Delphi Poetry Anthology: The World's Greatest Poems (Delphi Poets Series Book 50) (206 page)

LXXXII

Fraught with this fine intention, and well fenced
    
In mail of proof — her purity of soul —
She, for the future of her strength convinced.
    
And that her honour was a rock, or mole,
Exceeding sagely from that hour dispensed
    
With any kind of troublesome control;
But whether Julia to the task was equal
Is that which must be mention’d in the sequel.

LXXXIII

Her plan she deem’d both innocent and feasible,
    
And, surely, with a stripling of sixteen
Not scandal’s fangs could fix on much that’s seizable,
    
Or if they did so, satisfied to mean
Nothing but what was good, her breast was peaceable —
    
A quiet conscience makes one so serene!
Christians have burnt each other, quite persuaded
That all the Apostles would have done as they did.

LXXXIV

And if in the mean time her husband died,
    
But Heaven forbid that such a thought should cross
Her brain, though in a dream! (and then she sigh’d)
    
Never could she survive that common loss;
But just suppose that moment should betide,
    
I only say suppose it —
inter nos
.
(This should be
entre nous
, for Julia thought
In French, but then the rhyme would go for naught.)

LXXXV

I only say suppose this supposition:
    
Juan being then grown up to man’s estate
Would fully suit a widow of condition,
    
Even seven years hence it would not be too late;
And in the interim (to pursue this vision)
   
 
The mischief, after all, could not be great,
For he would learn the rudiments of love,
I mean the
seraph
way of those above.

LXXXVI

So much for Julia. Now we’ll turn to Juan.
    
Poor little fellow! he had no idea
Of his own case, and never hit the true one;
    
In feelings quick as Ovid’s Miss Medea,
He puzzled over what he found a new one,
    
But not as yet imagined it could be
Thing quite in course, and not at all alarming,
Which, with a little patience, might grow charming.

LXXXVII

Silent and pensive, idle, restless, slow,
    
His home deserted for the lonely wood,
Tormented with a wound he could not know,
    
His, like all deep grief, plunged in solitude:
I’m fond myself of solitude or so,
    
But then, I beg it may be understood,
By solitude I mean a sultan’s, not
A hermit’s, with a haram for a grot.

LXXXVIII

“Oh Love! in such a wilderness as this,
    
Where transport and security entwine,
Here is the empire of thy perfect bliss,
    
And here thou art a god indeed divine.”
The bard I quote from does not sing amiss,
    
With the exception of the second line,
For that same twining “transport and security”
Are twisted to a phrase of some obscurity.

LXXXIX

The poet meant, no doubt, and thus appeals
    
To the good sense and senses of mankind,
The very thing which every body feels,
    
As all have found on trial, or may find,
That no one likes to be disturb’d at meals
    
Or love. — I won’t say more about “entwined”
Or “transport,” as we knew all that before,
But beg’security’ will bolt the door.

XC

Young Juan wander’d by the glassy brooks,
    
Thinking unutterable things; he threw
Himself at length within the leafy nooks
    
Where the wild branch of the cork forest grew;
There poets find materials for their books,
    
And every now and then we read them through,
So that their plan and prosody are eligible,
Unless, like Wordsworth, they prove unintelligible.

XCI

He, Juan (and not Wordsworth), so pursued
    
His self-communion with his own high soul,
Until his mighty heart, in its great mood,
 
   
Had mitigated part, though not the whole
Of its disease; he did the best he could
    
With things not very subject to control,
And turn’d, without perceiving his condition,
Like Coleridge, into a metaphysician.

XCII

He thought about himself, and the whole earth
    
Of man the wonderful, and of the stars,
And how the deuce they ever could have birth;
    
And then he thought of earthquakes, and of wars,
How many miles the moon might have in girth,
    
Of air-balloons, and of the many bars
To perfect knowledge of the boundless skies; —
And then he thought of Donna Julia’s eyes.

XCIII

In thoughts like these true wisdom may discern
    
Longings sublime, and aspirations high,
Which some are born with, but the most part learn
    
To plague themselves withal, they know not why:
‘T was strange that one so young should thus concern
    
His brain about the action of the sky;
If
you
think ‘t was philosophy that this did,
I can’t help thinking puberty assisted.

XCIV

He pored upon the leaves, and on the flowers,
    
And heard a voice in all the winds; and then
He thought of wood-nymphs and immortal bowers,
    
And how the goddesses came down to men:
He miss’d the pathway, he forgot the hours,
    
And when he look’d upon his watch again,
He found how much old Time had been a winner —
He also found that he had lost his dinner.

XCV

Sometimes he turn’d to gaze upon his book,
    
Boscan, or Garcilasso; — by the wind
Even as the page is rustled while we look,
    
So by the poesy of his own mind
Over the mystic leaf his soul was shook,
    
As if ‘t were one whereon magicians bind
Their spells, and give them to the passing gale,
According to some good old woman’s tale.

