstruse,<br>The arts, at least all such as could be said<br> To be the most remote from common use,<br>In all these he was much and deeply read;<br> But not a page of any thing that's loose,<br>Or hints continuation of the species,<br>Was ever suffer'd, lest he should grow vicious.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XLI<br>His classic studies made a little puzzle,<br> Because of filthy loves of gods and goddesses,<br>Who in the earlier ages raised a bustle,<br> But never put on pantaloons or bodices;<br>His reverend tutors had at times a tussle,<br> And for their AEneids, Iliads, and Odysseys,<br>Were forced to make an odd sort of apology,<br>For Donna Inez dreaded the Mythology.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XLII<br>Ovid's a rake, as half his verses show him,<br> Anacreon's morals are a still worse sample,<br>Catullus scarcely has a decent poem,<br> I don't think Sappho's Ode a good example,<br>Although Longinus tells us there is no hymn<br> Where the sublime soars forth on wings more ample:<br>But Virgil's songs are pure, except that horrid one<br>Beginning with "Formosum Pastor Corydon."</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XLIII<br>Lucretius' irreligion is too strong,<br> For early stomachs, to prove wholesome food;<br>I can't help thinking Juvenal was wrong,<br> Although no doubt his real intent was good,<br>For speaking out so plainly in his song,<br> So much indeed as to be downright rude;<br>And then what proper person can be partial<br>To all those nauseous epigrams of Martial?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XLIV<br>Juan was taught from out the best edition,<br> Expurgated by learnéd men, who place<br>Judiciously, from out the schoolboy's vision,<br> The grosser parts; but, fearful to deface<br>Too much their modest bard by this omission,<br> And pitying sore his mutilated case,<br>They only add them all in an appendix,<br>Which saves, in fact, the trouble of an index;</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XLV<br>For there we have them all "at one fell swoop,"<br> Instead of being scatter'd through the Pages;<br>They stand forth marshall'd in a handsome troop,<br> To meet the ingenuous youth of future ages,<br>Till some less rigid editor shall stoop<br> To call them back into their separate cages,<br>Instead of standing staring all together,<br>Like garden gods—and not so decent either.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XLVI<br>The Missal too (it was the family Missal)<br> Was ornamented in a sort of way<br>Which ancient mass-books often are, and this all<br> Kinds of grotesques illumined; and how they,<br>Who saw those figures on the margin kiss all,<br> Could turn their optics to the text and pray,<br>Is more than I know—But Don Juan's mother<br>Kept this herself, and gave her son another.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XLVII<br>Sermons he read, and lectures he endured,<br> And homilies, and lives of all the saints;<br>To Jerome and to Chrysostom inured,<br> He did not take such studies for restraints;<br>But how faith is acquired, and then ensured,<br> So well not one of the aforesaid paints<br>As Saint Augustine in his fine Confessions,<br>Which make the reader envy his transgressions.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XLVIII<br>This, too, was a seal'd book to little Juan—<br> I can't but say that his mamma was right,<br>If such an education was the true one.<br> She scarcely trusted him from out her sight;<br>Her maids were old, and if she took a new one,<br> You might be sure she was a perfect fright;<br>She did this during even her husband's life—<br>I recommend as much to every wife.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XLIX<br>Young Juan wax'd in goodliness and grace;<br> At six a charming child, and at eleven<br>With all the promise of as fine a face<br> As e'er to man's maturer growth was given:<br>He studied steadily, and grew apace,<br> And seem'd, at least, in the right road to heaven,<br>For half his days were pass'd at church, the other<br>Between his tutors, confessor, and mother.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> L<br>At six, I said, he was a charming child,<br> At twelve he was a fine, but quiet boy;<br>Although in infancy a little wild,<br> They tamed him down amongst them: to destroy<br>His natural spirit not in vain they toil'd,<br> At least it seem'd so; and his mother's joy<br>Was to declare how sage, and still, and steady,<br>Her young philosopher was grown already.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LI<br>I had my doubts, perhaps I have them still,<br> But what I say is neither here nor there:<br>I knew his father well, and have some skill<br> In character—but it would not be fair<br>From sire to son to augur good or ill:<br> He and his wife were an ill-sorted pair—<br>But scandal's my aversion—I protest<br>Against all evil speaking, even in jest.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LII<br>For my part I say nothing—nothing—but<br> This I will say—my reasons are my own—<br>That if I had an only son to put<br> To school (as God be praised that I have none),<br>'T is not with Donna Inez I would shut<br> Him up to learn his catechism alone,<br>No—no—I'd send him out betimes to college,<br>For there it was I pick'd up my own knowledge.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LIII<br>For there one learns—'t is not for me to boast,<br> Though I acquired—but I pass over that,<br>As well as all the Greek I since have lost:<br> I say that there's the place—but Verbum sat.<br>I think I pick'd up too, as well as most,<br> Knowledge of matters—but no matter what—<br>I never married—but, I think, I know<br>That sons should not be educated so.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LIV<br>Young Juan now was sixteen years of age,<br> Tall, handsome, slender, but well knit: he seem'd<br>Active, though not so sprightly, as a page;<br> And everybody but his mother deem'd<br>Him almost man; but she flew in a rage<br> And bit her lips (for else she might have scream'd)<br>If any said so, for to be precocious<br>Was in her eyes a thing the most atrocious.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LV<br>Amongst her numerous acquaintance, all<br> Selected for discretion and devotion,<br>There was the Donna Julia, whom to call<br> Pretty were but to give a feeble notion<br>Of many charms in her as natural<br> As sweetness to the flower, or salt to ocean,<br>Her zone to Venus, or his bow to Cupid<br>(But this last simile is trite and stupid).</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LVI<br>The darkness of her Oriental eye<br> Accorded with her Moorish origin<br>(Her blood was not all Spanish, by the by;<br> In Spain, you know, this is a sort of sin);<br>When proud Granada fell, and, forced to fly,<br> Boabdil wept, of Donna Julia's kin<br>Some went to Africa, some stay'd in Spain,<br>Her great-great-grandmamma chose to remain.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LVII<br>She married (I forget the pedigree)<br> With an Hidalgo, who transmitted down<br>His blood less noble than such blood should be;<br> At such alliances his sires would frown,<br>In that point so precise in each degree<br> That they bred in and in, as might be shown,<br>Marrying their cousins—nay, their aunts, and nieces,<br>Which always spoils the breed, if it increases.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LVIII<br>This heathenish cross restored the breed again,<br> Ruin'd its blood, but much improved its flesh;<br>For from a root the ugliest in Old Spain<br> Sprung up a branch as beautiful as fresh;<br>The sons no more were short, the daughters plain:<br> But there's a rumour which I fain would hush,<br>'T is said that Donna Julia's grandmamma<br>Produced her Don more heirs at love than law.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LIX<br>However this might be, the race went on<br> Improving still through every generation,<br>Until it centred in an only son,<br> Who left an only daughter; my narration<br>May have suggested that this single one<br> Could be but Julia (whom on this occasion<br>I shall have much to speak about), and she<br>Was married, charming, chaste, and twenty-three.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LX<br>Her eye (I'm very fond of handsome eyes)<br> Was large and dark, suppressing half its fire<br>Until she spoke, then through its soft disguise<br> Flash'd an expression more of pride than ire,<br>And love than either; and there would arise<br> A something in them which was not desire,<br>But would have been, perhaps, but for the soul<br>Which struggled through and chasten'd down the whole.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LXI<br>Her glossy hair was cluster'd o'er a brow<br> Bright with intelligence, and fair, and smooth;<br>Her eyebrow's shape was like th' aerial bow,<br> Her cheek all purple with the beam of youth,<br>Mounting at times to a transparent glow,<br> As if her veins ran lightning; she, in sooth,<br>Possess'd an air and grace by no means common:<br>Her stature tall—I hate a dumpy woman.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LXII<br>Wedded she was some years, and to a man<br> Of fifty, and such husbands are in plenty;<br>And yet, I think, instead of such a one<br> 'T were better to have two of five-and-twenty,<br>Especially in countries near the sun:<br> And now I think on 't, "mi vien in mente",<br>Ladies even of the most uneasy virtue<br>Prefer a spouse whose age is short of thirty.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LXIII<br>'T is a sad thing, I cannot choose but say,<br> And all the fault of that indecent sun,<br>Who cannot leave alone our helpless clay,<br> But will keep baking, broiling, burning on,<br>That howsoever people fast and pray,<br> The flesh is frail, and so the soul undone:<br>What men call gallantry, and gods adultery,<br>Is much more common where the climate's sultry.