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XCIII.

C. All are not moralists like Southey, when

" Pedlars," and "boats," and " wagons!" Oh! ye He prated to the world of “Pantisocracy;" Of Pope and Dryden, are we come to this ? (shades Or Wordsworth unexcised, unhired, who then That trash of such sort not alone evades

Season'd his pedlar poems with democracy; Contempt, but from the bathos' vast abyss Or Coleridge, long before his flighty pen

Floats scum-like uppermost, and these Jack Cades Let to the Morning Post its aristocracy;

Of sense and song above your graves may hiss
When he and Southey, following the same path, The “little boatman " and his “Peter Bell"
Espoused two partners, (milliners of Bath.) Can sneer at him who drew “ Achitophel !"
XCIV.

CI.
Such names at present cut a convict figure, T' our tale.-The feast was over, the slaves gone,

The very Botany Bay in moral geography: The dwarfs and dancing girls had all retired;
Their loyal treason, renegado vigor,

The Arab lore and poet's song were done,
Are good manure for their more bare biography. And every sound of reyelry expired;
Wordsworth's last quarto, by the way, is bigger The lady and her lover, left alone,

Than any since the birthday of typography: The rosy flood of twilight sky admired;-
A clumsy frowzy poem, call'd the “Excursion," Ave Maria! o'er the earth and sea,
Writ in a manner which is

my aversion.

That heavenliest hour of Heaven is worthiest thee! XCV.

CII. He there builds up a formidable dyke

Ave Maria ! blessed be the hour! Between his own and others' intellect;

The time, the clime, the spot, where I so oft But Wordsworth's poem, and his followers, like

Have felt that moment in its fullest power
Joanna Southcote's Shiloh and her sect,

Sink o'er the earth so beautiful and soft,
Are things which in this century don't strike While swung the deep bell in the distant tower,
The public mind, so few are the elect;

Or the faint dying day-hymn stole aloft,
And the new births of both their stale virginities

And not a breath crept through the rosy air, Have proved but dropsies taken for divinities. And yet the forest leaves seem stirr'd with prayer. XCVI.

CIII. But let me to my story: I must own

Ave Maria ! 'tis the hour of prayer ! If I have any fault, it is digression;

Ave Maria! 'tis the hour of love! Leaving my people to proceed alone,

Ave Maria! may our spirits dare While I soliloquize beyond expression;

Look up to thine and to thy Son's above! But these are my addresses from the throne,

Ave Maria! oh that face so fair! Which put off business to the ensuing session:

Those downcast eyes beneath the almighty dore Forgetting each omission is a loss to

What though 'tis but a pictured image strike
The world, not quite so great as Ariosto.

That painting is no idol, 'tis too like.
XCVII.

CIV.
I know that what our neighbors call “ longueurs," Some kind casuists are pleased to say,

In nameless print-that I have no devotion, (We've not so good a word, but have the thing

But set those persons down with me to pray,
In that complete perfection, which ensures
An epic from Bob Southey every spring)

And you shall see who has the properest notion
Form not the true temptation which allures

Of getting into heaven the shortest way;

My altars are the mountains and the ocean,
The reader ; but 'twould not be hard to bring
Some fine examples of the épopée,

Earth, air, stars,-all that springs from the great To prove its grand ingredient is ennui.

whole,

Who hath produced, and will receive the soul.
XCVIII.

Су.
We learn from Horace, Homer sometimes sleeps,

Sweet hour of twilight !-in the solitude
We feel without him, Wordsworth sometimes

Of the pine forest, and the silent shore
To show with what complacency he creeps, (wakes, which bounds Ravenna's immemorial wood,

With his dear “Wagoners,” around his lakes; Rooted where once the Adrian wave flow'd o'er,
He wishes for “a boat” to sail the deeps-

To where the last Cæsarean fortress stood, Of Ocean :-no, of air ; and then he makes

Ever-green forest! which Boccaccio's lore Another outcry for “a little boat,"

And Dryden's lay made haunted ground to me,
And drivels seas to set it well afloat.

How have I loved the twilight hour and thee!
XCIX.

CVI.
Y he must fain sweep o'er the ethereal plain, The shrill cicalas, people of the pine,

And Pegasus runs restive in his “wagon," Making their summer lives one ceaseless song,
Could he not beg the loan of Charles's wain? Were the sole echoes, save my steed's and mine,
Or pray Medea for a single dragon ?

