Don Juan
Just to console sad glory for being glorious;
Which is in all respects, save now and then,
A dull and desolate appendage. Gaze
Upon the shades of those distinguish’d men
Who were or are the puppet-shows of praise,
The praise of persecution; gaze again
On the most favour’d; and amidst the blaze
Of sunset halos o’er the laurel-brow’d,
What can ye recognise?—a gilded cloud.
There also was of course in Adeline
That calm patrician polish in the address,
Which ne’er can pass the equinoctial line
Of any thing which nature would express;
Just as a mandarin finds nothing fine,—
At least his manner suffers not to guess
That any thing he views can greatly please.
Perhaps we have borrow’d this from the Chinese—
Perhaps from Horace: his ‘Nil admirari’
Was what he call’d the ‘Art of Happiness;’
An art on which the artists greatly vary,
And have not yet attain’d to much success.
However, ’tis expedient to be wary:
Indifference certes don’t produce distress;
And rash enthusiasm in good society
Were nothing but a moral inebriety.
But Adeline was not indifferent: for
(Now for a common-place!) beneath the snow,
As a volcano holds the lava more
Within—et caetera. Shall I go on?—No!
I hate to hunt down a tired metaphor,
So let the often-used volcano go.
Poor thing! How frequently, by me and others,
It hath been stirr’d up till its smoke quite smothers!
I’ll have another figure in a trice:—
What say you to a bottle of champagne?
Frozen into a very vinous ice,
Which leaves few drops of that immortal rain,
Yet in the very centre, past all price,
About a liquid glassful will remain;
And this is stronger than the strongest grape
Could e’er express in its expanded shape:
’Tis the whole spirit brought to a quintessence;
And thus the chilliest aspects may concentre
A hidden nectar under a cold presence.
And such are many—though I only meant her
From whom I now deduce these moral lessons,
On which the Muse has always sought to enter.
And your cold people are beyond all price,
When once you have broken their confounded ice.
But after all they are a North-West Passage
Unto the glowing India of the soul;
And as the good ships sent upon that message
Have not exactly ascertain’d the Pole
(Though Parry’s efforts look a lucky presage),
Thus gentlemen may run upon a shoal;
For if the Pole ’s not open, but all frost
(A chance still), ’tis a voyage or vessel lost.
And young beginners may as well commence
With quiet cruising o’er the ocean woman;
While those who are not beginners should have sense
Enough to make for port, ere time shall summon
With his grey signal-flag; and the past tense,
The dreary ‘Fuimus’ of all things human,
Must be declined, while life’s thin thread ’s spun out
Between the gaping heir and gnawing gout.
But heaven must be diverted; its diversion
Is sometimes truculent—but never mind:
The world upon the whole is worth the assertion
(If but for comfort) that all things are kind:
And that same devilish doctrine of the Persian,
Of the two principles, but leaves behind
As many doubts as any other doctrine
Has ever puzzled Faith withal, or yoked her in.
The English winter—ending in July,
To recommence in August—now was done.
’Tis the postilion’s paradise: wheels fly;
On roads, east, south, north, west, there is a run.
But for post-horses who finds sympathy?
Man’s pity ’s for himself, or for his son,
Always premising that said son at college
Has not contracted much more debt than knowledge.
The London winter ’s ended in July—
Sometimes a little later. I don’t err
In this: whatever other blunders lie
Upon my shoulders, here I must aver
My Muse a glass of weatherology;
For parliament is our barometer:
Let radicals its other acts attack,
Its sessions form our only almanack.
When its quicksilver ’s down at zero,—lo
Coach, chariot, luggage, baggage, equipage!
Wheels whirl from Carlton palace to Soho,
And happiest they who horses can engage;
The turnpikes glow with dust; and Rotten Row
Sleeps from the chivalry of this bright age;
And tradesmen, with long bills and longer faces,
Sigh—as the postboys fasten on the traces.
They and their bills, ‘Arcadians both,’ are left
To the Greek kalends of another session.
Alas! to them of ready cash bereft,
What hope remains? Of hope the full possession,
Or generous draft, conceded as a gift,
At a long date—till they can get a fresh one—
Hawk’d about at a discount, small or large;
Also the solace of an overcharge.
But these are trifles. Downward flies my lord,
Nodding beside my lady in his carriage.
Away! away! ‘Fresh horses!’ are the word,
And changed as quickly as hearts after marriage;
The obsequious landlord hath the change restored;
The postboys have no reason to disparage
Their fee; but ere the water’d wheels may hiss hence,
The ostler pleads too for a reminiscence.
’Tis granted; and the valet mounts the dickey—
That gentleman of lords and gentlemen;
Also my lady’s gentlewoman, tricky,
Trick’d out, but modest more than poet’s pen
Can paint,—‘Cosi viaggino i Ricchi!’
(Excuse a foreign slipslop now and then,
If but to show I’ve travell’d; and what ’s travel,
Unless it teaches one to quote and cavil?)
The London winter and the country summer
Were well nigh over. ’Tis perhaps a pity,
When nature wears the gown that doth become her,
To lose those best months in a sweaty city,
And wait until the nightingale grows dumber,
Listening debates not very wise or witty,
Ere patriots their true country can remember;—
But there’s no shooting (save grouse) till September.
I’ve done with my tirade. The world was gone;
The twice two thousand, for whom earth was made,
Were vanish’d to be what they call alone—
That is, with thirty servants for parade,
As many guests, or more; before whom groan
As many covers, duly, daily, laid.
