“ Eat, drink, and love; what can the rest avail us ?' So said the royal sage Sardanapalus. But Juan ! had he quite forgotten Julia ? And should he have forgotten her so soon ? I can't but say it seems to me most truly a Perplexing question ; but, no doubt, the moon) Does these things for us, and whenever newly a Strong palpitation rises, 't is her boon, Else how the devil is it that fresh fea tures Have such a charm for us poor human creatures ? I hate inconstancy-I loathe, detest, Abhor, condemn, abjure the mortal made Of such quicksilver clay that in his breast No permanent foundation can be laid ; Love, constant love, has been my con stant guest, And yet last night, being at a masque rade, I saw the prettiest creature, fresh from Milan, Which gave me some sensations like a villain. The heart is like the sky, a part of heaven, But changes night and day, too, like the sky ; Now o'er it clouds and thunder must be driven, And darkness and destruction as on higlı: But when it hath been scorch'd, and pierced, and riven, Its storms expire in water-drops; the eye Pours forth at last the heart's blood turn'd to tears, Which make the English climate of our years. But soon Philosophy came to my aid, And whisperid, “Think of every sacred tie!" “I will, my dear Philosophy!” I said, ! But then her teeth, and then, oh, Heaven ! ler eye! I'll just inquire if she be wife or maid, Or neither-out of curiosity." “Stop!” cried Philosophy, with air so Grecian (Though she was misqued then as a fair Venetian); “Stop!" so I stopp'd.-But to return : that which Men call inconstancy is nothing more Than admiration due where nature's rich Profusion with young beauty covers o'er Some favor'd object; and as in the niche A lo statue we almost adore, " beau ideal." 9 Two hundred and odd stanzas as before, That being about the number I'll allow E: chi canto of the twelve, or twenty four ; And, laying down my pen, I make my bow, Leaving Don Juan and Haidée to plead For them and theirs with all who deign to read. Canto II., December, 1818, January, 1819. July 15, 1819. FROM CANTO III THE ISLES OF GREECE a Must we but weep o'er days more blest ? Must we bút blush ?--Our fathers bled. Earth ! render back from out thy breast A remnant of our Spartan dead! Of the three hundred grant but three, To make a new Thermopylæ ! What, silent still ? and silent all ? Ah! no ;--the voices of the dead Sound like a distant torrent's fall, And answer, “Let one living head, But one arise, --we come, we come!” 'Tis but the living who are dumb. In vain--in vain : strike other chords ; Fill high the cup with Sainian wine ! Leave battles to the Turkish hordes, And shed the blood of Scio's vine ! Hark! rising to the ignoble call--How answers each bold Bacchanal ! You have the Pyrrhic dance as yet ; Where is the Pyrrhic phalaux gone ? Of two such lessons, why forget The nobler and the manlier one ? You have the letters Cadmus gare-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 PolycratesA 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 ! Oh ! 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 shore, 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, The isles of Greece, the isles of Greece ! Where burning Sappho loved and sung, Where grew the arts of war and peace, Where Delos rose, and Phoebus sprung! Eternal summer gilds them yet, But all, except their sun, is set. The Scian and the Teian muse, The hero's harp, the lover's lute, Have found the fame your shores refuse: Their place of birth alone is mute To sounds which echid further west Than your sires' “ Islands of the Blest.” The mountains look on Marathon And Marathon looks on the sea ; free ; Which looks o'er sea-born Salamis; And men in nations ;--all were lis! He counted them at break of dayAnd when the sun set, where were they? And where are they? and where art thou, My country ? On thy voiceless shore The heroic lay is tuneless now The heroic bosom beats no more ! And must tlıy lyre, so long divine, Degenerate into hands like mine! 'Tis something, in the dearth of fame, Though link'd among a fetter'd race, To feel at least a patriot's shame, Even as I sing, suffuse my face ; For what is left the poet here? For Greeks a blush-for Greece a tear. My own the burning tear-drop laves, Than on the name a person leaves To think such breasts must suckle slaves. behind : Troy owes to Homer what whist owes to Place me on Sunium's marbled steep, Hoyle; Where nothing, save the waves and I, The present century was growing blind May hear our mutual murmurs sweep; To the great Marlborough's skill in givThere, swan-like, let me sing and die : ing kuocks, A land of slaves shall ne'er be mine- Until his late Life by Archdeacon Coxe. Dash down yon cup of Samian wine! Milton's the prince of poets-so we say ; Thus sung, or would, or could, or should A little heavy, but no less divine : have sung, St. 87 An independent being in his day-The modern Greek, in tolerable verse ; Learn'd, pious, temperate in love and If not like Orpheus quite, when Greece wine; was young, But his life falling into Johnson's way, Yet in these times he might have done We're told this great high priest of all