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LXIV<br>Happy the nations of the moral North!<br> Where all is virtue, and the winter season<br>Sends sin, without a rag on, shivering forth<br> ('T was snow that brought St. Anthony to reason);<br>Where juries cast up what a wife is worth,<br> By laying whate'er sum in mulct they please on<br>The lover, who must pay a handsome price,<br>Because it is a marketable vice.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LXV<br>Alfonso was the name of Julia's lord,<br> A man well looking for his years, and who<br>Was neither much beloved nor yet abhorr'd:<br> They lived together, as most people do,<br>Suffering each other's foibles by accord,<br> And not exactly either one or two;<br>Yet he was jealous, though he did not show it,<br>For jealousy dislikes the world to know it.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LXVI<br>Julia was—yet I never could see why—<br> With Donna Inez quite a favourite friend;<br>Between their tastes there was small sympathy,<br> For not a line had Julia ever penn'd:<br>Some people whisper but no doubt they lie,<br> For malice still imputes some private end)<br>That Inez had, ere Don Alfonso's marriage,<br>Forgot with him her very prudent carriage;</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LXVII<br>And that still keeping up the old connection,<br> Which time had lately render'd much more chaste,<br>She took his lady also in affection,<br> And certainly this course was much the best:<br>She flatter'd Julia with her sage protection,<br> And complimented Don Alfonso's taste;<br>And if she could not (who can?) silence scandal,<br>At least she left it a more slender handle.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LXVIII<br>I can't tell whether Julia saw the affair<br> With other people's eyes, or if her own<br>Discoveries made, but none could be aware<br> Of this, at least no symptom e'er was shown;<br>Perhaps she did not know, or did not care,<br> Indifferent from the first or callous grown:<br>I'm really puzzled what to think or say,<br>She kept her counsel in so close a way.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LXIX<br>Juan she saw, and, as a pretty child,<br> Caress'd him often—such a thing might be<br>Quite innocently done, and harmless styled,<br> When she had twenty years, and thirteen he;<br>But I am not so sure I should have smiled<br> When he was sixteen, Julia twenty-three;<br>These few short years make wondrous alterations,<br>Particularly amongst sun-burnt nations.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LXX<br>Whate'er the cause might be, they had become<br> Changed; for the dame grew distant, the youth shy,<br>Their looks cast down, their greetings almost dumb,<br> And much embarrassment in either eye;<br>There surely will be little doubt with some<br> That Donna Julia knew the reason why,<br>But as for Juan, he had no more notion<br>Than he who never saw the sea of ocean.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LXXI<br>Yet Julia's very coldness still was kind,<br> And tremulously gentle her small hand<br>Withdrew itself from his, but left behind<br> A little pressure, thrilling, and so bland<br>And slight, so very slight, that to the mind<br> 'T was but a doubt; but ne'er magician's wand<br>Wrought change with all Armida's fairy art<br>Like what this light touch left on Juan's heart.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LXXII<br>And if she met him, though she smiled no more,<br> She look'd a sadness sweeter than her smile,<br>As if her heart had deeper thoughts in store<br> She must not own, but cherish'd more the while<br>For that compression in its burning core;<br> Even innocence itself has many a wile,<br>And will not dare to trust itself with truth,<br>And love is taught hypocrisy from youth.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LXXIII<br>But passion most dissembles, yet betrays<br> Even by its darkness; as the blackest sky<br>Foretells the heaviest tempest, it displays<br> Its workings through the vainly guarded eye,<br>And in whatever aspect it arrays<br> Itself, 't is still the same hypocrisy;<br>Coldness or anger, even disdain or hate,<br>Are masks it often wears, and still too late.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LXXIV<br>Then there were sighs, the deeper for suppression,<br> And stolen glances, sweeter for the theft,<br>And burning blushes, though for no transgression,<br> Tremblings when met, and restlessness when left;<br>All these are little preludes to possession,<br> Of which young passion cannot be bereft,<br>And merely tend to show how greatly love is<br>Embarrass'd at first starting with a novice.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LXXV<br>Poor Julia's heart was in an awkward state;<br> She felt it going, and resolved to make<br>The noblest efforts for herself and mate,<br> For honour's, pride's, religion's, virtue's sake;<br>Her resolutions were most truly great,<br> And almost might have made a Tarquin quake:<br>She pray'd the Virgin Mary for her grace,<br>As being the best judge of a lady's case.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LXXVI<br>She vow'd she never would see Juan more,<br> And next day paid a visit to his mother,<br>And look'd extremely at the opening door,<br> Which, by the Virgin's grace, let in another;<br>Grateful she was, and yet a little sore—<br> Again it opens, it can be no other,<br>'T is surely Juan now—No! I'm afraid<br>That night the Virgin was no further pray'd.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LXXVII<br>She now determined that a virtuous woman<br> Should rather face and overcome temptation,<br>That flight was base and dastardly, and no man<br> Should ever give her heart the least sensation;<br>That is to say, a thought beyond the common<br> Preference, that we must feel upon occasion<br>For people who are pleasanter than others,<br>But then they only seem so many brothers.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LXXVIII<br>And even if by chance—and who can tell?<br> The devil's so very sly—she should discover<br>That all within was not so very well,<br> And, if still free, that such or such a lover<br>Might please perhaps, a virtuous wife can quell<br> Such thoughts, and be the better when they're over;<br>And if the man should ask, 't is but denial:<br>I recommend young ladies to make trial.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LXXIX<br>And then there are such things as love divine,<br> Bright and immaculate, unmix'd and pure,<br>Such as the angels think so very fine,<br> And matrons who would be no less secure,<br>Platonic, perfect, "just such love as mine;"<br> Thus Julia said—and thought so, to be sure;<br>And so I'd have her think, were I the man<br>On whom her reveries celestial ran.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LXXX<br>Such love is innocent, and may exist<br> Between young persons without any danger.<br>A hand may first, and then a lip be kist;<br> For my part, to such doings I'm a stranger,<br>But hear these freedoms form the utmost list<br> Of all o'er which such love may be a ranger:<br>If people go beyond, 't is quite a crime,<br>But not my fault—I tell them all in time.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LXXXI<br>Love, then, but love within its proper limits,<br> Was Julia's innocent determination<br>In young Don Juan's favour, and to him its<br> Exertion might be useful on occasion;<br>And, lighted at too pure a shrine to dim its<br> Ethereal lustre, with what sweet persuasion<br>He might be taught, by love and her together—<br>I really don't know what, nor Julia either.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LXXXII<br>Fraught with this fine intention, and well fenced<br> In mail of proof—her purity of soul—<br>She, for the future of her strength convinced.<br> And that her honour was a rock, or mole,<br>Exceeding sagely from that hour dispensed<br> With any kind of troublesome control;<br>But whether Julia to the task was equal<br>Is that which must be mention'd in the sequel.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LXXXIII<br>Her plan she deem'd both innocent and feasible,<br> And, surely, with a stripling of sixteen<br>Not scandal's fangs could fix on much that's seizable,<br> Or if they did so, satisfied to mean<br>Nothing but what was good, her breast was peaceable—<br> A quiet conscience makes one so serene!<br>Christians have burnt each other, quite persuaded<br>That all the Apostles would have done as they did.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LXXXIV<br>And if in the mean time her husband died,<br> But Heaven forbid that such a thought should cross<br>Her brain, though in a dream! (and then she sigh'd)<br> Never could she survive that common loss;<br>But just suppose that moment should betide,<br> I only say suppose it—inter nos.<br>(This should be entre nous, for Julia thought<br>In French, but then the rhyme would go for naught.)</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LXXXV<br>I only say suppose this supposition:<br> Juan being then grown up to man's estate<br>Would fully suit a widow of condition,<br> Even seven years hence it would not be too late;<br>And in the interim (to pursue this vision)<br> The mischief, after all, could not be great,<br>For he would learn the rudiments of love,<br>I mean the seraph way of those above.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LXXXVI<br>So much for Julia. Now we'll turn to Juan.