Don Juan Part 13

In vain--in vain: strike other chords; Fill high the cup with Samian wine!

Leave battles to the Turkish hordes, And shed the blood of Scio's vine!

Hark! rising to the ign.o.ble call-- How answers each bold Baccha.n.a.l!

You have the Pyrrhic dance as yet, Where is the Pyrrhic phalanx gone?

Of two such lessons, why forget The n.o.bler and the manlier one?

You have the letters Cadmus gave-- Think ye he meant them for a slave?

Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!

We will not think of themes like these!

It made Anacreon's song divine: He served--but served Polycrates-- A tyrant; but our masters then Were still, at least, our countrymen.

The tyrant of the Chersonese Was freedom's best and bravest friend; That tyrant was Miltiades!

O! that the present hour would lend Another despot of the kind!

Such chains as his were sure to bind.

Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!

On Suli's rock, and Parga's sh.o.r.e, Exists the remnant of a line Such as the Doric mothers bore; And there, perhaps, some seed is sown, The Heracleidan blood might own.

Trust not for freedom to the Franks-- They have a king who buys and sells; In native swords, and native ranks, The only hope of courage dwells; But Turkish force, and Latin fraud, Would break your shield, however broad.

Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!

Our virgins dance beneath the shade-- I see their glorious black eyes shine; But gazing on each glowing maid, My own the burning tear-drop laves, To think such b.r.e.a.s.t.s must suckle slaves

Place me on Sunium's marbled steep, Where nothing, save the waves and I, May hear our mutual murmurs sweep; There, swan-like, let me sing and die: A land of slaves shall ne'er be mine-- Dash down yon cup of Samian wine!

Thus sung, or would, or could, or should have sung, The modern Greek, in tolerable verse; If not like Orpheus quite, when Greece was young, Yet in these times he might have done much worse: His strain display'd some feeling--right or wrong; And feeling, in a poet, is the source Of others' feeling; but they are such liars, And take all colours--like the hands of dyers.

But words are things, and a small drop of ink, Falling like dew, upon a thought, produces That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think; 'T is strange, the shortest letter which man uses Instead of speech, may form a lasting link Of ages; to what straits old Time reduces Frail man, when paper--even a rag like this, Survives himself, his tomb, and all that 's his.

And when his bones are dust, his grave a blank, His station, generation, even his nation, Become a thing, or nothing, save to rank In chronological commemoration, Some dull MS. oblivion long has sank, Or graven stone found in a barrack's station In digging the foundation of a closet, May turn his name up, as a rare deposit.

And glory long has made the sages smile; 'T is something, nothing, words, illusion, wind-- Depending more upon the historian's style Than on the name a person leaves behind: Troy owes to Homer what whist owes to Hoyle: The present century was growing blind To the great Marlborough's skill in giving knocks, Until his late life by Archdeacon c.o.xe.

Milton 's the prince of poets--so we say; A little heavy, but no less divine: An independent being in his day-- Learn'd, pious, temperate in love and wine; But, his life falling into Johnson's way, We 're told this great high priest of all the Nine Was whipt at college--a harsh sire--odd spouse, For the first Mrs. Milton left his house.

All these are, certes, entertaining facts, Like Shakspeare's stealing deer, Lord Bacon's bribes; Like t.i.tus' youth, and Caesar's earliest acts; Like Burns (whom Doctor Currie well describes); Like Cromwell's pranks;--but although truth exacts These amiable descriptions from the scribes, As most essential to their hero's story, They do not much contribute to his glory.

All are not moralists, like Southey, when He prated to the world of 'Pantisocracy;'

Or Wordsworth unexcised, unhired, who then Season'd his pedlar poems with democracy; Or Coleridge, long before his flighty pen Let to the Morning Post its aristocracy; When he and Southey, following the same path, Espoused two partners (milliners of Bath).

Such names at present cut a convict figure, The very Botany Bay in moral geography; Their loyal treason, renegado rigour, Are good manure for their more bare biography.

Wordsworth's last quarto, by the way, is bigger Than any since the birthday of typography; A drowsy frowzy poem, call'd the 'Excursion.'

Writ in a manner which is my aversion.

He there builds up a formidable d.y.k.e Between his own and others' intellect; But Wordsworth's poem, and his followers, like Joanna Southcote's Shiloh, and her sect, Are things which in this century don't strike The public mind,--so few are the elect; And the new births of both their stale virginities Have proved but dropsies, taken for divinities.

But let me to my story: I must own, If I have any fault, it is digression-- Leaving my people to proceed alone, While I soliloquize beyond expression; But these are my addresses from the throne, Which put off business to the ensuing session: Forgetting each omission is a loss to The world, not quite so great as Ariosto.

I know that what our neighbours call 'longueurs'

(We 've not so good a word, but have the thing In that complete perfection which ensures An epic from Bob Southey every spring), Form not the true temptation which allures The reader; but 't would not be hard to bring Some fine examples of the epopee, To prove its grand ingredient is ennui.

