Selected Works of George Gordon, Lord Byron

     LXXV
Wounded and fetter'd, 'cabin'd, cribb'd, confined,'
  Some days and nights elapsed before that he
Could altogether call the past to mind;
  And when he did, he found himself at sea,
Sailing six knots an hour before the wind;
  The shores of Ilion lay beneath their lee--
Another time he might have liked to see 'em,
But now was not much pleased with Cape Sigaeum.

     LXXVI
There, on the green and village-cotted hill, is
  (Flank'd by the Hellespont and by the sea)
Entomb'd the bravest of the brave, Achilles;
  They say so (Bryant says the contrary):
And further downward, tall and towering still, is
  The tumulus--of whom? Heaven knows! 't may be
Patroclus, Ajax, or Protesilaus--
All heroes, who if living still would slay us.

     LXXVII
High barrows, without marble or a name,
  A vast, untill'd, and mountain-skirted plain,
And Ida in the distance, still the same,
  And old Scamander (if 't is he) remain;
The situation seems still form'd for fame--
  A hundred thousand men might fight again
With case; but where I sought for Ilion's walls,
The quiet sheep feeds, and the tortoise crawls;

     LXXVIII
Troops of untended horses; here and there
  Some little hamlets, with new names uncouth;
Some shepherds (unlike Paris) led to stare
  A moment at the European youth
Whom to the spot their school-boy feelings bear;
  A turk, with beads in hand and pipe in mouth,
Extremely taken with his own religion,
Are what I found there--but the devil a Phrygian.

     LXXIX
Don Juan, here permitted to emerge
  From his dull cabin, found himself a slave;
Forlorn, and gazing on the deep blue surge,
  O'ershadow'd there by many a hero's grave;
Weak still with loss of blood, he scarce could urge
  A few brief questions; and the answers gave
No very satisfactory information
About his past or present situation.

     LXXX
He saw some fellow captives, who appear'd
  To be Italians, as they were in fact;
From them, at least, their destiny he heard,
  Which was an odd one; a troop going to act
In Sicily (all singers, duly rear'd
  In their vocation) had not been attack'd
In sailing from Livorno by the pirate,
But sold by the impresario at no high rate.

     LXXXI
By one of these, the buffo of the party,
  Juan was told about their curious case;
For although destined to the Turkish mart, he
  Still kept his spirits up--at least his face;
The little fellow really look'd quite hearty,
  And bore him with some gaiety and grace,
Showing a much more reconciled demeanour,
Than did the prima donna and the tenor.

     LXXXII
In a few words he told their hapless story,
  Saying, 'Our Machiavellian impresario,
Making a signal off some promontory,
  Hail'd a strange brig--Corpo di Caio Mario!
We were transferr'd on board her in a hurry,
  Without a Single scudo of salario;
But if the Sultan has a taste for song,
We will revive our fortunes before long.

     LXXXIII
'The prima donna, though a little old,
  And haggard with a dissipated life,
And subject, when the house is thin, to cold,
  Has some good notes; and then the tenor's wife,
With no great voice, is pleasing to behold;
  Last carnival she made a deal of strife
By carrying off Count Cesare Cicogna
From an old Roman princess at Bologna.

     LXXXIV
'And then there are the dancers; there 's the Nini,
  With more than one profession, gains by all;
Then there 's that laughing slut the Pelegrini,
  She, too, was fortunate last carnival,
And made at least five hundred good zecchini,
  But spends so fast, she has not now a paul;
And then there 's the Grotesca--such a dancer!
Where men have souls or bodies she must answer.

     LXXXV
'As for the figuranti, they are like
  The rest of all that tribe; with here and there
A pretty person, which perhaps may strike,
  The rest are hardly fitted for a fair;
There 's one, though tall and stiffer than a pike,
  Yet has a sentimental kind of air
Which might go far, but she don't dance with vigour;
The more 's the pity, with her face and figure.

     LXXXVI
'As for the men, they are a middling set;
  The musico is but a crack'd old basin,
But being qualified in one way yet,
  May the seraglio do to set his face in,
And as a servant some preferment get;
  His singing I no further trust can place in:
From all the Pope makes yearly 't would perplex
To find three perfect pipes of the third sex.

     LXXXVII
'The tenor's voice is spoilt by affectation,
  And for the bass, the beast can only bellow;
In fact, he had no singing education,
  An ignorant, noteless, timeless, tuneless fellow;
But being the prima donna's near relation,
  Who swore his voice was very rich and mellow,
They hired him, though to hear him you 'd believe
An ass was practising recitative.

     LXXXVIII
''T would not become myself to dwell upon
  My own merits, and though young--I see, Sir--you
Have got a travell'd air, which speaks you one
  To whom the opera is by no means new:
You 've heard of Raucocanti?--I 'm the man;
  The time may come when you may hear me too;
You was not last year at the fair of Lugo,
But next, when I 'm engaged to sing there--do go.