<br> Poor little fellow! he had no idea<br>Of his own case, and never hit the true one;<br> In feelings quick as Ovid's Miss Medea,<br>He puzzled over what he found a new one,<br> But not as yet imagined it could be<br>Thing quite in course, and not at all alarming,<br>Which, with a little patience, might grow charming.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LXXXVII<br>Silent and pensive, idle, restless, slow,<br> His home deserted for the lonely wood,<br>Tormented with a wound he could not know,<br> His, like all deep grief, plunged in solitude:<br>I'm fond myself of solitude or so,<br> But then, I beg it may be understood,<br>By solitude I mean a sultan's, not<br>A hermit's, with a haram for a grot.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LXXXVIII<br>"Oh Love! in such a wilderness as this,<br> Where transport and security entwine,<br>Here is the empire of thy perfect bliss,<br> And here thou art a god indeed divine."<br>The bard I quote from does not sing amiss,<br> With the exception of the second line,<br>For that same twining "transport and security"<br>Are twisted to a phrase of some obscurity.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> LXXXIX<br>The poet meant, no doubt, and thus appeals<br> To the good sense and senses of mankind,<br>The very thing which every body feels,<br> As all have found on trial, or may find,<br>That no one likes to be disturb'd at meals<br> Or love.—I won't say more about "entwined"<br>Or "transport," as we knew all that before,<br>But beg'security' will bolt the door.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XC<br>Young Juan wander'd by the glassy brooks,<br> Thinking unutterable things; he threw<br>Himself at length within the leafy nooks<br> Where the wild branch of the cork forest grew;<br>There poets find materials for their books,<br> And every now and then we read them through,<br>So that their plan and prosody are eligible,<br>Unless, like Wordsworth, they prove unintelligible.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XCI<br>He, Juan (and not Wordsworth), so pursued<br> His self-communion with his own high soul,<br>Until his mighty heart, in its great mood,<br> Had mitigated part, though not the whole<br>Of its disease; he did the best he could<br> With things not very subject to control,<br>And turn'd, without perceiving his condition,<br>Like Coleridge, into a metaphysician.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XCII<br>He thought about himself, and the whole earth<br> Of man the wonderful, and of the stars,<br>And how the deuce they ever could have birth;<br> And then he thought of earthquakes, and of wars,<br>How many miles the moon might have in girth,<br> Of air-balloons, and of the many bars<br>To perfect knowledge of the boundless skies;—<br>And then he thought of Donna Julia's eyes.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XCIII<br>In thoughts like these true wisdom may discern<br> Longings sublime, and aspirations high,<br>Which some are born with, but the most part learn<br> To plague themselves withal, they know not why:<br>'T was strange that one so young should thus concern<br> His brain about the action of the sky;<br>If you think 't was philosophy that this did,<br>I can't help thinking puberty assisted.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XCIV<br>He pored upon the leaves, and on the flowers,<br> And heard a voice in all the winds; and then<br>He thought of wood-nymphs and immortal bowers,<br> And how the goddesses came down to men:<br>He miss'd the pathway, he forgot the hours,<br> And when he look'd upon his watch again,<br>He found how much old Time had been a winner—<br>He also found that he had lost his dinner.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XCV<br>Sometimes he turn'd to gaze upon his book,<br> Boscan, or Garcilasso;—by the wind<br>Even as the page is rustled while we look,<br> So by the poesy of his own mind<br>Over the mystic leaf his soul was shook,<br> As if 't were one whereon magicians bind<br>Their spells, and give them to the passing gale,<br>According to some good old woman's tale.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XCVI<br>Thus would he while his lonely hours away<br> Dissatisfied, nor knowing what he wanted;<br>Nor glowing reverie, nor poet's lay,<br> Could yield his spirit that for which it panted,<br>A bosom whereon he his head might lay,<br> And hear the heart beat with the love it granted,<br>With—several other things, which I forget,<br>Or which, at least, I need not mention yet.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XCVII<br>Those lonely walks, and lengthening reveries,<br> Could not escape the gentle Julia's eyes;<br>She saw that Juan was not at his ease;<br> But that which chiefly may, and must surprise,<br>Is, that the Donna Inez did not tease<br> Her only son with question or surmise:<br>Whether it was she did not see, or would not,<br>Or, like all very clever people, could not.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XCVIII<br>This may seem strange, but yet 't is very common;<br> For instance—gentlemen, whose ladies take<br>Leave to o'erstep the written rights of woman,<br> And break the—Which commandment is 't they break?<br>(I have forgot the number, and think no man<br> Should rashly quote, for fear of a mistake.)<br>I say, when these same gentlemen are jealous,<br>They make some blunder, which their ladies tell us.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> XCIX<br>A real husband always is suspicious,<br> But still no less suspects in the wrong place,<br>Jealous of some one who had no such wishes,<br> Or pandering blindly to his own disgrace,<br>By harbouring some dear friend extremely vicious;<br> The last indeed's infallibly the case:<br>And when the spouse and friend are gone off wholly,<br>He wonders at their vice, and not his folly.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> C<br>Thus parents also are at times short-sighted;<br> Though watchful as the lynx, they ne'er discover,<br>The while the wicked world beholds delighted,<br> Young Hopeful's mistress, or Miss Fanny's lover,<br>Till some confounded escapade has blighted<br> The plan of twenty years, and all is over;<br>And then the mother cries, the father swears,<br>And wonders why the devil he got heirs.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CI<br>But Inez was so anxious, and so clear<br> Of sight, that I must think, on this occasion,<br>She had some other motive much more near<br> For leaving Juan to this new temptation;<br>But what that motive was, I sha'n't say here;<br> Perhaps to finish Juan's education,<br>Perhaps to open Don Alfonso's eyes,<br>In case he thought his wife too great a prize.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CII<br>It was upon a day, a summer's day;—<br> Summer's indeed a very dangerous season,<br>And so is spring about the end of May;<br> The sun, no doubt, is the prevailing reason;<br>But whatsoe'er the cause is, one may say,<br> And stand convicted of more truth than treason,<br>That there are months which nature grows more merry in,—<br>March has its hares, and May must have its heroine.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CIII<br>'T was on a summer's day—the sixth of June:—<br> I like to be particular in dates,<br>Not only of the age, and year, but moon;<br> They are a sort of post-house, where the Fates<br>Change horses, making history change its tune,<br> Then spur away o'er empires and o'er states,<br>Leaving at last not much besides chronology,<br>Excepting the post-obits of theology.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CIV<br>'T was on the sixth of June, about the hour<br> Of half-past six—perhaps still nearer seven—<br>When Julia sate within as pretty a bower<br> As e'er held houri in that heathenish heaven<br>Described by Mahomet, and Anacreon Moore,<br> To whom the lyre and laurels have been given,<br>With all the trophies of triumphant song—<br>He won them well, and may he wear them long!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CV<br>She sate, but not alone; I know not well<br> How this same interview had taken place,<br>And even if I knew, I should not tell—<br> People should hold their tongues in any case;<br>No matter how or why the thing befell,<br> But there were she and Juan, face to face—<br>When two such faces are so, 't would be wise,<br>But very difficult, to shut their eyes.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CVI<br>How beautiful she look'd! her conscious heart<br> Glow'd in her cheek, and yet she felt no wrong.<br>Oh Love! how perfect is thy mystic art,<br> Strengthening the weak, and trampling on the strong,<br>How self-deceitful is the sagest part<br> Of mortals whom thy lure hath led along-<br>The precipice she stood on was immense,<br>So was her creed in her own innocence.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CVII<br>She thought of her own strength, and Juan's youth,<br> And of the folly of all prudish fears,<br>Victorious virtue, and domestic truth,<br> And then of Don Alfonso's fifty years:<br>I wish these last had not occurr'd, in sooth,<br> Because that number rarely much endears,<br>And through all climes, the snowy and the sunny,<br>Sounds ill in love, whate'er it may in money.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CVIII<br>When people say, "I've told you fifty times,"<br> They mean to scold, and very often do;<br>When poets say, "I've written fifty rhymes,"<br> They make you dread that they'll recite them too;<br>In gangs of fifty, thieves commit their crimes;<br> At fifty love for love is rare, 't is true,<br>But then, no doubt, it equally as true is,<br>A good deal may be bought for fifty Louis.