XCVI

Thus would he while his lonely hours away
    
Dissatisfied, nor knowing what he wanted;
Nor glowing reverie, nor poet’s lay,
    
Could yield his spirit that for which it panted,
A bosom whereon he his head might lay,
    
And hear the heart beat with the love it granted,
With — several other things, which I forget,
Or which, at least, I need not mention yet.

XCVII

Those lonely walks, and lengthening reveries,
    
Could not escape the gentle Julia’s eyes;
She saw that Juan was not at his ease;
    
But that which chiefly may, and must surprise,
Is, that the Donna Inez did not tease
    
Her only son with question or surmise:
Whether it was she did not see, or would not,
Or, like all very clever people, could not.

XCVIII

This may seem strange, but yet ‘t is very common;
    
For instance — gentlemen, whose ladies take
Leave to o’erstep the written rights of woman,
    
And break the — Which commandment is ‘t they break?
(I have forgot the number, and think no man
    
Should rashly quote, for fear of a mistake.)
I say, when these same gentlemen are jealous,
They make some blunder, which their ladies tell us.

XCIX

A real husband always is suspicious,
    
But still no less suspects in the wrong place,
Jealous of some one who had no such wishes,
    
Or pandering blindly to his own disgrace,
By harbouring some dear friend extremely vicious;
    
The last indeed’s infallibly the case:
And when the spouse and friend are gone off wholly,
He wonders at their vice, and not his folly.

C

Thus parents also are at times short-sighted;
    
Though watchful as the lynx, they ne’er discover,
The while the wicked world beholds delighted,
    
Young Hopeful’s mistress, or Miss Fanny’s lover,
Till some confounded escapade has blighted
    
The plan of twenty years, and all is over;
And then the mother cries, the father swears,
And wonders why the devil he got heirs.

CI

But Inez was so anxious, and so clear
    
Of sight, that I must think, on this occasion,
She had some other motive much more near
    
For leaving Juan to this new temptation;
But what that motive was, I sha’n’t say here;
    
Perhaps to finish Juan’s education,
Perhaps to open Don Alfonso’s eyes,
In case he thought his wife too great a prize.

CII

It was upon a day, a summer’s day; —
    
Summer’s indeed a very dangerous season,
And so is spring about the end of May;
    
The sun, no doubt, is the prevailing reason;
But whatsoe’er the cause is, one may say,
    
And stand convicted of more truth than treason,
That there are months which nature grows more merry in, —
March has its hares, and May must have its heroine.

CIII

‘T was on a summer’s day — the sixth of June: —
    
I like to be particular in dates,
Not only of the age, and year, but moon;
    
They are a sort of post-house, where the Fates
Change horses, making history change its tune,
    
Then spur away o’er empires and o’er states,
Leaving at last not much besides chronology,
Excepting the post-obits of theology.

CIV

‘T was on the sixth of June, about the hour
    
Of half-past six — perhaps still nearer seven —
When Julia sate within as pretty a bower
    
As e’er held houri in that heathenish heaven
Described by Mahomet, and Anacreon Moore,
    
To whom the lyre and laurels have been given,
With all the trophies of triumphant song —
He won them well, and may he wear them long!

CV

She sate, but not alone; I know not well
    
How this same interview had taken place,
And even if I knew, I should not tell —
    
People should hold their tongues in any case;
No matter how or why the thing befell,
    
But there were she and Juan, face to face —
When two such faces are so, ‘t would be wise,
But very difficult, to shut their eyes.

CVI

How beautiful she look’d! her conscious heart
    
Glow’d in her cheek, and yet she felt no wrong.
Oh Love! how perfect is thy mystic art,
    
Strengthening the weak, and trampling on the strong,
How self-deceitful is the sagest part
    
Of mortals whom thy lure hath led along —
The precipice she stood on was immense,
So was her creed in her own innocence.

CVII

She thought of her own strength, and Juan’s youth,
    
And of the folly of all prudish fears,
Victorious virtue, and domestic truth,
    
And then of Don Alfonso’s fifty years:
I wish these last had not occurr’d, in sooth,
    
Because that number rarely much endears,
And through all climes, the snowy and the sunny,
Sounds ill in love, whate’er it may in money.

CVIII

When people say, “I’ve told you
fifty
times,”
    
They mean to scold, and very often do;
When poets say, “I’ve written
fifty
rhymes,”
    
They make you dread that they’ll recite them too;
In gangs of
fifty
, thieves commit their crimes;
    
At
fifty
love for love is rare, ‘t is true,
But then, no doubt, it equally as true is,
A good deal may be bought for
fifty
Louis.