And vesper-bell's that rose the boughs along; Or if, too classic for his vulgar brain,

The spectre huntsman of Onesti's line, He fear'd his neck to venture such a nag on, His hell-dogs, and their chase, and the fair throng, And he must needs mount nearer to the moon, Which learn'd from this example not to fly Could not the blockhead ask for a balloon From a true lover, shadow'd my mind's eye.

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II.

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CVII. Oh Hesperus !5 thou bringest all good things- But time, which brings all beings to their level,

Home to the weary, to the hungry cheer, And sharp adversity, will teach at last To the young bird the parent's brooding wings, Man,-and, as we would hope,-perhaps the devil The welcome stall to the o'erlabor'd steer;

That neither of their intellects are vast: Whate'er of peace about our hearthstone clings, While youth's hot wishes in our red veins revel,

Whate'er our household gods protect of dear, We know not this—the blood flows on too fast; Are gather'd round us by thy look of rest;

But as the torrent widens towards the ocean,
Thou bring'st the child, too, to the mother's breast. We vonder deeply on each past emotion.
CVIII.

III.
Soft hour !6 which wakes the wish and melts the As boy, I thought myself a clever fellow,
Of those who sail the seas, on the first day [heart

And wish'd that others held the same opinion : When they from their sweet friends are torn apart; They took it up when my days grew more mellow, Or fills with love the pilgrim on his way,

And other minds acknowledged my dominion: As the far bell of vesper makes him start, Now my sere fancy “falls into the yellow Seeming to weep the dying day's decay;

Leaf," and imagination droops her pinion, Is this a fancy which our reason scorns ?

And the sad truth which hovers o'er my desk Ah! surely nothing dies but something mourns !

Turns what was once romantic to burlesque.

IV.
When Nero perish'd by the justest doom And if I laugh at any mortal thing,
Which ever the destroyer yet destroy'd

'Tis that I may not weep; and if I weep, Amid the roar of liberated Rome,

'Tis that our nature cannot always bring Of nations freed, and the world overjoy'd,

Itself to apathy, which we must steep Some hands unseen strew'd flowers upon his tomb ;? First in the icy depths of Lethe's spring, Perhaps the weakness of a heart not void

Ere what we least wish to behold will sleep; Of feeling for some kindness done, when power

Thetis baptized her mortal son in Styx; Had left the wretch an uncorrupted hour.

A mortal mother would on Lethe fix. сх.

V. But I'm digressing: what on earth has Nero,

Some have accused me of a strange design Or any such like sovereign buffoons,

Against the creed and morals of the land,
To do with the transactions of my hero, [moon's? And trace it in this poem every line:

More than such madmen's fellow-man-the I don't pretend that I quite understand
Sure my invention must be down at zero,

My own meaning when I would be very fine;
And I grown one of many “wooden spoons"

But the fact is that I have nothing plann'd,
Of verse, (the name with which we Cantabs please Unless it was to be a moment merry,
To dub the last of honors in degrees.)

A novel word in my vocabulary.
CXI.

VI.
I feel this tediousness will never dom

To the kind reader of our sober clime, 'Tis being too epic, and I must cut down

This way of writing will appear exotic; (In copying) this long canto into two:

Pulci was sire of the half-serious rhyme, They'll never find it out, unless I own

Who sung when chivalry was more Quixotic, The fact, excepting some experienced few;

And revell'd in the fancies of the time, [despotis; And then as an improvement 'twill be shown:

True knights, chaste dames, huge giants, kings I'll prove that such the opinion of the critic is, But all these, save the last, being obsolete, From Aristotle passim.-See lointikNS.

I chose a modern subject as more meet.

VII.
How I have treated it, I do not know-

Pertaps no better than they have treated me
Who nave imputed such designs as show,

Not what they saw, but what they wish'd to see ; But if it gives them pleasure, be it so,

This is a liberal age, and thoughts are free:
CANTO IV.

Meantime Apollo plucks me by the ear, .
And tells me to resume my story here.

I.

VIII. NOTHING so difficult as a beginning

Young Juan and his lady-love were left In poesy, unless perhaps the end :

To their own heart's most sweet society; For oftentimes when Pegasus seems winning Even Time the pitiless in sorrow cleft

The race, he sprains a wing, and down we tend, With his rude scythe such gentle bosoms; he Like Lucifer when hurl'd from heaven for sinning; Sigh'd

to behold them of their hours bereft, Our sin the same, and hard as his to mend, Though foe to love; and yet they could not be Being pride, which leads the mind to soar too far, Meant to grow old, but die in happy spring Till our own weakness shows us what we are. Before one charm or hope had taken wing

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IX.