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CIX<br>Julia had honour, virtue, truth, and love,<br> For Don Alfonso; and she inly swore,<br>By all the vows below to powers above,<br> She never would disgrace the ring she wore,<br>Nor leave a wish which wisdom might reprove;<br> And while she ponder'd this, besides much more,<br>One hand on Juan's carelessly was thrown,<br>Quite by mistake—she thought it was her own;</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CX<br>Unconsciously she lean'd upon the other,<br> Which play'd within the tangles of her hair:<br>And to contend with thoughts she could not smother<br> She seem'd by the distraction of her air.<br>'T was surely very wrong in Juan's mother<br> To leave together this imprudent pair,<br>She who for many years had watch'd her son so—<br>I'm very certain mine would not have done so.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXI<br>The hand which still held Juan's, by degrees<br> Gently, but palpably confirm'd its grasp,<br>As if it said, "Detain me, if you please;"<br> Yet there's no doubt she only meant to clasp<br>His fingers with a pure Platonic squeeze:<br> She would have shrunk as from a toad, or asp,<br>Had she imagined such a thing could rouse<br>A feeling dangerous to a prudent spouse.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXII<br>I cannot know what Juan thought of this,<br> But what he did, is much what you would do;<br>His young lip thank'd it with a grateful kiss,<br> And then, abash'd at its own joy, withdrew<br>In deep despair, lest he had done amiss,—<br> Love is so very timid when 't is new:<br>She blush'd, and frown'd not, but she strove to speak,<br>And held her tongue, her voice was grown so weak.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXIII<br>The sun set, and up rose the yellow moon:<br> The devil's in the moon for mischief; they<br>Who call'd her CHASTE, methinks, began too soon<br> Their nomenclature; there is not a day,<br>The longest, not the twenty-first of June,<br> Sees half the business in a wicked way<br>On which three single hours of moonshine smile—<br>And then she looks so modest all the while.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXIV<br>There is a dangerous silence in that hour,<br> A stillness, which leaves room for the full soul<br>To open all itself, without the power<br> Of calling wholly back its self-control;<br>The silver light which, hallowing tree and tower,<br> Sheds beauty and deep softness o'er the whole,<br>Breathes also to the heart, and o'er it throws<br>A loving languor, which is not repose.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXV<br>And Julia sate with Juan, half embraced<br> And half retiring from the glowing arm,<br>Which trembled like the bosom where 't was placed;<br> Yet still she must have thought there was no harm,<br>Or else 't were easy to withdraw her waist;<br> But then the situation had its charm,<br>And then—— God knows what next—I can't go on;<br>I'm almost sorry that I e'er begun.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXVI<br>Oh Plato! Plato! you have paved the way,<br> With your confounded fantasies, to more<br>Immoral conduct by the fancied sway<br> Your system feigns o'er the controulless core<br>Of human hearts, than all the long array<br> Of poets and romancers:—You're a bore,<br>A charlatan, a coxcomb—and have been,<br>At best, no better than a go-between.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXVII<br>And Julia's voice was lost, except in sighs,<br> Until too late for useful conversation;<br>The tears were gushing from her gentle eyes,<br> I wish indeed they had not had occasion,<br>But who, alas! can love, and then be wise?<br> Not that remorse did not oppose temptation;<br>A little still she strove, and much repented<br>And whispering "I will ne'er consent"—consented.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXVIII<br>'T is said that Xerxes offer'd a reward<br> To those who could invent him a new pleasure:<br>Methinks the requisition's rather hard,<br> And must have cost his majesty a treasure:<br>For my part, I'm a moderate-minded bard,<br> Fond of a little love (which I call leisure);<br>I care not for new pleasures, as the old<br>Are quite enough for me, so they but hold.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXIX<br>Oh Pleasure! you are indeed a pleasant thing,<br> Although one must be damn'd for you, no doubt:<br>I make a resolution every spring<br> Of reformation, ere the year run out,<br>But somehow, this my vestal vow takes wing,<br> Yet still, I trust it may be kept throughout:<br>I'm very sorry, very much ashamed,<br>And mean, next winter, to be quite reclaim'd.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXX<br>Here my chaste Muse a liberty must take—<br> Start not! still chaster reader—she'll be nice hence—<br>Forward, and there is no great cause to quake;<br> This liberty is a poetic licence,<br>Which some irregularity may make<br> In the design, and as I have a high sense<br>Of Aristotle and the Rules, 't is fit<br>To beg his pardon when I err a bit.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXXI<br>This licence is to hope the reader will<br> Suppose from June the sixth (the fatal day,<br>Without whose epoch my poetic skill<br> For want of facts would all be thrown away),<br>But keeping Julia and Don Juan still<br> In sight, that several months have pass'd; we'll say<br>'T was in November, but I'm not so sure<br>About the day—the era's more obscure.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXXII<br>We'll talk of that anon.—'T is sweet to hear<br> At midnight on the blue and moonlit deep<br>The song and oar of Adria's gondolier,<br> By distance mellow'd, o'er the waters sweep;<br>'T is sweet to see the evening star appear;<br> 'T is sweet to listen as the night-winds creep<br>From leaf to leaf; 't is sweet to view on high<br>The rainbow, based on ocean, span the sky.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXXIII<br>'T is sweet to hear the watch-dog's honest bark<br> Bay deep-mouth'd welcome as we draw near home;<br>'T is sweet to know there is an eye will mark<br> Our coming, and look brighter when we come;<br>'T is sweet to be awaken'd by the lark,<br> Or lull'd by falling waters; sweet the hum<br>Of bees, the voice of girls, the song of birds,<br>The lisp of children, and their earliest words.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXXIV<br>Sweet is the vintage, when the showering grapes<br> In Bacchanal profusion reel to earth,<br>Purple and gushing: sweet are our escapes<br> From civic revelry to rural mirth;<br>Sweet to the miser are his glittering heaps,<br> Sweet to the father is his first-born's birth,<br>Sweet is revenge—especially to women,<br>Pillage to soldiers, prize-money to seamen.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXXV<br>Sweet is a legacy, and passing sweet<br> The unexpected death of some old lady<br>Or gentleman of seventy years complete,<br> Who've made "us youth" wait too—too long already<br>For an estate, or cash, or country seat,<br> Still breaking, but with stamina so steady<br>That all the Israelites are fit to mob its<br>Next owner for their double-damn'd post-obits.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXXVI<br>'T is sweet to win, no matter how, one's laurels,<br> By blood or ink; 't is sweet to put an end<br>To strife; 't is sometimes sweet to have our quarrels,<br> Particularly with a tiresome friend:<br>Sweet is old wine in bottles, ale in barrels;<br> Dear is the helpless creature we defend<br>Against the world; and dear the schoolboy spot<br>We ne'er forget, though there we are forgot.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXXVII<br>But sweeter still than this, than these, than all,<br> Is first and passionate love—it stands alone,<br>Like Adam's recollection of his fall;<br> The tree of knowledge has been pluck'd—all's known—<br>And life yields nothing further to recall<br> Worthy of this ambrosial sin, so shown,<br>No doubt in fable, as the unforgiven<br>Fire which Prometheus filch'd for us from heaven.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXXVIII<br>Man's a strange animal, and makes strange use<br> Of his own nature, and the various arts,<br>And likes particularly to produce<br> Some new experiment to show his parts;<br>This is the age of oddities let loose,<br> Where different talents find their different marts;<br>You'd best begin with truth, and when you've lost your<br>Labour, there's a sure market for imposture.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXXIX<br>What opposite discoveries we have seen!<br> (Signs of true genius, and of empty pockets.)<br>One makes new noses, one a guillotine,<br> One breaks your bones, one sets them in their sockets;<br>But vaccination certainly has been<br> A kind antithesis to Congreve's rockets,<br>With which the Doctor paid off an old pox,<br>By borrowing a new one from an ox.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXXX<br>Bread has been made (indifferent) from potatoes;<br> And galvanism has set some corpses grinning,<br>But has not answer'd like the apparatus<br> Of the Humane Society's beginning<br>By which men are unsuffocated gratis:<br> What wondrous new machines have late been spinning!<br>I said the small-pox has gone out of late;<br>Perhaps it may be follow'd by the great.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXXXI<br>'T is said the great came from America;<br> Perhaps it may set out on its return,—<br>The population there so spreads, they say<br> 'T is grown high time to thin it in its turn,<br>With war, or plague, or famine, any way,<br> So that civilisation they may learn;<br>And which in ravage the more loathsome evil is—<br>Their real lues, or our pseudo-syphilis?