Delphi Poetry Anthology: The World's Greatest Poems (Delphi Poets Series Book 50) (204 page)

XXVIII

She kept a journal, where his faults were noted,
 
   
And open’d certain trunks of books and letters,
All which might, if occasion served, be quoted;
    
And then she had all Seville for abettors,
Besides her good old grandmother (who doted);
    
The hearers of her case became repeaters,
Then advocates, inquisitors, and judges,
Some for amusement, others for old grudges.

XXIX

And then this best and weakest woman bore
    
With such serenity her husband’s woes,
Just as the Spartan ladies did of yore,
    
Who saw their spouses kill’d, and nobly chose
Never to say a word about them more —
    
Calmly she heard each calumny that rose,
And saw
his
agonies with such sublimity,
That all the world exclaim’d, “What magnanimity!”

XXX

No doubt this patience, when the world is damning us,
    
Is philosophic in our former friends;
‘T is also pleasant to be deem’d magnanimous,
    
The more so in obtaining our own ends;
And what the lawyers call a “
malus animus
”
    
Conduct like this by no means comprehends;
Revenge in person’s certainly no virtue,
But then ‘t is not
my
fault, if
others
hurt you.

XXXI

And if your quarrels should rip up old stories,
    
And help them with a lie or two additional,
I
’m not to blame, as you well know — no more is
    
Any one else — they were become traditional;
Besides, their resurrection aids our glories
    
By contrast, which is what we just were wishing all:
And science profits by this resurrection —
Dead scandals form good subjects for dissection.

XXXII

Their friends had tried at reconciliation,
    
Then their relations, who made matters worse.
(‘T were hard to tell upon a like occasion
    
To whom it may be best to have recourse —
I can’t say much for friend or yet relation):
    
The lawyers did their utmost for divorce,
But scarce a fee was paid on either side
Before, unluckily, Don Jóse died.

XXXIII

He died: and most unluckily, because,
    
According to all hints I could collect
From counsel learnéd in those kinds of laws
    
(Although their talk’s obscure and circumspect),
His death contrived to spoil a charming cause;
  
  
A thousand pities also with respect
To public feeling, which on this occasion
Was manifested in a great sensation.

XXXIV

But, ah! he died; and buried with him lay
    
The public feeling and the lawyers’ fees:
His house was sold, his servants sent away,
    
A Jew took one of his two mistresses,
A priest the other — at least so they say:
    
I ask’d the doctors after his disease —
He died of the slow fever call’d the tertian,
And left his widow to her own aversion.

XXXV

Yet Jóse was an honourable man,
 
   
That I must say who knew him very well;
Therefore his frailties I’ll no further scan
    
Indeed there were not many more to tell;
And if his passions now and then outran
    
Discretion, and were not so peaceable
As Numa’s (who was also named Pompilius),
He had been ill brought up, and was born bilious.

XXXVI

Whate’er might be his worthlessness or worth,
    
Poor fellow! he had many things to wound him.
Let’s own — since it can do no good on earth —
    
It was a trying moment that which found him
Standing alone beside his desolate hearth,
    
Where all his household gods lay shiver’d round him:
No choice was left his feelings or his pride,
Save death or Doctors’ Commons — so he died.

XXXVII

Dying intestate, Juan was sole heir
    
To a chancery suit, and messuages, and lands,
Which, with a long minority and care,
    
Promised to turn out well in proper hands:
Inez became sole guardian, which was fair,
    
And answer’d but to nature’s just demands;
An only son left with an only mother
Is brought up much more wisely than another.

XXXVIII

Sagest of women, even of widows, she
    
Resolved that Juan should be quite a paragon,
And worthy of the noblest pedigree
    
(His sire was of Castile, his dam from Aragon):
Then for accomplishments of chivalry,
  
  
In case our lord the king should go to war again,
He learn’d the arts of riding, fencing, gunnery,
And how to scale a fortress — or a nunnery.

XXXIX

But that which Donna Inez most desired,
    
And saw into herself each day before all
The learnéd tutors whom for him she hired,
    
Was, that his breeding should be strictly moral;
Much into all his studies she inquired,
    
And so they were submitted first to her, all,
Arts, sciences, no branch was made a mystery
To Juan’s eyes, excepting natural history.

XL

The languages, especially the dead,
    
The sciences, and most of all the abstruse,
The arts, at least all such as could be said
    
To be the most remote from common use,
In all these he was much and deeply read;
    
But not a page of any thing that’s loose,
Or hints continuation of the species,
Was ever suffer’d, lest he should grow vicious.

