Don Juan
That future bridegrooms swore, and sigh’d, and paid it.
The Blues, that tender tribe who sigh o’er sonnets,
And with the pages of the last Review
Line the interior of their heads or bonnets,
Advanced in all their azure’s highest hue:
They talk’d bad French or Spanish, and upon its
Late authors ask’d him for a hint or two;
And which was softest, Russian or Castilian?
And whether in his travels he saw Ilion?
Juan, who was a little superficial,
And not in literature a great Drawcansir,
Examined by this learned and especial
Jury of matrons, scarce knew what to answer:
His duties warlike, loving or official,
His steady application as a dancer,
Had kept him from the brink of Hippocrene,
Which now he found was blue instead of green.
However, he replied at hazard, with
A modest confidence and calm assurance,
Which lent his learned lucubrations pith,
And pass’d for arguments of good endurance.
That prodigy, Miss Araminta Smith
(Who at sixteen translated ‘Hercules Furens’
Into as furious English), with her best look,
Set down his sayings in her common-place book.
Juan knew several languages—as well
He might—and brought them up with skill, in time
To save his fame with each accomplish’d belle,
Who still regretted that he did not rhyme.
There wanted but this requisite to swell
His qualities (with them) into sublime:
Lady Fitz-Frisky, and Miss Maevia Mannish,
Both long’d extremely to be sung in Spanish.
However, he did pretty well, and was
Admitted as an aspirant to all
The coteries, and, as in Banquo’s glass,
At great assemblies or in parties small,
He saw ten thousand living authors pass,
That being about their average numeral;
Also the eighty ‘greatest living poets,’
As every paltry magazine can show its.
In twice five years the ‘greatest living poet,’
Like to the champion in the fisty ring,
Is call’d on to support his claim, or show it,
Although ’tis an imaginary thing.
Even I—albeit I’m sure I did not know it,
Nor sought of foolscap subjects to be king—
Was reckon’d a considerable time,
The grand Napoleon of the realms of rhyme.
But Juan was my Moscow, and Faliero
My Leipsic, and my Mount Saint Jean seems Cain:
‘La Belle Alliance’ of dunces down at zero,
Now that the Lion ’s fall’n, may rise again:
But I will fall at least as fell my hero;
Nor reign at all, or as a monarch reign;
Or to some lonely isle of gaolers go,
With turncoat Southey for my turnkey Lowe.
Sir Walter reign’d before me; Moore and Campbell
Before and after; but now grown more holy,
The Muses upon Sion’s hill must ramble
With poets almost clergymen, or wholly;
And Pegasus hath a psalmodic amble
Beneath the very Reverend Rowley Powley,
Who shoes the glorious animal with stilts,
A modern Ancient Pistol—by the hilts?
Then there’s my gentle Euphues, who, they say,
Sets up for being a sort of moral me;
He’ll find it rather difficult some day
To turn out both, or either, it may be.
Some persons think that Coleridge hath the sway;
And Wordsworth has supporters, two or three;
And that deep-mouth’d Boeotian ‘Savage Landor’
Has taken for a swan rogue Southey’s gander.
John Keats, who was kill’d off by one critique,
Just as he really promised something great,
If not intelligible, without Greek
Contrived to talk about the gods of late,
Much as they might have been supposed to speak.
Poor fellow! His was an untoward fate;
’Tis strange the mind, that very fiery particle,
Should let itself be snuff’d out by an article.
The list grows long of live and dead pretenders
To that which none will gain—or none will know
The conqueror at least; who, ere Time renders
His last award, will have the long grass grow
Above his burnt-out brain, and sapless cinders.
If I might augur, I should rate but low
Their chances; they’re too numerous, like the thirty
Mock tyrants, when Rome’s annals wax’d but dirty.
This is the literary lower empire,
Where the praetorian bands take up the matter;—
A ‘dreadful trade,’ like his who ‘gathers samphire,’
The insolent soldiery to soothe and flatter,
With the same feelings as you’d coax a vampire.
Now, were I once at home, and in good satire,
I’d try conclusions with those Janizaries,
And show them what an intellectual war is.
I think I know a trick or two, would turn
Their flanks;—but it is hardly worth my while
With such small gear to give myself concern:
Indeed I’ve not the necessary bile;
My natural temper ’s really aught but stern,
And even my Muse’s worst reproof ’s a smile;
And then she drops a brief and modern curtsy,
And glides away, assured she never hurts ye.
My Juan, whom I left in deadly peril
Amongst live poets and blue ladies, past
With some small profit through that field so sterile,
Being tired in time, and, neither least nor last,
Left it before he had been treated very ill;
And henceforth found himself more gaily class’d
Amongst the higher spirits of the day,
The sun’s true son, no vapour, but a ray.
His morns he pass’d in business—which, dissected,
Was like all business a laborious nothing
That leads to lassitude, the most infected
And Centaur Nessus garb of mortal clothing,
And on our sofas makes us lie dejected,
And talk in tender horrors of our loathing
All kinds of toil, save for our country’s good—
Which grows no better, though ’tis time it should.
His afternoons he pass’d in visits, luncheons,
Lounging and boxing; and the twilight hour
In riding round those vegetable puncheons
Call’d ‘Parks,’ where there is neither fruit nor flower
Enough to gratify a bee’s slight munchings;
But after all it is the only ‘bower’
(In Moore’s phrase), where the fashionable fair
Can form a slight acquaintance with fresh air.
Then dress, then dinner, then awakes the world!