     LXXXIX
'Our baritone I almost had forgot,
  A pretty lad, but bursting with conceit;
With graceful action, science not a jot,
  A voice of no great compass, and not sweet,
He always is complaining of his lot,
  Forsooth, scarce fit for ballads in the street;
In lovers' parts his passion more to breathe,
Having no heart to show, he shows his teeth.'

     XC
Here Raucocanti's eloquent recital
  Was interrupted by the pirate crew,
Who came at stated moments to invite all
  The captives back to their sad berths; each threw
A rueful glance upon the waves (which bright all
  From the blue skies derived a double blue,
Dancing all free and happy in the sun),
And then went down the hatchway one by one.

     XCI
They heard next day--that in the Dardanelles,
  Waiting for his Sublimity's firman,
The most imperative of sovereign spells,
  Which every body does without who can,
More to secure them in their naval cells,
  Lady to lady, well as man to man,
Were to be chain'd and lotted out per couple,
For the slave market of Constantinople.

     XCII
It seems when this allotment was made out,
  There chanced to be an odd male, and odd female,
Who (after some discussion and some doubt,
  If the soprano might be deem'd to be male,
They placed him o'er the women as a scout)
  Were link'd together, and it happen'd the male
Was Juan,--who, an awkward thing at his age,
Pair'd off with a Bacchante blooming visage.

     XCIII
With Raucocanti lucklessly was chain'd
  The tenor; these two hated with a hate
Found only on the stage, and each more pain'd
  With this his tuneful neighbour than his fate;
Sad strife arose, for they were so cross-grain'd,
  Instead of bearing up without debate,
That each pull'd different ways with many an oath,
'Arcades ambo,' id est--blackguards both.

     XCIV
Juan's companion was a Romagnole,
  But bred within the March of old Ancona,
With eyes that look'd into the very soul
  (And other chief points of a 'bella donna'),
Bright--and as black and burning as a coal;
  And through her dear brunette complexion shone
Great wish to please--a most attractive dower,
Especially when added to the power.

     XCV
But all that power was wasted upon him,
  For sorrow o'er each sense held stern command;
Her eye might flash on his, but found it dim;
  And though thus chain'd, as natural her hand
Touch'd his, nor that--nor any handsome limb
  (And she had some not easy to withstand)
Could stir his pulse, or make his faith feel brittle;
Perhaps his recent wounds might help a little.

     XCVI
No matter; we should ne'er too much enquire,
  But facts are facts: no knight could be more true,
And firmer faith no lady-love desire;
  We will omit the proofs, save one or two:
'T is said no one in hand 'can hold a fire
  By thought of frosty Caucasus;' but few,
I really think; yet Juan's then ordeal
Was more triumphant, and not much less real.

     XCVII
Here I might enter on a chaste description,
  Having withstood temptation in my youth,
But hear that several people take exception
  At the first two books having too much truth;
Therefore I 'll make Don Juan leave the ship soon,
  Because the publisher declares, in sooth,
Through needles' eyes it easier for the camel is
To pass, than those two cantos into families.

     XCVIII
'T is all the same to me; I 'm fond of yielding,
  And therefore leave them to the purer page
Of Smollett, Prior, Ariosto, Fielding,
  Who say strange things for so correct an age;
I once had great alacrity in wielding
  My pen, and liked poetic war to wage,
And recollect the time when all this cant
Would have provoked remarks which now it shan't.

     XCIX
As boys love rows, my boyhood liked a squabble;
  But at this hour I wish to part in peace,
Leaving such to the literary rabble:
  Whether my verse's fame be doom'd to cease
While the right hand which wrote it still is able,
  Or of some centuries to take a lease,
The grass upon my grave will grow as long,
And sigh to midnight winds, but not to song.

     C
Of poets who come down to us through distance
  Of time and tongues, the foster-babes of Fame,
Life seems the smallest portion of existence;
  Where twenty ages gather o'er a name,
'T is as a snowball which derives assistance
  From every flake, and yet rolls on the same,
Even till an iceberg it may chance to grow;
But, after all, 't is nothing but cold snow.

     CI
And so great names are nothing more than nominal,
  And love of glory 's but an airy lust,
Too often in its fury overcoming all
  Who would as 't were identify their dust
From out the wide destruction, which, entombing all,
  Leaves nothing till 'the coming of the just'--
Save change: I 've stood upon Achilles' tomb,
And heard Troy doubted; time will doubt of Rome.

     CII
The very generations of the dead
  Are swept away, and tomb inherits tomb,
Until the memory of an age is fled,
  And, buried, sinks beneath its offspring's doom:
Where are the epitaphs our fathers read?
  Save a few glean'd from the sepulchral gloom
Which once-named myriads nameless lie beneath,
And lose their own in universal death.

     CIII
I canter by the spot each afternoon
  Where perish'd in his fame the hero-boy,
Who lived too long for men, but died too soon
  For human vanity, the young De Foix!
A broken pillar, not uncouthly hewn,
  But which neglect is hastening to destroy,
Records Ravenna's carnage on its face,
While weeds and ordure rankle round the base.