Let none accuse Old England’s hospitality—
Its quantity is but condensed to quality.
Lord Henry and the Lady Adeline
Departed like the rest of their compeers,
The peerage, to a mansion very fine;
The Gothic Babel of a thousand years.
None than themselves could boast a longer line,
Where time through heroes and through beauties steers;
And oaks as olden as their pedigree
Told of their sires, a tomb in every tree.
A paragraph in every paper told
Of their departure: such is modern fame:
’Tis pity that it takes no farther hold
Than an advertisement, or much the same;
When, ere the ink be dry, the sound grows cold.
The Morning Post was foremost to proclaim—
‘Departure, for his country seat, to-day,
Lord H. Amundeville and Lady A.
‘We understand the splendid host intends
To entertain, this autumn, a select
And numerous party of his noble friends;
’Midst whom we have heard, from sources quite correct,
With many more by rank and fashion deck’d;
Also a foreigner of high condition,
The envoy of the secret Russian mission.’
And thus we see—who doubts the Morning Post?
(Whose articles are like the ‘Thirty-nine,’
Which those most swear to who believe them most)—
Our gay Russ Spaniard was ordain’d to shine,
Deck’d by the rays reflected from his host,
With those who, Pope says, ‘greatly daring dine.’
’Tis odd, but true,—last war the News abounded
More with these dinners than the kill’d or wounded;—
As thus: ‘On Thursday there was a grand dinner;
Present, Lords A. B. C.’—Earls, dukes, by name
Announced with no less pomp than victory’s winner:
Then underneath, and in the very same
Column; date, ‘Falmouth. There has lately been here
The Slap-dash regiment, so well known to fame,
Whose loss in the late action we regret:
The vacancies are fill’d up—see Gazette.’
To Norman Abbey whirl’d the noble pair,—
An old, old monastery once, and now
Still older mansion; of a rich and rare
Mix’d Gothic, such as artists all allow
Few specimens yet left us can compare
Withal: it lies perhaps a little low,
Because the monks preferr’d a hill behind,
To shelter their devotion from the wind.
It stood embosom’d in a happy valley,
Crown’d by high woodlands, where the Druid oak
Stood like Caractacus in act to rally
His host, with broad arms ’gainst the thunderstroke;
And from beneath his boughs were seen to sally
The dappled foresters—as day awoke,
The branching stag swept down with all his herd,
To quaff a brook which murmur’d like a bird.
Before the mansion lay a lucid lake,
Broad as transparent, deep, and freshly fed
By a river, which its soften’d way did take
In currents through the calmer water spread
Around: the wildfowl nestled in the brake
And sedges, brooding in their liquid bed:
The woods sloped downwards to its brink, and stood
With their green faces fix’d upon the flood.
Its outlet dash’d into a deep cascade,
Sparkling with foam, until again subsiding,
Its shriller echoes—like an infant made
Quiet—sank into softer ripples, gliding
Into a rivulet; and thus allay’d,
Pursued its course, now gleaming, and now hiding
Its windings through the woods; now clear, now blue,
According as the skies their shadows threw.
A glorious remnant of the Gothic pile
(While yet the church was Rome’s) stood half apart
In a grand arch, which once screen’d many an aisle.
These last had disappear’d—a loss to art:
The first yet frown’d superbly o’er the soil,
And kindled feelings in the roughest heart,
Which mourn’d the power of time’s or tempest’s march,
In gazing on that venerable arch.
Within a niche, nigh to its pinnacle,
Twelve saints had once stood sanctified in stone;
But these had fallen, not when the friars fell,
But in the war which struck Charles from his throne,
When each house was a fortalice, as tell
The annals of full many a line undone,—
The gallant cavaliers, who fought in vain
For those who knew not to resign or reign.
But in a higher niche, alone, but crowned,
The Virgin Mother of the God-born Child,
With her Son in her blessed arms, look’d round,
Spared by some chance when all beside was spoil’d;
She made the earth below seem holy ground.
This may be superstition, weak or wild,
But even the faintest relics of a shrine
Of any worship wake some thoughts divine.
A mighty window, hollow in the centre,
Shorn of its glass of thousand colourings,
Through which the deepen’d glories once could enter,
Streaming from off the sun like seraph’s wings,
Now yawns all desolate: now loud, now fainter,
The gale sweeps through its fretwork, and oft sings
The owl his anthem, where the silenced quire
Lie with their hallelujahs quench’d like fire.
But in the noontide of the moon, and when
The wind is winged from one point of heaven,
There moans a strange unearthly sound, which then
Is musical—a dying accent driven
Through the huge arch, which soars and sinks again.
Some deem it but the distant echo given
Back to the night wind by the waterfall,
And harmonised by the old choral wall:
Others, that some original shape, or form
Shaped by decay perchance, hath given the power
(Though less than that of Memnon’s statue, warm
In Egypt’s rays, to harp at a fix’d hour)
To this grey ruin, with a voice to charm.
Sad, but serene, it sweeps o’er tree or tower;
The cause I know not, nor can solve; but such
The fact:—I’ve heard it—once perhaps too much.
Amidst the court a Gothic fountain play’d,
Symmetrical, but deck’d with carvings quaint—
Strange faces, like to men in masquerade,
And here perhaps a monster, there a saint:
The spring gush’d through grim mouths of granite made,
And sparkled into basins, where it spent