Delphi Poetry Anthology: The World's Greatest Poems (Delphi Poets Series Book 50) (207 page)

CIX

Julia had honour, virtue, truth, and love,
    
For Don Alfonso; and she inly swore,
By all the vows below to powers above,
    
She never would disgrace the ring she wore,
Nor leave a wish which wisdom might reprove;
    
And while she ponder’d this, besides much more,
One hand on Juan’s carelessly was thrown,
Quite by mistake — she thought it was her own;

CX

Unconsciously she lean’d upon the other,
    
Which play’d within the tangles of her hair:
And to contend with thoughts she could not smother
    
She seem’d by the distraction of her air.
‘T was surely very wrong in Juan’s mother
    
To leave together this imprudent pair,
She who for many years had watch’d her son so —
I’m very certain
mine
would not have done so.

CXI

The hand which still held Juan’s, by degrees
    
Gently, but palpably confirm’d its grasp,
As if it said, “Detain me, if you please;”
    
Yet there’s no doubt she only meant to clasp
His fingers with a pure Platonic squeeze:
    
She would have shrunk as from a toad, or asp,
Had she imagined such a thing could rouse
A feeling dangerous to a prudent spouse.

CXII

I cannot know what Juan thought of this,
   
 
But what he did, is much what you would do;
His young lip thank’d it with a grateful kiss,
    
And then, abash’d at its own joy, withdrew
In deep despair, lest he had done amiss, —
    
Love is so very timid when ‘t is new:
She blush’d, and frown’d not, but she strove to speak,
And held her tongue, her voice was grown so weak.

CXIII

The sun set, and up rose the yellow moon:
    
The devil’s in the moon for mischief; they
Who call’d her CHASTE, methinks, began too soon
    
Their nomenclature; there is not a day,
The longest, not the twenty-first of June,
    
Sees half the business in a wicked way
On which three single hours of moonshine smile —
And then she looks so modest all the while.

CXIV

There is a dangerous silence in that hour,
    
A stillness, which leaves room for the full soul
To open all itself, without the power
    
Of calling wholly back its self-control;
The silver light which, hallowing tree and tower,
    
Sheds beauty and deep softness o’er the whole,
Breathes also to the heart, and o’er it throws
A loving languor, which is not repose.

CXV

And Julia sate with Juan, half embraced
    
And half retiring from the glowing arm,
Which trembled like the bosom where ‘t was placed;
    
Yet still she must have thought there was no harm,
Or else ‘t were easy to withdraw her waist;
    
But then the situation had its charm,
And then —— God knows what next — I can’t go on;
I’m almost sorry that I e’er begun.

CXVI

Oh Plato! Plato! you have paved the way,
    
With your confounded fantasies, to more
Immoral conduct by the fancied sway
    
Your system feigns o’er the controulless core
Of human hearts, than all the long array
    
Of poets and romancers: — You’re a bore,
A charlatan, a coxcomb — and have been,
At best, no better than a go-between.

CXVII

And Julia’s voice was lost, except in sighs,
    
Until too late for useful conversation;
The tears were gushing from her gentle eyes,
    
I wish indeed they had not had occasion,
But who, alas! can love, and then be wise?
    
Not that remorse did not oppose temptation;
A little still she strove, and much repented
And whispering “I will ne’er consent” — consented.

CXVIII

‘T is said that Xerxes offer’d a reward
    
To those who could invent him a new pleasure:
Methinks the requisition’s rather hard,
   
 
And must have cost his majesty a treasure:
For my part, I’m a moderate-minded bard,
    
Fond of a little love (which I call leisure);
I care not for new pleasures, as the old
Are quite enough for me, so they but hold.

CXIX

Oh Pleasure! you are indeed a pleasant thing,
    
Although one must be damn’d for you, no doubt:
I make a resolution every spring
    
Of reformation, ere the year run out,
But somehow, this my vestal vow takes wing,
    
Yet still, I trust it may be kept throughout:
I’m very sorry, very much ashamed,
And mean, next winter, to be quite reclaim’d.

CXX

Here my chaste Muse a liberty must take —
    
Start not! still chaster reader — she’ll be nice hence —
Forward, and there is no great cause to quake;
    
This liberty is a poetic licence,
Which some irregularity may make
    
In the design, and as I have a high sense
Of Aristotle and the Rules, ‘t is fit
To beg his pardon when I err a bit.

CXXI

This licence is to hope the reader will
    
Suppose from June the sixth (the fatal day,
Without whose epoch my poetic skill
    
For want of facts would all be thrown away),
But keeping Julia and Don Juan still
    
In sight, that several months have pass’d; we’ll say
‘T was in November, but I’m not so sure
About the day — the era’s more obscure.

CXXII

We’ll talk of that anon.— ‘T is sweet to hear
    
At midnight on the blue and moonlit deep
The song and oar of Adria’s gondolier,
    
By distance mellow’d, o’er the waters sweep;
‘T is sweet to see the evening star appear;
    
‘T is sweet to listen as the night-winds creep
From leaf to leaf; ‘t is sweet to view on high
The rainbow, based on ocean, span the sky.