Then glare the lamps, then whirl the wheels, then roar
Through street and square fast flashing chariots hurl’d
Like harness’d meteors; then along the floor
Chalk mimics painting; then festoons are twirl’d;
Then roll the brazen thunders of the door,
Which opens to the thousand happy few
An earthly paradise of ‘Or Molu.’
There stands the noble hostess, nor shall sink
With the three-thousandth curtsy; there the waltz,
The only dance which teaches girls to think,
Makes one in love even with its very faults.
Saloon, room, hall, o’erflow beyond their brink,
And long the latest of arrivals halts,
’Midst royal dukes and dames condemn’d to climb,
And gain an inch of staircase at a time.
Thrice happy he who, after a survey
Of the good company, can win a corner,
A door that’s in or boudoir out of the way,
Where he may fix himself like small ‘Jack Horner,’
And let the Babel round run as it may,
And look on as a mourner, or a scorner,
Or an approver, or a mere spectator,
Yawning a little as the night grows later.
But this won’t do, save by and by; and he
Who, like Don Juan, takes an active share,
Must steer with care through all that glittering sea
Of gems and plumes and pearls and silks, to where
He deems it is his proper place to be;
Dissolving in the waltz to some soft air,
Or proudlier prancing with mercurial skill
Where Science marshals forth her own quadrille.
Or, if he dance not, but hath higher views
Upon an heiress or his neighbour’s bride,
Let him take care that that which he pursues
Is not at once too palpably descried.
Full many an eager gentleman oft rues
His haste: impatience is a blundering guide,
Amongst a people famous for reflection,
Who like to play the fool with circumspection.
But, if you can contrive, get next at supper;
Or, if forestalled, get opposite and ogle:—
O, ye ambrosial moments! always upper
In mind, a sort of sentimental bogle,
Which sits for ever upon memory’s crupper,
The ghost of vanish’d pleasures once in vogue! Ill
Can tender souls relate the rise and fall
Of hopes and fears which shake a single ball.
But these precautionary hints can touch
Only the common run, who must pursue,
And watch, and ward; whose plans a word too much
Or little overturns; and not the few
Or many (for the number’s sometimes such)
Whom a good mien, especially if new,
Or fame, or name, for wit, war, sense, or nonsense,
Permits whate’er they please, or did not long since.
Our hero, as a hero, young and handsome,
Noble, rich, celebrated, and a stranger,
Like other slaves of course must pay his ransom,
Before he can escape from so much danger
As will environ a conspicuous man. Some
Talk about poetry, and ‘rack and manger,’
And ugliness, disease, as toil and trouble;—
I wish they knew the life of a young noble.
They are young, but know not youth—it is anticipated;
Handsome but wasted, rich without a sou;
Their vigour in a thousand arms is dissipated;
Their cash comes from, their wealth goes to a Jew;
Both senates see their nightly votes participated
Between the tyrant’s and the tribunes’ crew;
And having voted, dined, drunk, gamed, and whored,
The family vault receives another lord.
‘Where is the world?’ cries Young, at eighty—‘Where
The world in which a man was born? ‘Alas!
Where is the world of eight years past? ’Twas there—
I look for it—’tis gone, a globe of glass!
Crack’d, shiver’d, vanish’d, scarcely gazed on, ere
A silent change dissolves the glittering mass.
Statesmen, chiefs, orators, queens, patriots, kings,
And dandies, all are gone on the wind’s wings.
Where is Napoleon the Grand? God knows.
Where little Castlereagh? The devil can tell:
Where Grattan, Curran, Sheridan, all those
Who bound the bar or senate in their spell?
Where is the unhappy Queen, with all her woes?
And where the Daughter, whom the Isles loved well?
Where are those martyr’d saints the Five per Cents?
And where—oh, where the devil are the rents?
Where’s Brummel? Dish’d. Where’s Long Pole Wellesley? Diddled.
Where’s Whitbread? Romilly? Where’s George the Third?
Where is his will? (That ’s not so soon unriddled.)
And where is ‘Fum’ the Fourth, our ‘royal bird?’
Gone down, it seems, to Scotland to be fiddled
Unto by Sawney’s violin, we have heard:
‘Caw me, caw thee’—for six months hath been hatching
This scene of royal itch and loyal scratching.
Where is Lord This? And where my Lady That?
The Honourable Mistresses and Misses?
Some laid aside like an old Opera hat,
Married, unmarried, and remarried (this is
An evolution oft performed of late).
Where are the Dublin shouts—and London hisses?
Where are the Grenvilles? Turn’d as usual. Where
My friends the Whigs? Exactly where they were.
Where are the Lady Carolines and Franceses?
Divorced or doing thereanent. Ye annals
So brilliant, where the list of routs and dances is,—
Thou Morning Post, sole record of the panels
Broken in carriages, and all the phantasies
Of fashion,—say what streams now fill those channels?
Some die, some fly, some languish on the Continent,
Because the times have hardly left them one tenant.
Some who once set their caps at cautious dukes,
Have taken up at length with younger brothers:
Some heiresses have bit at sharpers’ hooks:
Some maids have been made wives, some merely mothers;
Others have lost their fresh and fairy looks:
In short, the list of alterations bothers.
There’s little strange in this, but something strange is
The unusual quickness of these common changes.
Talk not of seventy years as age; in seven
I have seen more changes, down from monarchs to
The humblest individual under heaven,
Than might suffice a moderate century through.
I knew that nought was lasting, but now even