We learn from Horace, 'Homer sometimes sleeps;'

We feel without him, Wordsworth sometimes wakes,-- To show with what complacency he creeps, With his dear 'Waggoners,' around his lakes.

He wishes for 'a boat' to sail the deeps-- Of ocean?--No, of air; and then he makes Another outcry for 'a little boat,'

And drivels seas to set it well afloat.

If he must fain sweep o'er the ethereal plain, And Pegasus runs restive in his 'Waggon,'

Could he not beg the loan of Charles's Wain?

Or pray Medea for a single dragon?

Or if, too cla.s.sic for his vulgar brain, He fear'd his neck to venture such a nag on, And he must needs mount nearer to the moon, Could not the blockhead ask for a balloon?

'Pedlars,' and 'Boats,' and 'Waggons!' Oh! ye shades Of Pope and Dryden, are we come to this?

That trash of such sort not alone evades Contempt, but from the bathos' vast abyss Floats sc.u.mlike uppermost, and these Jack Cades Of sense and song above your graves may hiss-- The 'little boatman' and his 'Peter Bell'

Can sneer at him who drew 'Achitophel'!

T' our tale.--The feast was over, the slaves gone, The dwarfs and dancing girls had all retired; The Arab lore and poet's song were done, And every sound of revelry expired; The lady and her lover, left alone, The rosy flood of twilight's sky admired;-- Ave Maria! o'er the earth and sea, That heavenliest hour of Heaven is worthiest thee!

Ave Maria! blessed be the hour!

The time, the clime, the spot, where I so oft Have felt that moment in its fullest power Sink o'er the earth so beautiful and soft, While swung the deep bell in the distant tower, Or the faint dying day-hymn stole aloft, And not a breath crept through the rosy air, And yet the forest leaves seem'd stirr'd with prayer.

Ave Maria! 't is the hour of prayer!

Ave Maria! 't is the hour of love!

Ave Maria! may our spirits dare Look up to thine and to thy Son's above!

Ave Maria! oh that face so fair!

Those downcast eyes beneath the Almighty dove-- What though 't is but a pictured image?--strike-- That painting is no idol,--'t is too like.

Some kinder casuists are pleased to say, In nameless print--that I have no devotion; But set those persons down with me to pray, And you shall see who has the properest notion Of getting into heaven the shortest way; My altars are the mountains and the ocean, Earth, air, stars,--all that springs from the great Whole, Who hath produced, and will receive the soul.

Sweet hour of twilight!--in the solitude Of the pine forest, and the silent sh.o.r.e Which bounds Ravenna's immemorial wood, Rooted where once the Adrian wave flow'd o'er, To where the last Caesarean fortress stood, Evergreen forest! which Boccaccio's lore And Dryden's lay made haunted ground to me, How have I loved the twilight hour and thee!

The shrill cicadas, people of the pine, Making their summer lives one ceaseless song, Were the sole echoes, save my steed's and mine, And vesper bell's that rose the boughs along; The spectre huntsman of Onesti's line, His h.e.l.l-dogs, and their chase, and the fair throng Which learn'd from this example not to fly From a true lover,--shadow'd my mind's eye.

O, Hesperus! thou bringest all good things-- Home to the weary, to the hungry cheer, To the young bird the parent's brooding wings, The welcome stall to the o'erlabour'd steer; Whate'er of peace about our hearthstone clings, Whate'er our household G.o.ds protect of dear, Are gather'd round us by thy look of rest; Thou bring'st the child, too, to the mother's breast.

Soft hour! which wakes the wish and melts the heart Of those who sail the seas, on the first day When they from their sweet friends are torn apart; Or fills with love the pilgrim on his way As the far bell of vesper makes him start, Seeming to weep the dying day's decay; Is this a fancy which our reason scorns?

Ah! surely nothing dies but something mourns!

When Nero perish'd by the justest doom Which ever the destroyer yet destroy'd, Amidst the roar of liberated Rome, Of nations freed, and the world overjoy'd, Some hands unseen strew'd flowers upon his tomb: Perhaps the weakness of a heart not void Of feeling for some kindness done, when power Had left the wretch an uncorrupted hour.

But I 'm digressing; what on earth has Nero, Or any such like sovereign buffoons, To do with the transactions of my hero, More than such madmen's fellow man--the moon's?

Sure my invention must be down at zero, And I grown one of many 'wooden spoons'

Of verse (the name with which we Cantabs please To dub the last of honours in degrees).

I feel this tediousness will never do-- 'T is being too epic, and I must cut down (In copying) this long canto into two; They 'll never find it out, unless I own The fact, excepting some experienced few; And then as an improvement 't will be shown: I 'll prove that such the opinion of the critic is From Aristotle pa.s.sim.--See poietikes.

CANTO THE FOURTH.