CXXIII

‘T is sweet to hear the watch-dog’s honest bark
    
Bay deep-mouth’d welcome as we draw near home;
‘T is sweet to know there is an eye will mark
    
Our coming, and look brighter when we come;
‘T is sweet to be awaken’d by the lark,
    
Or lull’d by falling waters; sweet the hum
Of bees, the voice of girls, the song of birds,
The lisp of children, and their earliest words.

CXXIV

Sweet is the vintage, when the showering grapes
    
In Bacchanal profusion reel to earth,
Purple and gushing: sweet are our escapes
    
From civic revelry to rural mirth;
Sweet to the miser are his glittering heaps,
    
Sweet to the father is his first-born’s birth,
Sweet is revenge — especially to women,
Pillage to soldiers, prize-money to seamen.

CXXV

Sweet is a legacy, and passing sweet
    
The unexpected death of some old lady
Or gentleman of seventy years complete,
    
Who’ve made “us youth” wait too — too long already
For an estate, or cash, or country seat,
    
Still breaking, but with stamina so steady
That all the Israelites are fit to mob its
Next owner for their double-damn’d post-obits.

CXXVI

‘T is sweet to win, no matter how, one’s laurels,
 
   
By blood or ink; ‘t is sweet to put an end
To strife; ‘t is sometimes sweet to have our quarrels,
    
Particularly with a tiresome friend:
Sweet is old wine in bottles, ale in barrels;
    
Dear is the helpless creature we defend
Against the world; and dear the schoolboy spot
We ne’er forget, though there we are forgot.

CXXVII

But sweeter still than this, than these, than all,
    
Is first and passionate love — it stands alone,
Like Adam’s recollection of his fall;
    
The tree of knowledge has been pluck’d — all’s known —
And life yields nothing further to recall
    
Worthy of this ambrosial sin, so shown,
No doubt in fable, as the unforgiven
Fire which Prometheus filch’d for us from heaven.

CXXVIII

Man’s a strange animal, and makes strange use
  
  
Of his own nature, and the various arts,
And likes particularly to produce
    
Some new experiment to show his parts;
This is the age of oddities let loose,
    
Where different talents find their different marts;
You’d best begin with truth, and when you’ve lost your
Labour, there’s a sure market for imposture.

CXXIX

What opposite discoveries we have seen!
    
(Signs of true genius, and of empty pockets.)
One makes new noses, one a guillotine,
    
One breaks your bones, one sets them in their sockets;
But vaccination certainly has been
    
A kind antithesis to Congreve’s rockets,
With which the Doctor paid off an old pox,
By borrowing a new one from an ox.

CXXX

Bread has been made (indifferent) from potatoes;
    
And galvanism has set some corpses grinning,
But has not answer’d like the apparatus
    
Of the Humane Society’s beginning
By which men are unsuffocated gratis:
    
What wondrous new machines have late been spinning!
I said the small-pox has gone out of late;
Perhaps it may be follow’d by the great.

CXXXI

‘T is said the great came from America;
    
Perhaps it may set out on its return, —
The population there so spreads, they say
    
‘T is grown high time to thin it in its turn,
With war, or plague, or famine, any way,
    
So that civilisation they may learn;
And which in ravage the more loathsome evil is —
Their real
lues
, or our pseudo-syphilis?

CXXXII

This is the patent-age of new inventions
    
For killing bodies, and for saving souls,
All propagated with the best intentions;
    
Sir Humphry Davy’s lantern, by which coals
Are safely mined for in the mode he mentions,
    
Tombuctoo travels, voyages to the Poles,
Are ways to benefit mankind, as true,
Perhaps, as shooting them at Waterloo.

CXXXIII

Man’s a phenomenon, one knows not what,
    
And wonderful beyond all wondrous measure;
‘T is pity though, in this sublime world, that
    
Pleasure’s a sin, and sometimes sin’s a pleasure;
Few mortals know what end they would be at,
    
But whether glory, power, or love, or treasure,
The path is through perplexing ways, and when
The goal is gain’d, we die, you know — and then —

CXXXIV

What then? — I do not know, no more do you —
    
And so good night. — Return we to our story:
‘T was in November, when fine days are few,
    
And the far mountains wax a little hoary,
And clap a white cape on their mantles blue;
    
And the sea dashes round the promontory,
And the loud breaker boils against the rock,
And sober suns must set at five o’clock.

CXXXV

‘T was, as the watchmen say, a cloudy night;
    
No moon, no stars, the wind was low or loud
By gusts, and many a sparkling hearth was bright
    
With the piled wood, round which the family crowd;
There’s something cheerful in that sort of light,
    
Even as a summer sky’s without a cloud:
I’m fond of fire, and crickets, and all that,
A lobster salad, and champagne, and chat.