Don Juan
Are they—now furious as the sweeping wave,
Now moved with pity: even as sometimes nods
The rugged tree unto the summer wind,
Compassion breathes along the savage mind.
But he would not be taken, and replied
To all the propositions of surrender
By mowing Christians down on every side,
As obstinate as Swedish Charles at Bender.
His five brave boys no less the foe defied;
Whereon the Russian pathos grew less tender,
As being a virtue, like terrestrial patience,
Apt to wear out on trifling provocations.
And spite of Johnson and of Juan, who
Expended all their Eastern phraseology
In begging him, for God’s sake, just to show
So much less fight as might form an apology
For them in saving such a desperate foe—
He hew’d away, like doctors of theology
When they dispute with sceptics; and with curses
Struck at his friends, as babies beat their nurses.
Nay, he had wounded, though but slightly, both
Juan and Johnson; whereupon they fell,
The first with sighs, the second with an oath,
Upon his angry sultanship, pell-mell,
And all around were grown exceeding wroth
At such a pertinacious infidel,
And pour’d upon him and his sons like rain,
Which they resisted like a sandy plain
That drinks and still is dry. At last they perish’d—
His second son was levell’d by a shot;
His third was sabred; and the fourth, most cherish’d
Of all the five, on bayonets met his lot;
The fifth, who, by a Christian mother nourish’d,
Had been neglected, ill-used, and what not,
Because deform’d, yet died all game and bottom,
To save a sire who blush’d that he begot him.
The eldest was a true and tameless Tartar,
As great a scorner of the Nazarene
As ever Mahomet pick’d out for a martyr,
Who only saw the black-eyed girls in green,
Who make the beds of those who won’t take quarter
On earth, in Paradise; and when once seen,
Those houris, like all other pretty creatures,
Do just whate’er they please, by dint of features.
And what they pleased to do with the young khan
In heaven I know not, nor pretend to guess;
But doubtless they prefer a fine young man
To tough old heroes, and can do no less;
And that ’s the cause no doubt why, if we scan
A field of battle’s ghastly wilderness,
For one rough, weather-beaten, veteran body,
You’ll find ten thousand handsome coxcombs bloody.
Your houris also have a natural pleasure
In lopping off your lately married men,
Before the bridal hours have danced their measure
And the sad, second moon grows dim again,
Or dull repentance hath had dreary leisure
To wish him back a bachelor now and then.
And thus your houri (it may be) disputes
Of these brief blossoms the immediate fruits.
Thus the young khan, with houris in his sight,
Thought not upon the charms of four young brides,
But bravely rush’d on his first heavenly night.
In short, howe’er our better faith derides,
These black-eyed virgins make the Moslems fight,
As though there were one heaven and none besides,—
Whereas, if all be true we hear of heaven
And hell, there must at least be six or seven.
So fully flash’d the phantom on his eyes,
That when the very lance was in his heart,
He shouted ‘Allah!’ and saw Paradise
With all its veil of mystery drawn apart,
And bright eternity without disguise
On his soul, like a ceaseless sunrise, dart:—
With prophets, houris, angels, saints, descried
In one voluptuous blaze,—and then he died,
But with a heavenly rapture on his face.
The good old khan, who long had ceased to see
Houris, or aught except his florid race
Who grew like cedars round him gloriously—
When he beheld his latest hero grace
The earth, which he became like a fell’d tree,
Paused for a moment, from the fight, and cast
A glance on that slain son, his first and last.
The soldiers, who beheld him drop his point,
Stopp’d as if once more willing to concede
Quarter, in case he bade them not ‘aroynt!’
As he before had done. He did not heed
Their pause nor signs: his heart was out of joint,
And shook (till now unshaken) like a reed,
As he look’d down upon his children gone,
And felt—though done with life—he was alone
But ’twas a transient tremor;—with a spring
Upon the Russian steel his breast he flung,
As carelessly as hurls the moth her wing
Against the light wherein she dies: he clung
Closer, that all the deadlier they might wring,
Unto the bayonets which had pierced his young;
And throwing back a dim look on his sons,
In one wide wound pour’d forth his soul at once.
’Tis strange enough—the rough, tough soldiers, who
Spared neither sex nor age in their career
Of carnage, when this old man was pierced through,
And lay before them with his children near,
Touch’d by the heroism of him they slew,
Were melted for a moment: though no tear
Flow’d from their bloodshot eyes, all red with strife,
They honour’d such determined scorn of life.
But the stone bastion still kept up its fire,
Where the chief pacha calmly held his post:
Some twenty times he made the Russ retire,
And baffled the assaults of all their host;
At length he condescended to inquire
If yet the city’s rest were won or lost;
And being told the latter, sent a bey
To answer Ribas’ summons to give way.
In the mean time, cross-legg’d, with great sang-froid,
Among the scorching ruins he sat smoking
Tobacco on a little carpet;—Troy
Saw nothing like the scene around:—yet looking
With martial stoicism, nought seem’d to annoy
His stern philosophy; but gently stroking
His beard, he puff’d his pipe’s ambrosial gales,
As if he had three lives, as well as tails.
The town was taken—whether he might yield
Himself or bastion, little matter’d now:
His stubborn valour was no future shield.