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXXXII<br>This is the patent-age of new inventions<br> For killing bodies, and for saving souls,<br>All propagated with the best intentions;<br> Sir Humphry Davy's lantern, by which coals<br>Are safely mined for in the mode he mentions,<br> Tombuctoo travels, voyages to the Poles,<br>Are ways to benefit mankind, as true,<br>Perhaps, as shooting them at Waterloo.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXXXIII<br>Man's a phenomenon, one knows not what,<br> And wonderful beyond all wondrous measure;<br>'T is pity though, in this sublime world, that<br> Pleasure's a sin, and sometimes sin's a pleasure;<br>Few mortals know what end they would be at,<br> But whether glory, power, or love, or treasure,<br>The path is through perplexing ways, and when<br>The goal is gain'd, we die, you know—and then—</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXXXIV<br>What then?—I do not know, no more do you—<br> And so good night.—Return we to our story:<br>'T was in November, when fine days are few,<br> And the far mountains wax a little hoary,<br>And clap a white cape on their mantles blue;<br> And the sea dashes round the promontory,<br>And the loud breaker boils against the rock,<br>And sober suns must set at five o'clock.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXXXV<br>'T was, as the watchmen say, a cloudy night;<br> No moon, no stars, the wind was low or loud<br>By gusts, and many a sparkling hearth was bright<br> With the piled wood, round which the family crowd;<br>There's something cheerful in that sort of light,<br> Even as a summer sky's without a cloud:<br>I'm fond of fire, and crickets, and all that,<br>A lobster salad, and champagne, and chat.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXXXVI<br>'T was midnight—Donna Julia was in bed,<br> Sleeping, most probably,—when at her door<br>Arose a clatter might awake the dead,<br> If they had never been awoke before,<br>And that they have been so we all have read,<br> And are to be so, at the least, once more;—<br>The door was fasten'd, but with voice and fist<br>First knocks were heard, then "Madam—Madam—hist!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXXXVII<br>"For God's sake, Madam—Madam—here's my master,<br> With more than half the city at his back—<br>Was ever heard of such a curst disaster!<br> 'T is not my fault—I kept good watch—Alack!<br>Do pray undo the bolt a little faster—<br> They're on the stair just now, and in a crack<br>Will all be here; perhaps he yet may fly—<br>Surely the window's not so very high!"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXXXVIII<br>By this time Don Alfonso was arrived,<br> With torches, friends, and servants in great number;<br>The major part of them had long been wived,<br> And therefore paused not to disturb the slumber<br>Of any wicked woman, who contrived<br> By stealth her husband's temples to encumber:<br>Examples of this kind are so contagious,<br>Were one not punish'd, all would be outrageous.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXXXIX<br>I can't tell how, or why, or what suspicion<br> Could enter into Don Alfonso's head;<br>But for a cavalier of his condition<br> It surely was exceedingly ill-bred,<br>Without a word of previous admonition,<br> To hold a levee round his lady's bed,<br>And summon lackeys, arm'd with fire and sword,<br>To prove himself the thing he most abhorr'd.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXL<br>Poor Donna Julia, starting as from sleep<br> (Mind—that I do not say—she had not slept),<br>Began at once to scream, and yawn, and weep;<br> Her maid Antonia, who was an adept,<br>Contrived to fling the bed-clothes in a heap,<br> As if she had just now from out them crept:<br>I can't tell why she should take all this trouble<br>To prove her mistress had been sleeping double.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXLI<br>But Julia mistress, and Antonia maid,<br> Appear'd like two poor harmless women, who<br>Of goblins, but still more of men afraid,<br> Had thought one man might be deterr'd by two,<br>And therefore side by side were gently laid,<br> Until the hours of absence should run through,<br>And truant husband should return, and say,<br>"My dear, I was the first who came away."</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXLII<br>Now Julia found at length a voice, and cried,<br> "In heaven's name, Don Alfonso, what d' ye mean?<br>Has madness seized you? would that I had died<br> Ere such a monster's victim I had been!<br>What may this midnight violence betide,<br> A sudden fit of drunkenness or spleen?<br>Dare you suspect me, whom the thought would kill?<br>Search, then, the room!"—Alfonso said, "I will."</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXLIII<br>He search'd, they search'd, and rummaged everywhere,<br> Closet and clothes' press, chest and window-seat,<br>And found much linen, lace, and several pair<br> Of stockings, slippers, brushes, combs, complete,<br>With other articles of ladies fair,<br> To keep them beautiful, or leave them neat:<br>Arras they prick'd and curtains with their swords,<br>And wounded several shutters, and some boards.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXLIV<br>Under the bed they search'd, and there they found—<br> No matter what—it was not that they sought;<br>They open'd windows, gazing if the ground<br> Had signs or footmarks, but the earth said nought;<br>And then they stared each other's faces round:<br> 'T is odd, not one of all these seekers thought,<br>And seems to me almost a sort of blunder,<br>Of looking in the bed as well as under.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXLV<br>During this inquisition, Julia's tongue<br> Was not asleep—"Yes, search and search," she cried,<br>"Insult on insult heap, and wrong on wrong!<br> It was for this that I became a bride!<br>For this in silence I have suffer'd long<br> A husband like Alfonso at my side;<br>But now I'll bear no more, nor here remain,<br>If there be law or lawyers in all Spain.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXLVI<br>"Yes, Don Alfonso! husband now no more,<br> If ever you indeed deserved the name,<br>Is 't worthy of your years?—you have threescore—<br> Fifty, or sixty, it is all the same—<br>Is 't wise or fitting, causeless to explore<br> For facts against a virtuous woman's fame?<br>Ungrateful, perjured, barbarous Don Alfonso,<br>How dare you think your lady would go on so?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXLVII<br>"Is it for this I have disdain'd to hold<br> The common privileges of my sex?<br>That I have chosen a confessor so old<br> And deaf, that any other it would vex,<br>And never once he has had cause to scold,<br> But found my very innocence perplex<br>So much, he always doubted I was married—<br>How sorry you will be when I've miscarried!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXLVIII<br>"Was it for this that no Cortejo e'er<br> I yet have chosen from out the youth of Seville?<br>Is it for this I scarce went anywhere,<br> Except to bull-fights, mass, play, rout, and revel?<br>Is it for this, whate'er my suitors were,<br> I favor'd none—nay, was almost uncivil?<br>Is it for this that General Count O'Reilly,<br>Who took Algiers, declares I used him vilely?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXLIX<br>"Did not the Italian Musico Cazzani<br> Sing at my heart six months at least in vain?<br>Did not his countryman, Count Corniani,<br> Call me the only virtuous wife in Spain?<br>Were there not also Russians, English, many?<br> The Count Strongstroganoff I put in pain,<br>And Lord Mount Coffeehouse, the Irish peer,<br>Who kill'd himself for love (with wine) last year.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CL<br>"Have I not had two bishops at my feet,<br> The Duke of Ichar, and Don Fernan Nunez?<br>And is it thus a faithful wife you treat?<br> I wonder in what quarter now the moon is:<br>I praise your vast forbearance not to beat<br> Me also, since the time so opportune is—<br>Oh, valiant man! with sword drawn and cock'd trigger,<br>Now, tell me, don't you cut a pretty figure?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CLI<br>"Was it for this you took your sudden journey.<br> Under pretence of business indispensable<br>With that sublime of rascals your attorney,<br> Whom I see standing there, and looking sensible<br>Of having play'd the fool? though both I spurn, he<br> Deserves the worst, his conduct's less defensible,<br>Because, no doubt, 't was for his dirty fee,<br>And not from any love to you nor me.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CLII<br>"If he comes here to take a deposition,<br> By all means let the gentleman proceed;<br>You've made the apartment in a fit condition:<br> There's pen and ink for you, sir, when you need—<br>Let every thing be noted with precision,<br> I would not you for nothing should be fee'd—<br>But, as my maid's undrest, pray turn your spies out."<br>"Oh!" sobb'd Antonia, "I could tear their eyes out."</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CLIII<br>"There is the closet, there the toilet, there<br> The antechamber—search them under, over;<br>There is the sofa, there the great arm-chair,<br> The chimney—which would really hold a lover.<br>I wish to sleep, and beg you will take care<br> And make no further noise, till you discover<br>The secret cavern of this lurking treasure—<br>And when 't is found, let me, too, have that pleasure.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CLIV<br>"And now, Hidalgo! now that you have thrown<br> Doubt upon me, confusion over all,<br>Pray have the courtesy to make it known<br> Who is the man you search for? how d' ye call<br>Him? what's his lineage? let him but be shown—<br> I hope he's young and handsome—is he tall?<br>Tell me—and be assured, that since you stain<br>My honour thus, it shall not be in vain.