XVI. Their faces were not made for wrinkles, their Moons changing had rollid on, and changeless found

Pure blood to stagnate, their great hearts to fail ; Those their bright rise had lighted to such joys The blank gray was not made to blast their hair, As rarely they beheld throughout their round:

But, like the climes that know nor snow nor hail, And these were not of the vain kind which closs They were all summer : lightning might assail For theirs were buoyant spirits, never bound And shiver them to ashes, but to trail

By the mere senses; and that which destroys A long and snake-like life of dull decay

Most love, possession, unto them appear'd
Was not for them they had too little clay. A thing which each endearment more endear'd.
X.

XVII.
They were alone once more; for them to be Oh beautiful! and rare as beautiful !
Thus was another Eden; they were never

But theirs was love in which the mind delights
Weary, unless when separate: the tree

To lose itself, when the whole world grows dull, Cut from its forest root of years—the river And we are sick of its hack sounds and sights, Damm’d from its fountain-the child from the knee Intrigues, adventures of the common school,

And breast maternal wean'd at once for ever, Its petty passions, marriages, and flights, Would wither less than these two torn apart; Where Hymen's torch but brands one strumpet more Alas! there is no instinct like the heart- Whose husband only knows her not a wh-se. XI.

XVIII. The heart—which may be broken : happy they ! Hard words; harsh truth ; a truth which many knom

Thrice fortunate! who, of that fragile mould, Enough.—The faithful and the fairy pair, The precious porcelain of human clay,

Who never found a single hour too slow, Break with the first fall: they can ne'er behold What was it made them thus exempt from care! The long year link'd with heavy day on day, Young innate feelings all have felt below,

And all which must be borne, and never told; Which perish in the rest, but in them were While life's strange principle will often lie Inherent; what we mortals call romantic, Deepest in those who long the most to die. And always envy, though we deem it frantic. XII.

XIX. Whom the gods love die young,” was sai . of yore, This is in others a factitious state, And many deaths do they escape by this: (more

An opium dream of too much youth and reading, The death of friends, and that which slays even But was in them their nature or their fate; The death of friendship, love, youth, all that is, For Haidee's knowledge was by no means great,

No novels e'er had set their young hearts bleeding, Except mere breath; and since the silent shore Awaits at last even those whom longest miss

And Juan was a boy of saintly breeding, The old archer's shafts, perhaps the early grave

So that there was no reason for their loves,
Which men weep over may be meant to save.

More than for those of nightingales or doves.
XIII.

XX.
Haidee and Juan thought not of the dead; [them :

They gazed upon the sunset; 'tis an hour The heavens, and earth, and air, seem'd made for

Dear unto all, but dearest to their eyes, They found no fault with time, save that he fled;

For it had made them what they were: the power,

Of love had first o'erwhelm'd them from such They saw not in themselves aught to condemn : Each was the other's mirror, and but read

When happiness had been their only dower, (skies, Joy sparkling in their dark eyes like a gem,

And twilight saw them link'd in passion's ties; And knew such brightness was but the reflection

Charm'd with each other, all things charm'd that Of their exchanging glances of affection.

brought

The past still welcome as the present thought
XIV.

XXI.
The gentle pressure, and the thrilling touch,

I know not why, but in that hour to-night, The least glance better understood than words,

Even as they gazed, a sudden tremor came, Which still said all, and ne'er could say too much; And swept, as 'twere, across their hearts' delight, A language, too, but like to that of birds,

Like the wind o'er a harp-string, or a flame, Known but to them, at least appearing such, When one is shook in sound, and one in sight; As but to lovers a true sense affords;

And thus some boding flash'd through either frame, Sweet playful phrases, which would seem absurd

And call'd from Juan's breast a faint low sigh,
To those who have ceased to hear such, or ne'er While one new tear arose in Haidee's eye.
heard :
XV.

XXII.
All these were theirs, for they were children still, That large black prophet eye seem'd to dilate

And children still they should have ever been; And follow far the disappearing sun,
They were not made in the real world to fill As if their last day of a happy date,
A busy character in the dull scene;

With his broad, bright, and dropping orb mere But like two beings born from out a rill,

Juan gazed on her as to ask his fate A nymph and her beloved, all unseen

He felt a grief, but knowing cause for none, To pass their lives in fountains and on flowers, His glance inquired of hers for some excuse And never know the weight of human hours. For feelings causeless, or at least abstruse.

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XXIII.

