Don Juan
Brief, but delightful—such as had not staid
Long with her destiny; but she sleeps well
By the sea-shore, whereon she loved to dwell.
That isle is now all desolate and bare,
Its dwellings down, its tenants pass’d away;
None but her own and father’s grave is there,
And nothing outward tells of human clay;
Ye could not know where lies a thing so fair,
No stone is there to show, no tongue to say
What was; no dirge, except the hollow sea’s,
Mourns o’er the beauty of the Cyclades.
But many a Greek maid in a loving song
Sighs o’er her name; and many an islander
With her sire’s story makes the night less long;
Valour was his, and beauty dwelt with her:
If she loved rashly, her life paid for wrong—
A heavy price must all pay who thus err,
In some shape; let none think to fly the danger,
For soon or late Love is his own avenger.
But let me change this theme which grows too sad,
And lay this sheet of sorrows on the shelf;
I don’t much like describing people mad,
For fear of seeming rather touch’d myself—
Besides, I’ve no more on this head to add;
And as my Muse is a capricious elf,
We’ll put about, and try another tack
With Juan, left half-kill’d some stanzas back.
Wounded and fetter’d, ‘cabin’d, cribb’d, confined,’
Some days and nights elapsed before that he
Could altogether call the past to mind;
And when he did, he found himself at sea,
Sailing six knots an hour before the wind;
The shores of Ilion lay beneath their lee—
Another time he might have liked to see ’em,
But now was not much pleased with Cape Sigaeum.
There, on the green and village-cotted hill, is
(Flank’d by the Hellespont and by the sea)
Entomb’d the bravest of the brave, Achilles;
They say so (Bryant says the contrary):
And further downward, tall and towering still, is
The tumulus—of whom? Heaven knows! ’t may be
Patroclus, Ajax, or Protesilaus—
All heroes, who if living still would slay us.
High barrows, without marble or a name,
A vast, untill’d, and mountain-skirted plain,
And Ida in the distance, still the same,
And old Scamander (if ’tis he) remain;
The situation seems still form’d for fame—
A hundred thousand men might fight again
With case; but where I sought for Ilion’s walls,
The quiet sheep feeds, and the tortoise crawls;
Troops of untended horses; here and there
Some little hamlets, with new names uncouth;
Some shepherds (unlike Paris) led to stare
A moment at the European youth
Whom to the spot their school-boy feelings bear;
A turk, with beads in hand and pipe in mouth,
Extremely taken with his own religion,
Are what I found there—but the devil a Phrygian.
Don Juan, here permitted to emerge
From his dull cabin, found himself a slave;
Forlorn, and gazing on the deep blue surge,
O’ershadow’d there by many a hero’s grave;
Weak still with loss of blood, he scarce could urge
A few brief questions; and the answers gave
No very satisfactory information
About his past or present situation.
He saw some fellow captives, who appear’d
To be Italians, as they were in fact;
From them, at least, their destiny he heard,
Which was an odd one; a troop going to act
In Sicily (all singers, duly rear’d
In their vocation) had not been attack’d
In sailing from Livorno by the pirate,
But sold by the impresario at no high rate.
By one of these, the buffo of the party,
Juan was told about their curious case;
For although destined to the Turkish mart, he
Still kept his spirits up—at least his face;
The little fellow really look’d quite hearty,
And bore him with some gaiety and grace,
Showing a much more reconciled demeanour,
Than did the prima donna and the tenor.
In a few words he told their hapless story,
Saying, ‘Our Machiavellian impresario,
Making a signal off some promontory,
Hail’d a strange brig—Corpo di Caio Mario!
We were transferr’d on board her in a hurry,
Without a Single scudo of salario;
But if the Sultan has a taste for song,
We will revive our fortunes before long.
‘The prima donna, though a little old,
And haggard with a dissipated life,
And subject, when the house is thin, to cold,
Has some good notes; and then the tenor’s wife,
With no great voice, is pleasing to behold;
Last carnival she made a deal of strife
By carrying off Count Cesare Cicogna
From an old Roman princess at Bologna.
‘And then there are the dancers; there’s the Nini,
With more than one profession, gains by all;
Then there’s that laughing slut the Pelegrini,
She, too, was fortunate last carnival,
And made at least five hundred good zecchini,
But spends so fast, she has not now a paul;
And then there’s the Grotesca—such a dancer!
Where men have souls or bodies she must answer.
‘As for the figuranti, they are like
The rest of all that tribe; with here and there
A pretty person, which perhaps may strike,
The rest are hardly fitted for a fair;
There’s one, though tall and stiffer than a pike,
Yet has a sentimental kind of air
Which might go far, but she don’t dance with vigour;
The more ’s the pity, with her face and figure.
‘As for the men, they are a middling set;
The musico is but a crack’d old basin,
But being qualified in one way yet,
May the seraglio do to set his face in,
And as a servant some preferment get;
His singing I no further trust can place in:
From all the Pope makes yearly ’twould perplex
To find three perfect pipes of the third sex.
‘The tenor’s voice is spoilt by affectation,
And for the bass, the beast can only bellow;
In fact, he had no singing education,
An ignorant, noteless, timeless, tuneless fellow;
But being the prima donna’s near relation,
Who swore his voice was very rich and mellow,
They hired him, though to hear him you’d believe
An ass was practising recitative.