Ismail ’s no more! The crescent’s silver bow
Sunk, and the crimson cross glared o’er the field,
But red with no redeeming gore: the glow
Of burning streets, like moonlight on the water,
Was imaged back in blood, the sea of slaughter.
All that the mind would shrink from of excesses;
All that the body perpetrates of bad;
All that we read, hear, dream, of man’s distresses;
All that the devil would do if run stark mad;
All that defies the worst which pen expresses;
All by which hell is peopled, or as sad
As hell—mere mortals who their power abuse—
Was here (as heretofore and since) let loose.
If here and there some transient trait of pity
Was shown, and some more noble heart broke through
Its bloody bond, and saved perhaps some pretty
Child, or an aged, helpless man or two—
What ’s this in one annihilated city,
Where thousand loves, and ties, and duties grew?
Cockneys of London! Muscadins of Paris!
Just ponder what a pious pastime war is.
Think how the joys of reading a Gazette
Are purchased by all agonies and crimes:
Or if these do not move you, don’t forget
Such doom may be your own in aftertimes.
Meantime the Taxes, Castlereagh, and Debt,
Are hints as good as sermons, or as rhymes.
Read your own hearts and Ireland’s present story,
Then feed her famine fat with Wellesley’s glory.
But still there is unto a patriot nation,
Which loves so well its country and its king,
A subject of sublimest exultation—
Bear it, ye Muses, on your brightest wing!
Howe’er the mighty locust, Desolation,
Strip your green fields, and to your harvests cling,
Gaunt famine never shall approach the throne—
Though Ireland starve, great George weighs twenty stone.
But let me put an end unto my theme:
There was an end of Ismail—hapless town!
Far flash’d her burning towers o’er Danube’s stream,
And redly ran his blushing waters down.
The horrid war-whoop and the shriller scream
Rose still; but fainter were the thunders grown:
Of forty thousand who had mann’d the wall,
Some hundreds breathed—the rest were silent all!
In one thing ne’ertheless ’tis fit to praise
The Russian army upon this occasion,
A virtue much in fashion now-a-days,
And therefore worthy of commemoration:
The topic ’s tender, so shall be my phrase—
Perhaps the season’s chill, and their long station
In winter’s depth, or want of rest and victual,
Had made them chaste;—they ravish’d very little.
Much did they slay, more plunder, and no less
Might here and there occur some violation
In the other line;—but not to such excess
As when the French, that dissipated nation,
Take towns by storm: no causes can I guess,
Except cold weather and commiseration;
But all the ladies, save some twenty score,
Were almost as much virgins as before.
Some odd mistakes, too, happen’d in the dark,
Which show’d a want of lanterns, or of taste—
Indeed the smoke was such they scarce could mark
Their friends from foes,—besides such things from haste
Occur, though rarely, when there is a spark
Of light to save the venerably chaste:
But six old damsels, each of seventy years,
Were all deflower’d by different grenadiers.
But on the whole their continence was great;
So that some disappointment there ensued
To those who had felt the inconvenient state
Of ‘single blessedness,’ and thought it good
(Since it was not their fault, but only fate,
To bear these crosses) for each waning prude
To make a Roman sort of Sabine wedding,
Without the expense and the suspense of bedding.
Some voices of the buxom middle-aged
Were also heard to wonder in the din
(Widows of forty were these birds long caged)
‘Wherefore the ravishing did not begin!’
But while the thirst for gore and plunder raged,
There was small leisure for superfluous sin;
But whether they escaped or no, lies hid
In darkness—I can only hope they did.
Suwarrow now was conqueror—a match
For Timour or for Zinghis in his trade.
While mosques and streets, beneath his eyes, like thatch
Blazed, and the cannon’s roar was scarce allay’d,
With bloody hands he wrote his first despatch;
And here exactly follows what he said:—
‘Glory to God and to the Empress!’ (Powers
Eternal! such names mingled!) ‘Ismail ’s ours.’
Methinks these are the most tremendous words,
Since ‘Mene, Mene, Tekel,’ and ‘Upharsin,’
Which hands or pens have ever traced of swords.
Heaven help me! I’m but little of a parson:
What Daniel read was short-hand of the Lord’s,
Severe, sublime; the prophet wrote no farce on
The fate of nations;—but this Russ so witty
Could rhyme, like Nero, o’er a burning city.
He wrote this Polar melody, and set it,
Duly accompanied by shrieks and groans,
Which few will sing, I trust, but none forget it—
For I will teach, if possible, the stones
To rise against earth’s tyrants. Never let it
Be said that we still truckle unto thrones;—
But ye—our children’s children! think how we
Show’d what things were before the world was free!
That hour is not for us, but ’tis for you:
And as, in the great joy of your millennium,
You hardly will believe such things were true
As now occur, I thought that I would pen you ’em;
But may their very memory perish too!—
Yet if perchance remember’d, still disdain you ’em
More than you scorn the savages of yore,
Who painted their bare limbs, but not with gore.
And when you hear historians talk of thrones,
And those that sate upon them, let it be
As we now gaze upon the mammoth’s bones,
‘And wonder what old world such things could see,
Or hieroglyphics on Egyptian stones,
The pleasant riddles of futurity—
Guessing at what shall happily be hid,
As the real purpose of a pyramid.
Reader! I have kept my word,—at least so far
As the first Canto promised. You have now
Had sketches of love, tempest, travel, war—
All very accurate, you must allow,