much worse : the Nine His strain display'd some feeling-right Was whipt at college a harsh sireor wrong; odd spouse, And feeling, in a poet, is the source For the first Mrs. Milton left his house, Of others' feeling ; but they are such liars, All these are, certes, entertaining facts, And take all colors-like the hands of Like Shakspeare's stealing deer, Lord dyers. Bacon's bribes ; Like Titus' youth, and Cæsar's earliest But words are things, and a small drop acts; of ink, Like Burns (whom Doctor Currie well Falling like dew, upon a thought, pro describes) ; duces Like Cromwell's pranks ;--but although That which makes thousands, perhaps truth exacts millions, think; These amiable descriptions from the "Tis strange, the shortest letter which scribes, man uses As most essential to their hero's story, Instead of speech, may form a lasting They do not much contribute to his glory. link Of ages ; to what straits old Time re- All are not moralists, like Southey, when duces He prated to the world of “PantisFrail man when paper-even a rag like ocrasy : this, Or Wordsworth unexcised, unhired, who Survives himself, his tomb, and all that's then his ! Season'd his pedlar poems with de mocracy ; And when his bones are dust, his grave Or Coleridge, long before his flighty per. a blank, Let to the Morning Post its arisHis station, generation, even bis na- tocracy ; tion, When he and Southey, following the Become a thing, or nothing, save to rank same path, In chronological commemoration, Espoused two partners (milliners of Some dull MS. oblivion long has sank, Bath). Or graven stone found in a barrack's station Such names at present cut a convict In digging the foundation of a closet, figure, May turn his name up, as a rare deposit. The very Botany Bay in moral geo graphy ; And glory long has made the sages smile ; Their royal treason, renegado rigor, 'Tis something, nothing, words, Are good manure for their more bare usion wind biography. Depending more upon the historian's Wordsworth's last quarto, by the way, style is bigger a Another outcry for “ a little boat," And drivels seas to set it well afloat. Than any since the birthday of typo graphy ; A drowsy frowzy poem, call’d the “ Ex cursion," Writ in a manner which is my aversion. 66 He there builds up a formidable dyke Between his own and others' intel lect; But Wordsworth's poem, and his fol lowers, like Joanna Southcote's Shilob, 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. If he must fain sweep o'er the ethereal plain, And Pegasus runs restive in his Wagon," Could he not beg the loan of Charles's Wain? Or pray Medea for a single dragon ? Or if, too classic for his vulgar brain, He feard his neck to venture such a nag on, And he must needs mount nearer to the moon. Could not the blockhead ask for a bal loon ? “Pedlars,” and “Boats," and “Wag ons!” 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 scumlike uppermost, and these Jack Cades may hiss The little boatman " and his “ Peter Bell ” Can sneer at him who drew “Achito phel ! ” a 66 sures 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 neighbors call " longueurs," (We've not so good a word, but have the thing, In that complete perfection which inAn 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 epopée, To prove its grand ingredient is ennui. We learn from Horace, " Homer some times sleeps ; We feel without him, Wordsworth sometimes wakes,To show with what complacency le creeps, With his dear " Wagoners," around his lakes. He wishes for "a boat" to sail the deeps Of ocean ?-No, of air; and then he makes Tour 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 ad mired ; Ave Maria ! o'er the earth and sea, That heavenliest hour of Heaven is worthiest thee! Ave Maria ! blessed be the hour! 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 leares 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 Al nighty doveWhat 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 de votion; But set those persons down with me to pray, And you shall see who has the proper est 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. From a true lover,--shadow'd my mind's eye. Oh, Hesperus! thou bringest all good thingsHome to the weary, to the hungry cheer, To the young bird the parent's brooding wings, The welcome stall to the o'erlabor'd steer; Whate'er of peace about our hearthstone clings, Whate'er our household gods 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 Whichever the destroyer yet destroy'd, Amidst the roar of liberated Rome, Of nations freed, and the world over joy'd, Some hands uuseen 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 Can tabs please To dub the last of honors in degrees). Sweet hour of twilight !-in the solitude Of the pine forest, and the silent shore Which bounds Ravenna's iminemorial wood, Rooted where once the Adrian wave flow'd o'er, To where the last Cæsarean 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 cicalas, people of the pine, Making their summer lives one cease less 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 hell-dogs, and their chase, and the fair throng Which learn’d from this example not to fly |