‘’Twould not become myself to dwell upon
My own merits, and though young—I see, Sir—you
Have got a travell’d air, which speaks you one
To whom the opera is by no means new:
You’ve heard of Raucocanti?—I’m the man;
The time may come when you may hear me too;
You was not last year at the fair of Lugo,
But next, when I’m engaged to sing there—do go.
‘Our baritone I almost had forgot,
A pretty lad, but bursting with conceit;
With graceful action, science not a jot,
A voice of no great compass, and not sweet,
He always is complaining of his lot,
Forsooth, scarce fit for ballads in the street;
In lovers’ parts his passion more to breathe,
Having no heart to show, he shows his teeth.’
Here Raucocanti’s eloquent recital
Was interrupted by the pirate crew,
Who came at stated moments to invite all
The captives back to their sad berths; each threw
A rueful glance upon the waves (which bright all
From the blue skies derived a double blue,
Dancing all free and happy in the sun),
And then went down the hatchway one by one.
They heard next day—that in the Dardanelles,
Waiting for his Sublimity’s firman,
The most imperative of sovereign spells,
Which every body does without who can,
More to secure them in their naval cells,
Lady to lady, well as man to man,
Were to be chain’d and lotted out per couple,
For the slave market of Constantinople.
It seems when this allotment was made out,
There chanced to be an odd male, and odd female,
Who (after some discussion and some doubt,
If the soprano might be deem’d to be male,
They placed him o’er the women as a scout)
Were link’d together, and it happen’d the male
Was Juan,—who, an awkward thing at his age,
Pair’d off with a Bacchante blooming visage.
With Raucocanti lucklessly was chain’d
The tenor; these two hated with a hate
Found only on the stage, and each more pain’d
With this his tuneful neighbour than his fate;
Sad strife arose, for they were so cross-grain’d,
Instead of bearing up without debate,
That each pull’d different ways with many an oath,
‘Arcades ambo,’ id est—blackguards both.
Juan’s companion was a Romagnole,
But bred within the March of old Ancona,
With eyes that look’d into the very soul
(And other chief points of a ‘bella donna’),
Bright—and as black and burning as a coal;
And through her dear brunette complexion shone
Great wish to please—a most attractive dower,
Especially when added to the power.
But all that power was wasted upon him,
For sorrow o’er each sense held stern command;
Her eye might flash on his, but found it dim;
And though thus chain’d, as natural her hand
Touch’d his, nor that—nor any handsome limb
(And she had some not easy to withstand)
Could stir his pulse, or make his faith feel brittle;
Perhaps his recent wounds might help a little.
No matter; we should ne’er too much enquire,
But facts are facts: no knight could be more true,
And firmer faith no ladye—love desire;
We will omit the proofs, save one or two:
’Tis said no one in hand ‘can hold a fire
By thought of frosty Caucasus;’ but few,
I really think; yet Juan’s then ordeal
Was more triumphant, and not much less real.
Here I might enter on a chaste description,
Having withstood temptation in my youth,
But hear that several people take exception
At the first two books having too much truth;
Therefore I’ll make Don Juan leave the ship soon,
Because the publisher declares, in sooth,
Through needles’ eyes it easier for the camel is
To pass, than those two cantos into families.
’Tis all the same to me; I’m fond of yielding,
And therefore leave them to the purer page
Of Smollett, Prior, Ariosto, Fielding,
Who say strange things for so correct an age;
I once had great alacrity in wielding
My pen, and liked poetic war to wage,
And recollect the time when all this cant
Would have provoked remarks which now it shan’t.
As boys love rows, my boyhood liked a squabble;
But at this hour I wish to part in peace,
Leaving such to the literary rabble:
Whether my verse’s fame be doom’d to cease
While the right hand which wrote it still is able,
Or of some centuries to take a lease,
The grass upon my grave will grow as long,
And sigh to midnight winds, but not to song.
Of poets who come down to us through distance
Of time and tongues, the foster-babes of Fame,
Life seems the smallest portion of existence;
Where twenty ages gather o’er a name,
’Tis as a snowball which derives assistance
From every flake, and yet rolls on the same,
Even till an iceberg it may chance to grow;
But, after all, ’tis nothing but cold snow.
And so great names are nothing more than nominal,
And love of glory ’s but an airy lust,
Too often in its fury overcoming all
Who would as ’twere identify their dust
From out the wide destruction, which, entombing all,
Leaves nothing till ‘the coming of the just’—
Save change: I’ve stood upon Achilles’ tomb,
And heard Troy doubted; time will doubt of Rome.
The very generations of the dead
Are swept away, and tomb inherits tomb,
Until the memory of an age is fled,
And, buried, sinks beneath its offspring’s doom:
Where are the epitaphs our fathers read?
Save a few glean’d from the sepulchral gloom
Which once-named myriads nameless lie beneath,
And lose their own in universal death.
I canter by the spot each afternoon
Where perish’d in his fame the hero-boy,
Who lived too long for men, but died too soon
For human vanity, the young De Foix!
A broken pillar, not uncouthly hewn,
But which neglect is hastening to destroy,
Records Ravenna’s carnage on its face,
While weeds and ordure rankle round the base.
I pass each day where Dante’s bones are laid:
A little cupola, more neat than solemn,
Protects his dust, but reverence here is paid