XXX.
She turn'd to him, and smiled, but in that sort Or as the stirring of a deep clear stream

Which makes not others smile; then turn'd aside ; Within an Alpine hollow, when the wind
Whatever feeling shook her, it seem'd short, Walks over it, was she shaken by the dreain,

And master'd by her wisdom or her pride ; * The mystical usurper of the mind-
When Juan spoke, too-it might be in sport- O'erpowering us to be whate'er may seem
Of this their mutual feeling, she replied

Good to the soul which we no more can bind; “If it should be so,-but-it cannot be- Strange state of being! (for 'tis still to be,) Or I at least shall not survive to see.”

Senseless to feel, and with seal'd eyes to see.
XXIV.

XXXI.
Juan would question further, but she press'd She dream'd of being alone on the seashore,

His lips to hers, and silenced him with this, Chain'd to a rock ; she knew not how, but stir
And then dismiss'd the omen from her breast, She could not from the spot, and the loud roar
Defying augury with that fond kiss ;

Grew, and each wave rose roughly, threatening And no doubt of all method's 'tis the best: And o'er her upper lip they seem’d to pour, [her; Some people prefer wine'tis not amiss :

Until she sobb'd for breath, and soon they were I have tried both; so those who would a part take Foaming o'er her lone head, so fierce and high May choose between the headache and the heart. Each broke to drown her, yet she could not die. ache. XXV.

XXXII. One of the two, according to your choice, Anon-she was released, and then she stray'd Women or wine, you'll have to undergo;

O'er the sharp shingles with her bleeding feet, Both maladies are taxes on our joys:

And stumbled almost every step she made; But which to choose I really hardly know; And something rollid before her in a sheet, And if I had to give a casting voice,

Which she must still pursue howe'er afraid ; For both sides I could many reasons show, 'Twas white and indistinct, nor stopp'd to meet And then decide, without great wrong to either, Her glance nor grasp, for still she gazed and grasp'd, It were much better to have both than neither. And ran, but it escaped her as she clasp'd. XXVI.

XXXIII. Juan and Haidee gazed upon each other,

The dream chang'd: in a care she stood, its walls With swimming looks of speechless tenderness, Were hung with marble icicles; the work Which mix'd all feelings, friend, child, lover, brother, Of ages on its water-fretted halls, [and lurk; All that the best can mingle and express,

Where waves might wash, and seals might breed When two pure hearts are pour'd in one another, Her hair was dripping, and the very balls And love too much, and yet can not love less;

Of her black eyes seem'd turn'd to tears, and murk But almost sanctify the sweet excess

The sharp rocks look'd below each drop they caught, By the immortal wish and power to bless. Which froze to marble as it fell, she thought. XXVII.

XXXIV. Mix'd in each other's arms, and heart in heart,

And wet, and cold, and lifeless at her feet, Why did they not then die ?-they had lived too

Pale as the foam that froth'd on his dead brow, long,

Which she essay'd in vain to clear, (how sweet Should an hour come to bid them breathe apart;

Were once her cares, how idle seem'd they now!) Years could not bring them cruel things or wrong, Lay Juan, nor could aught renew the beat The world was not for them, nor the world's art

Of his quench'd heart; and the sea-dirges low For beings passionate as Sappho's song;

Rang in her sad ears like a mermaid's song, Love was born with them, in them, so intense,

And that brief dream appear'd a life too long. It was their very spirit—not a sense. XXVIII.

XXXV. They should have lived together deep in woods,

And gazing on the dead, she thought his face Unseen as sings the nightingale ; they were

Faded, or alter'd into something new, Unfit to mix in these thick solitudes

Like to her father's features, till each trace

More like and like to Lambro's aspect grew Call'd social, where all vice and hatred are: How lonely every freeborn creature broods !

With all his keen worn look and Grecian grace; The sweetest song-birds nestle in a pair;

And starting, she awoke, and what to view ! The eagle soars alone; the gull and crow

Oh! Powers of Heaven ! what dark eye meets she Flock o'er their carrion, just as mortals do.

"Tis—'tis her father's—fixed upon the pair! [there? XXIX.

XXXVI. Now pillow'd, cheek to cheek, in loving sleep, Then shrieking, she arose, and shrieking fell, Haidee and Juan their siesta took,

With joy and sorrow, hope and fear, to see A gentle slumber, but it was not deep,

Him whom she deem'd a habitant where dwell For ever and anon a something shook

The ocean-buried, risen from death, to be Juan, and shuddering o'er his frame would creep; Perchance the death of one she loved too well;

And Haidee's sweet lips murmur'd like a brook Dear as her father had been to Haidee, A worldless music, and her face so fair

It was a moment of that awful kindStirr'd with her dream as rose-leaves with the air: 'I have seen such—but must not call to mind.