     CIV
I pass each day where Dante's bones are laid:
  A little cupola, more neat than solemn,
Protects his dust, but reverence here is paid
  To the bard's tomb, and not the warrior's column.
The time must come, when both alike decay'd,
  The chieftain's trophy, and the poet's volume,
Will sink where lie the songs and wars of earth,
Before Pelides' death, or Homer's birth.

     CV
With human blood that column was cemented,
  With human filth that column is defiled,
As if the peasant's coarse contempt were vented
  To show his loathing of the spot he soil'd:
Thus is the trophy used, and thus lamented
  Should ever be those blood-hounds, from whose wild
Instinct of gore and glory earth has known
Those sufferings Dante saw in hell alone.

     CVI
Yet there will still be bards: though fame is smoke,
  Its fumes are frankincense to human thought;
And the unquiet feelings, which first woke
  Song in the world, will seek what then they sought;
As on the beach the waves at last are broke,
  Thus to their extreme verge the passions brought
Dash into poetry, which is but passion,
Or at least was so ere it grew a fashion.

     CVII
If in the course of such a life as was
  At once adventurous and contemplative,
Men, who partake all passions as they pass,
  Acquire the deep and bitter power to give
Their images again as in a glass,
  And in such colours that they seem to live;
You may do right forbidding them to show 'em,
But spoil (I think) a very pretty poem.

     CVIII
Oh! ye, who make the fortunes of all books!
  Benign Ceruleans of the second sex!
Who advertise new poems by your looks,
  Your 'imprimatur' will ye not annex?
What! must I go to the oblivious cooks,
  Those Cornish plunderers of Parnassian wrecks?
Ah! must I then the only minstrel be,
Proscribed from tasting your Castalian tea!

     CIX
What! can I prove 'a lion' then no more?
  A ball-room bard, a foolscap, hot-press darling?
To bear the compliments of many a bore,
  And sigh, 'I can't get out,' like Yorick's starling;
Why then I 'll swear, as poet Wordy swore
  (Because the world won't read him, always snarling),
That taste is gone, that fame is but a lottery,
Drawn by the blue-coat misses of a coterie.

     CX
Oh! 'darkly, deeply, beautifully blue,'
  As some one somewhere sings about the sky,
And I, ye learned ladies, say of you;
  They say your stockings are so (Heaven knows why,
I have examined few pair of that hue);
  Blue as the garters which serenely lie
Round the Patrician left-legs, which adorn
The festal midnight, and the levee morn.

     CXI
Yet some of you are most seraphic creatures--
  But times are alter'd since, a rhyming lover,
You read my stanzas, and I read your features:
  And--but no matter, all those things are over;
Still I have no dislike to learned natures,
  For sometimes such a world of virtues cover;
I knew one woman of that purple school,
The loveliest, chastest, best, but--quite a fool.

     CXII
Humboldt, 'the first of travellers,' but not
  The last, if late accounts be accurate,
Invented, by some name I have forgot,
  As well as the sublime discovery's date,
An airy instrument, with which he sought
  To ascertain the atmospheric state,
By measuring 'the intensity of blue:'
Oh, Lady Daphne! let me measure you!

     CXIII
But to the narrative:--The vessel bound
  With slaves to sell off in the capital,
After the usual process, might be found
  At anchor under the seraglio wall;
Her cargo, from the plague being safe and sound,
  Were landed in the market, one and all,
And there with Georgians, Russians, and Circassians,
Bought up for different purposes and passions.

     CXIV
Some went off dearly; fifteen hundred dollars
  For one Circassian, a sweet girl, were given,
Warranted virgin; beauty's brightest colours
  Had deck'd her out in all the hues of heaven:
Her sale sent home some disappointed bawlers,
  Who bade on till the hundreds reach'd eleven;
But when the offer went beyond, they knew
'T was for the Sultan, and at once withdrew.

     CXV
Twelve negresses from Nubia brought a price
  Which the West Indian market scarce would bring;
Though Wilberforce, at last, has made it twice
  What 't was ere Abolition; and the thing
Need not seem very wonderful, for vice
  Is always much more splendid than a king:
The virtues, even the most exalted, Charity,
Are saving--vice spares nothing for a rarity.

     CXVI
But for the destiny of this young troop,
  How some were bought by pachas, some by Jews,
How some to burdens were obliged to stoop,
  And others rose to the command of crews
As renegadoes; while in hapless group,
  Hoping no very old vizier might choose,
The females stood, as one by one they pick'd 'em,
To make a mistress, or fourth wife, or victim:

     CXVII
All this must be reserved for further song;
  Also our hero's lot, howe'er unpleasant
(Because this Canto has become too long),
  Must be postponed discreetly for the present;
I 'm sensible redundancy is wrong,
  But could not for the muse of me put less in 't:
And now delay the progress of Don Juan,
Till what is call'd in Ossian the fifth Juan.