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CLV<br>"At least, perhaps, he has not sixty years,<br> At that age he would be too old for slaughter,<br>Or for so young a husband's jealous fears<br> (Antonia! let me have a glass of water).<br>I am ashamed of having shed these tears,<br> They are unworthy of my father's daughter;<br>My mother dream'd not in my natal hour<br>That I should fall into a monster's power.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CLVI<br>"Perhaps 't is of Antonia you are jealous,<br> You saw that she was sleeping by my side<br>When you broke in upon us with your fellows:<br> Look where you please—we've nothing, sir, to hide;<br>Only another time, I trust, you'll tell us,<br> Or for the sake of decency abide<br>A moment at the door, that we may be<br>Drest to receive so much good company.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CLVII<br>"And now, sir, I have done, and say no more;<br> The little I have said may serve to show<br>The guileless heart in silence may grieve o'er<br> The wrongs to whose exposure it is slow:<br>I leave you to your conscience as before,<br> 'T will one day ask you why you used me so?<br>God grant you feel not then the bitterest grief!—<br>Antonia! where's my pocket-handkerchief?"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CLVIII<br>She ceased, and turn'd upon her pillow; pale<br> She lay, her dark eyes flashing through their tears,<br>Like skies that rain and lighten; as a veil,<br> Waved and o'ershading her wan cheek, appears<br>Her streaming hair; the black curls strive, but fail,<br> To hide the glossy shoulder, which uprears<br>Its snow through all;—her soft lips lie apart,<br>And louder than her breathing beats her heart.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CLIX<br>The Senhor Don Alfonso stood confused;<br> Antonia bustled round the ransack'd room,<br>And, turning up her nose, with looks abused<br> Her master and his myrmidons, of whom<br>Not one, except the attorney, was amused;<br> He, like Achates, faithful to the tomb,<br>So there were quarrels, cared not for the cause,<br>Knowing they must be settled by the laws.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CLX<br>With prying snub-nose, and small eyes, he stood,<br> Following Antonia's motions here and there,<br>With much suspicion in his attitude;<br> For reputations he had little care;<br>So that a suit or action were made good,<br> Small pity had he for the young and fair,<br>And ne'er believed in negatives, till these<br>Were proved by competent false witnesses.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CLXI<br>But Don Alfonso stood with downcast looks,<br> And, truth to say, he made a foolish figure;<br>When, after searching in five hundred nooks,<br> And treating a young wife with so much rigour,<br>He gain'd no point, except some self-rebukes,<br> Added to those his lady with such vigour<br>Had pour'd upon him for the last half-hour,<br>Quick, thick, and heavy—as a thunder-shower.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CLXII<br>At first he tried to hammer an excuse,<br> To which the sole reply was tears and sobs,<br>And indications of hysterics, whose<br> Prologue is always certain throes, and throbs,<br>Gasps, and whatever else the owners choose:<br> Alfonso saw his wife, and thought of Job's;<br>He saw too, in perspective, her relations,<br>And then he tried to muster all his patience.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CLXIII<br>He stood in act to speak, or rather stammer,<br> But sage Antonia cut him short before<br>The anvil of his speech received the hammer,<br> With "Pray, sir, leave the room, and say no more,<br>Or madam dies."—Alfonso mutter'd, "D—n her,"<br> But nothing else, the time of words was o'er;<br>He cast a rueful look or two, and did,<br>He knew not wherefore, that which he was bid.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CLXIV<br>With him retired his "posse comitatus,"<br> The attorney last, who linger'd near the door<br>Reluctantly, still tarrying there as late as<br> Antonia let him—not a little sore<br>At this most strange and unexplain'd "hiatus"<br> In Don Alfonso's facts, which just now wore<br>An awkward look; as he revolved the case,<br>The door was fasten'd in his legal face.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CLXV<br>No sooner was it bolted, than—Oh shame!<br> Oh sin! Oh sorrow! and oh womankind!<br>How can you do such things and keep your fame,<br> Unless this world, and t' other too, be blind?<br>Nothing so dear as an unfilch'd good name!<br> But to proceed—for there is more behind:<br>With much heartfelt reluctance be it said,<br>Young Juan slipp'd half-smother'd, from the bed.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CLXVI<br>He had been hid—I don't pretend to say<br> How, nor can I indeed describe the where—<br>Young, slender, and pack'd easily, he lay,<br> No doubt, in little compass, round or square;<br>But pity him I neither must nor may<br> His suffocation by that pretty pair;<br>'T were better, sure, to die so, than be shut<br>With maudlin Clarence in his Malmsey butt.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CLXVII<br>And, secondly, I pity not, because<br> He had no business to commit a sin,<br>Forbid by heavenly, fined by human laws,<br> At least 't was rather early to begin;<br>But at sixteen the conscience rarely gnaws<br> So much as when we call our old debts in<br>At sixty years, and draw the accompts of evil,<br>And find a deuced balance with the devil.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CLXVIII<br>Of his position I can give no notion:<br> 'T is written in the Hebrew Chronicle,<br>How the physicians, leaving pill and potion,<br> Prescribed, by way of blister, a young belle,<br>When old King David's blood grew dull in motion,<br> And that the medicine answer'd very well;<br>Perhaps 't was in a different way applied,<br>For David lived, but Juan nearly died.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CLXIX<br>What's to be done? Alfonso will be back<br> The moment he has sent his fools away.<br>Antonia's skill was put upon the rack,<br> But no device could be brought into play—<br>And how to parry the renew'd attack?<br> Besides, it wanted but few hours of day:<br>Antonia puzzled; Julia did not speak,<br>But press'd her bloodless lip to Juan's cheek.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CLXX<br>He turn'd his lip to hers, and with his hand<br> Call'd back the tangles of her wandering hair;<br>Even then their love they could not all command,<br> And half forgot their danger and despair:<br>Antonia's patience now was at a stand—<br> "Come, come, 't is no time now for fooling there,"<br>She whisper'd, in great wrath—"I must deposit<br>This pretty gentleman within the closet:</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CLXXI<br>"Pray, keep your nonsense for some luckier night—<br> Who can have put my master in this mood?<br>What will become on 't—I'm in such a fright,<br> The devil's in the urchin, and no good—<br>Is this a time for giggling? this a plight?<br> Why, don't you know that it may end in blood?<br>You'll lose your life, and I shall lose my place,<br>My mistress all, for that half-girlish face.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CLXXII<br>"Had it but been for a stout cavalier<br> Of twenty-five or thirty (come, make haste)—<br>But for a child, what piece of work is here!<br> I really, madam, wonder at your taste<br>(Come, sir, get in)—my master must be near:<br> There, for the present, at the least, he's fast,<br>And if we can but till the morning keep<br>Our counsel—(Juan, mind, you must not sleep)."</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CLXXIII<br>Now, Don Alfonso entering, but alone,<br> Closed the oration of the trusty maid:<br>She loiter'd, and he told her to be gone,<br> An order somewhat sullenly obey'd;<br>However, present remedy was none,<br> And no great good seem'd answer'd if she stay'd:<br>Regarding both with slow and sidelong view,<br>She snuff'd the candle, curtsied, and withdrew.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CLXXIV<br>Alfonso paused a minute—then begun<br> Some strange excuses for his late proceeding;<br>He would not justify what he had done,<br> To say the best, it was extreme ill-breeding;<br>But there were ample reasons for it, none<br> Of which he specified in this his pleading:<br>His speech was a fine sample, on the whole,<br>Of rhetoric, which the learn'd call "rigmarole."</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CLXXV<br>Julia said nought; though all the while there rose<br> A ready answer, which at once enables<br>A matron, who her husband's foible knows,<br> By a few timely words to turn the tables,<br>Which, if it does not silence, still must pose,—<br> Even if it should comprise a pack of fables;<br>'T is to retort with firmness, and when he<br>Suspects with one, do you reproach with three.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CLXXVI<br>Julia, in fact, had tolerable grounds,—<br> Alfonso's loves with Inez were well known,<br>But whether 't was that one's own guilt confounds—<br> But that can't be, as has been often shown,<br>A lady with apologies abounds;—<br> It might be that her silence sprang alone<br>From delicacy to Don Juan's ear,<br>To whom she knew his mother's fame was dear.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CLXXVII<br>There might be one more motive, which makes two;<br> Alfonso ne'er to Juan had alluded,—<br>Mention'd his jealousy but never who<br> Had been the happy lover, he concluded,<br>Conceal'd amongst his premises; 't is true,<br> His mind the more o'er this its mystery brooded;<br>To speak of Inez now were, one may say,<br>Like throwing Juan in Alfonso's way.