XLI

His classic studies made a little puzzle,
    
Because of filthy loves of gods and goddesses,
Who in the earlier ages raised a bustle,
    
But never put on pantaloons or bodices;
His reverend tutors had at times a tussle,
    
And for their
Æneids
,
Iliads
, and
Odysseys
,
Were forced to make an odd sort of apology,
For Donna Inez dreaded the Mythology.

XLII

Ovid’s a rake, as half his verses show him,
    
Anacreon’s morals are a still worse sample,
Catullus scarcely has a decent poem,
    
I don’t think Sappho’s
Ode
a good example,
Although Longinus tells us there is no hymn
    
Where the sublime soars forth on wings more ample:
But Virgil’s songs are pure, except that horrid one
Beginning with “
Formosum Pastor Corydon
.”

XLIII

Lucretius’ irreligion is too strong,
    
For early stomachs, to prove wholesome food;
I can’t help thinking Juvenal was wrong,
    
Although no doubt his real intent was good,
For speaking out so plainly in his song,
    
So much indeed as to be downright rude;
And then what proper person can be partial
To all those nauseous epigrams of Martial?

XLIV

Juan was taught from out the best edition,
    
Expurgated by learnéd men, who place
Judiciously, from out the schoolboy’s vision,
    
The grosser parts; but, fearful to deface
Too much their modest bard by this omission,
    
And pitying sore his mutilated case,
They only add them all in an appendix,
Which saves, in fact, the trouble of an index;

XLV

For there we have them all “at one fell swoop,”
    
Instead of being scatter’d through the Pages;
They stand forth marshall’d in a handsome troop,
    
To meet the ingenuous youth of future ages,
Till some less rigid editor shall stoop
    
To call them back into their separate cages,
Instead of standing staring all together,
Like garden gods — and not so decent either.

XLVI

The Missal too (it was the family Missal)
    
Was ornamented in a sort of way
Which ancient mass-books often are, and this all
    
Kinds of grotesques illumined; and how they,
Who saw those figures on the margin kiss all,
    
Could turn their optics to the text and pray,
Is more than I know — But Don Juan’s mother
Kept this herself, and gave her son another.

XLVII

Sermons he read, and lectures he endured,
    
And homilies, and lives of all the saints;
To Jerome and to Chrysostom inured,
    
He did not take such studies for restraints;
But how faith is acquired, and then ensured,
    
So well not one of the aforesaid paints
As Saint Augustine in his fine Confessions,
Which make the reader envy his transgressions.

XLVIII

This, too, was a seal’d book to little Juan —
    
I can’t but say that his mamma was right,
If such an education was the true one.
    
She scarcely trusted him from out her sight;
Her maids were old, and if she took a new one,
    
You might be sure she was a perfect fright;
She did this during even her husband’s life —
I recommend as much to every wife.

XLIX

Young Juan wax’d in goodliness and grace;
   
 
At six a charming child, and at eleven
With all the promise of as fine a face
    
As e’er to man’s maturer growth was given:
He studied steadily, and grew apace,
    
And seem’d, at least, in the right road to heaven,
For half his days were pass’d at church, the other
Between his tutors, confessor, and mother.

L

At six, I said, he was a charming child,
    
At twelve he was a fine, but quiet boy;
Although in infancy a little wild,
    
They tamed him down amongst them: to destroy
His natural spirit not in vain they toil’d,
    
At least it seem’d so; and his mother’s joy
Was to declare how sage, and still, and steady,
Her young philosopher was grown already.

LI

I had my doubts, perhaps I have them still,
    
But what I say is neither here nor there:
I knew his father well, and have some skill
    
In character — but it would not be fair
From sire to son to augur good or ill:
    
He and his wife were an ill-sorted pair —
But scandal’s my aversion — I protest
Against all evil speaking, even in jest.

LII

For my part I say nothing — nothing — but
    
This
I will say — my reasons are my own —
That if I had an only son to put
    
To school (as God be praised that I have none),
‘T is not with Donna Inez I would shut
    
Him up to learn his catechism alone,
No — no — I’d send him out betimes to college,
For there it was I pick’d up my own knowledge.

LIII

For there one learns— ‘t is not for me to boast,
    
Though I acquired — but I pass over that,
As well as all the Greek I since have lost:
    
I say that there’s the place — but
Verbum sat
.
I think I pick’d up too, as well as most,
    
Knowledge of matters — but no matter
what
—
I never married — but, I think, I know
That sons should not be educated so.

LIV

Young Juan now was sixteen years of age,
    
Tall, handsome, slender, but well knit: he seem’d
Active, though not so sprightly, as a page;
    
And everybody but his mother deem’d
Him almost man; but she flew in a rage
    
And bit her lips (for else she might have scream’d)
If any said so, for to be precocious
Was in her eyes a thing the most atrocious.