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CLXXVIII<br>A hint, in tender cases, is enough;<br> Silence is best, besides there is a tact—<br>(That modern phrase appears to me sad stuff,<br> But it will serve to keep my verse compact)—<br>Which keeps, when push'd by questions rather rough,<br> A lady always distant from the fact:<br>The charming creatures lie with such a grace,<br>There's nothing so becoming to the face.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CLXXIX<br>They blush, and we believe them; at least I<br> Have always done so; 't is of no great use,<br>In any case, attempting a reply,<br> For then their eloquence grows quite profuse;<br>And when at length they 're out of breath, they sigh,<br> And cast their languid eyes down, and let loose<br>A tear or two, and then we make it up;<br>And then—and then—and then—sit down and sup.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CLXXX<br>Alfonso closed his speech, and begg'd her pardon,<br> Which Julia half withheld, and then half granted,<br>And laid conditions he thought very hard on,<br> Denying several little things he wanted:<br>He stood like Adam lingering near his garden,<br> With useless penitence perplex'd and haunted,<br>Beseeching she no further would refuse,<br>When, lo! he stumbled o'er a pair of shoes.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CLXXXI<br>A pair of shoes!—what then? not much, if they<br> Are such as fit with ladies' feet, but these<br>(No one can tell how much I grieve to say)<br> Were masculine; to see them, and to seize,<br>Was but a moment's act.—Ah! well-a-day!<br> My teeth begin to chatter, my veins freeze—<br>Alfonso first examined well their fashion,<br>And then flew out into another passion.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CLXXXII<br>He left the room for his relinquish'd sword,<br> And Julia instant to the closet flew.<br>"Fly, Juan, fly! for heaven's sake—not a word—<br> The door is open—you may yet slip through<br>The passage you so often have explored—<br> Here is the garden-key—Fly—fly—Adieu!<br>Haste—haste! I hear Alfonso's hurrying feet—<br>Day has not broke—there's no one in the street:"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CLXXXIII<br>None can say that this was not good advice,<br> The only mischief was, it came too late;<br>Of all experience 't is the usual price,<br> A sort of income-tax laid on by fate:<br>Juan had reach'd the room-door in a trice,<br> And might have done so by the garden-gate,<br>But met Alfonso in his dressing-gown,<br>Who threaten'd death—so Juan knock'd him down.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CLXXXIV<br>Dire was the scuffle, and out went the light;<br> Antonia cried out "Rape!" and Julia "Fire!"<br>But not a servant stirr'd to aid the fight.<br> Alfonso, pommell'd to his heart's desire,<br>Swore lustily he'd be revenged this night;<br> And Juan, too, blasphemed an octave higher;<br>His blood was up: though young, he was a Tartar,<br>And not at all disposed to prove a martyr.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CLXXXV<br>Alfonso's sword had dropp'd ere he could draw it,<br> And they continued battling hand to hand,<br>For Juan very luckily ne'er saw it;<br> His temper not being under great command,<br>If at that moment he had chanced to claw it,<br> Alfonso's days had not been in the land<br>Much longer.—Think of husbands', lovers' lives!<br>And how ye may be doubly widows—wives!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CLXXXVI<br>Alfonso grappled to detain the foe,<br> And Juan throttled him to get away,<br>And blood ('t was from the nose) began to flow;<br> At last, as they more faintly wrestling lay,<br>Juan contrived to give an awkward blow,<br> And then his only garment quite gave way;<br>He fled, like Joseph, leaving it; but there,<br>I doubt, all likeness ends between the pair.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CLXXXVII<br>Lights came at length, and men, and maids, who found<br> An awkward spectacle their eyes before;<br>Antonia in hysterics, Julia swoon'd,<br> Alfonso leaning, breathless, by the door;<br>Some half-torn drapery scatter'd on the ground,<br> Some blood, and several footsteps, but no more:<br>Juan the gate gain'd, turn'd the key about,<br>And liking not the inside, lock'd the out.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CLXXXVIII<br>Here ends this canto.—Need I sing, or say,<br> How Juan naked, favour'd by the night,<br>Who favours what she should not, found his way,<br> And reach'd his home in an unseemly plight?<br>The pleasant scandal which arose next day,<br> The nine days' wonder which was brought to light,<br>And how Alfonso sued for a divorce,<br>Were in the English newspapers, of course.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CLXXXIX<br>If you would like to see the whole proceedings,<br> The depositions, and the cause at full,<br>The names of all the witnesses, the pleadings<br> Of counsel to nonsuit, or to annul,<br>There's more than one edition, and the readings<br> Are various, but they none of them are dull;<br>The best is that in short-hand ta'en by Gurney,<br>Who to Madrid on purpose made a journey.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXC<br>But Donna Inez, to divert the train<br> Of one of the most circulating scandals<br>That had for centuries been known in Spain,<br> At least since the retirement of the Vandals,<br>First vow'd (and never had she vow'd in vain)<br> To Virgin Mary several pounds of candles;<br>And then, by the advice of some old ladies,<br>She sent her son to be shipp'd off from Cadiz.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXCI<br>She had resolved that he should travel through<br> All European climes, by land or sea,<br>To mend his former morals, and get new,<br> Especially in France and Italy<br>(At least this is the thing most people do).<br> Julia was sent into a convent: she<br>Grieved, but, perhaps, her feelings may be better<br>Shown in the following copy of her Letter:—</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXCII<br>"They tell me 't is decided; you depart:<br> 'T is wise—'t is well, but not the less a pain;<br>I have no further claim on your young heart,<br> Mine is the victim, and would be again;<br>To love too much has been the only art<br> I used;—I write in haste, and if a stain<br>Be on this sheet, 't is not what it appears;<br>My eyeballs burn and throb, but have no tears.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXCIII<br>"I loved, I love you, for this love have lost<br> State, station, heaven, mankind's, my own esteem,<br>And yet can not regret what it hath cost,<br> So dear is still the memory of that dream;<br>Yet, if I name my guilt, 't is not to boast,<br> None can deem harshlier of me than I deem:<br>I trace this scrawl because I cannot rest—<br>I've nothing to reproach, or to request.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXCIV<br>"Man's love is of man's life a thing apart,<br> 'T is woman's whole existence; man may range<br>The court, camp, church, the vessel, and the mart;<br> Sword, gown, gain, glory, offer in exchange<br>Pride, fame, ambition, to fill up his heart,<br> And few there are whom these cannot estrange;<br>Men have all these resources, we but one,<br>To love again, and be again undone.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXCV<br>"You will proceed in pleasure, and in pride,<br> Beloved and loving many; all is o'er<br>For me on earth, except some years to hide<br> My shame and sorrow deep in my heart's core;<br>These I could bear, but cannot cast aside<br> The passion which still rages as before—<br>And so farewell—forgive me, love me—No,<br>That word is idle now—but let it go.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXCVI<br>"My breast has been all weakness, is so yet;<br> But still I think I can collect my mind;<br>My blood still rushes where my spirit's set,<br> As roll the waves before the settled wind;<br>My heart is feminine, nor can forget—<br> To all, except one image, madly blind;<br>So shakes the needle, and so stands the pole,<br>As vibrates my fond heart to my fix'd soul.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXCVII<br>"I have no more to say, but linger still,<br> And dare not set my seal upon this sheet,<br>And yet I may as well the task fulfil,<br> My misery can scarce be more complete:<br>I had not lived till now, could sorrow kill;<br> Death shuns the wretch who fain the blow would meet,<br>And I must even survive this last adieu,<br>And bear with life, to love and pray for you!"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXCVIII<br>This note was written upon gilt-edged paper<br> With a neat little crow-quill, slight and new:<br>Her small white hand could hardly reach the taper,<br> It trembled as magnetic needles do,<br>And yet she did not let one tear escape her;<br> The seal a sun-flower; "Elle vous suit partout,"<br>The motto cut upon a white cornelian;<br>The wax was superfine, its hue vermilion.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CXCIX<br>This was Don Juan's earliest scrape; but whether<br> I shall proceed with his adventures is<br>Dependent on the public altogether;<br> We'll see, however, what they say to this:<br>Their favour in an author's cap's a feather,<br> And no great mischief's done by their caprice;<br>And if their approbation we experience,<br>Perhaps they'll have some more about a year hence.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CC<br>My poem's epic, and is meant to be<br> Divided in twelve books; each book containing,<br>With love, and war, a heavy gale at sea,<br> A list of ships, and captains, and kings reigning,<br>New characters; the episodes are three:<br> A panoramic view of hell's in training,<br>After the style of Virgil and of Homer,<br>So that my name of Epic's no misnomer.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CCI<br>All these things will be specified in time,<br> With strict regard to Aristotle's rules,<br>The Vade Mecum of the true sublime,<br> Which makes so many poets, and some fools:<br>Prose poets like blank-verse, I'm fond of rhyme,<br> Good workmen never quarrel with their tools;<br>I've got new mythological machinery,<br>And very handsome supernatural scenery.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CCII<br>There's only one slight difference between<br> Me and my epic brethren gone before,<br>And here the advantage is my own, I ween<br> (Not that I have not several merits more,<br>But this will more peculiarly be seen);<br> They so embellish, that 't is quite a bore<br>Their labyrinth of fables to thread through,<br>Whereas this story's actually true.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CCIII<br>If any person doubt it, I appeal<br> To history, tradition, and to facts,<br>To newspapers, whose truth all know and feel,<br> To plays in five, and operas in three acts;<br>All these confirm my statement a good deal,<br> But that which more completely faith exacts<br>Is that myself, and several now in Seville,<br>Saw Juan's last elopement with the devil.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CCIV<br>If ever I should condescend to prose,<br> I'll write poetical commandments, which<br>Shall supersede beyond all doubt all those<br> That went before; in these I shall enrich<br>My text with many things that no one knows,<br> And carry precept to the highest pitch:<br>I'll call the work "Longinus o'er a Bottle,<br>Or, Every Poet his own Aristotle."</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CCV<br>Thou shalt believe in Milton, Dryden, Pope;<br> Thou shalt not set up Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey;<br>Because the first is crazed beyond all hope,<br> The second drunk, the third so quaint and mouthy:<br>With Crabbe it may be difficult to cope,<br> And Campbell's Hippocrene is somewhat drouthy:<br>Thou shalt not steal from Samuel Rogers, nor<br>Commit—flirtation with the muse of Moore.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CCVI<br>Thou shalt not covet Mr. Sotheby's Muse,<br> His Pegasus, nor anything that's his;<br>Thou shalt not bear false witness like "the Blues"<br> (There's one, at least, is very fond of this);<br>Thou shalt not write, in short, but what I choose:<br> This is true criticism, and you may kiss—<br>Exactly as you please, or not,—the rod;<br>But if you don't, I'll lay it on, by G-d!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CCVII<br>If any person should presume to assert<br> This story is not moral, first, I pray,<br>That they will not cry out before they're hurt,<br> Then that they'll read it o'er again, and say<br>(But, doubtless, nobody will be so pert)<br> That this is not a moral tale, though gay;<br>Besides, in Canto Twelfth, I mean to show<br>The very place where wicked people go.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CCVIII<br>If, after all, there should be some so blind<br> To their own good this warning to despise,<br>Led by some tortuosity of mind,<br> Not to believe my verse and their own eyes,<br>And cry that they "the moral cannot find,"<br> I tell him, if a clergyman, he lies;<br>Should captains the remark, or critics, make,<br>They also lie too—under a mistake.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CCIX<br>The public approbation I expect,<br> And beg they'll take my word about the moral,<br>Which I with their amusement will connect<br> (So children cutting teeth receive a coral);<br>Meantime, they'll doubtless please to recollect<br> My epical pretensions to the laurel:<br>For fear some prudish readers should grow skittish,<br>I've bribed my grandmother's review—the British.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CCX<br>I sent it in a letter to the Editor,<br> Who thank'd me duly by return of post—<br>I'm for a handsome article his creditor;<br> Yet, if my gentle Muse he please to roast,<br>And break a promise after having made it her,<br> Denying the receipt of what it cost,<br>And smear his page with gall instead of honey,<br>All I can say is—that he had the money.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CCXI<br>I think that with this holy new alliance<br> I may ensure the public, and defy<br>All other magazines of art or science,<br> Daily, or monthly, or three monthly; I<br>Have not essay'd to multiply their clients,<br> Because they tell me 't were in vain to try,<br>And that the Edinburgh Review and Quarterly<br>Treat a dissenting author very martyrly.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CCXII<br>"Non ego hoc ferrem calida juventâ<br> Consule Planco," Horace said, and so<br>Say I; by which quotation there is meant a<br> Hint that some six or seven good years ago<br>(Long ere I dreamt of dating from the Brenta)<br> I was most ready to return a blow,<br>And would not brook at all this sort of thing<br>In my hot youth—when George the Third was King.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CCXIII<br>But now at thirty years my hair is grey<br> (I wonder what it will be like at forty?<br>I thought of a peruke the other day)—<br> My heart is not much greener; and, in short, I<br>Have squander'd my whole summer while 't was May,<br> And feel no more the spirit to retort; I<br>Have spent my life, both interest and principal,<br>And deem not, what I deem'd, my soul invincible.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CCXIV<br>No more—no more—Oh! never more on me<br> The freshness of the heart can fall like dew,<br>Which out of all the lovely things we see<br> Extracts emotions beautiful and new,<br>Hived in our bosoms like the bag o' the bee:<br> Think'st thou the honey with those objects grew?<br>Alas! 't was not in them, but in thy power<br>To double even the sweetness of a flower.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CCXV<br>No more—no more—Oh! never more, my heart,<br> Canst thou be my sole world, my universe!<br>Once all in all, but now a thing apart,<br> Thou canst not be my blessing or my curse:<br>The illusion's gone for ever, and thou art<br> Insensible, I trust, but none the worse,<br>And in thy stead I've got a deal of judgment,<br>Though heaven knows how it ever found a lodgment.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CCXVI<br>My days of love are over; me no more<br> The charms of maid, wife, and still less of widow,<br>Can make the fool of which they made before,—<br> In short, I must not lead the life I did do;<br>The credulous hope of mutual minds is o'er,<br> The copious use of claret is forbid too,<br>So for a good old-gentlemanly vice,<br>I think I must take up with avarice.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CCXVII<br>Ambition was my idol, which was broken<br> Before the shrines of Sorrow, and of Pleasure;<br>And the two last have left me many a token<br> O'er which reflection may be made at leisure:<br>Now, like Friar Bacon's brazen head, I've spoken,<br> "Time is, Time was, Time's past:"—a chymic treasure<br>Is glittering youth, which I have spent betimes—<br>My heart in passion, and my head on rhymes.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CCXVIII<br>What is the end of Fame? 't is but to fill<br> A certain portion of uncertain paper:<br>Some liken it to climbing up a hill,<br> Whose summit, like all hills, is lost in vapour;<br>For this men write, speak, preach, and heroes kill,<br> And bards burn what they call their "midnight taper,"<br>To have, when the original is dust,<br>A name, a wretched picture, and worse bust.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CCXIX<br>What are the hopes of man? Old Egypt's King<br> Cheops erected the first pyramid<br>And largest, thinking it was just the thing<br> To keep his memory whole, and mummy hid;<br>But somebody or other rummaging,<br> Burglariously broke his coffin's lid:<br>Let not a monument give you or me hopes,<br>Since not a pinch of dust remains of Cheops.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CCXX<br>But I being fond of true philosophy,<br> Say very often to myself, "Alas!<br>All things that have been born were born to die,<br> And flesh (which Death mows down to hay) is grass;<br>You've pass'd your youth not so unpleasantly,<br> And if you had it o'er again—'t would pass—<br>So thank your stars that matters are no worse,<br>And read your Bible, sir, and mind your purse."</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CCXXI<br>But for the present, gentle reader! and<br> Still gentler purchaser! the bard—that's I—<br>Must, with permission, shake you by the hand,<br> And so "Your humble servant, and good-b'ye!"<br>We meet again, if we should understand<br> Each other; and if not, I shall not try<br>Your patience further than by this short sample—<br>'T were well if others follow'd my example.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116886" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> CCXXII<br>"Go, little book, from this my solitude!<br> I cast thee on the waters—go thy ways!<br>And if, as I believe, thy vein be good,<br> The world will find thee after many days."<br>When Southey's read, and Wordsworth understood,<br> I can't help putting in my claim to praise—<br>The four first rhymes are Southey's every line:<br>For God's sake, reader! take them not for mine.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br/></a><a href="https://poems.citatepedia.com/">poem</a> by <strong><a rel="author" href="https://authors.citatepedia.com/by.php?a=Byron">Byron</a></strong> from <em><a href="https://sources.citatepedia.com/from.php?a=Byron&d=Don+Juan">Don Juan</a></em></div>

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