from Canto I

121

This licence is to hope the reader will
     Suppose from June the sixth (the fatal day,
Without whose epoch my poetic skill
     For want of facts would all be thrown away),
But keeping Julia and Don Juan still
     In sight, that several months have pass’d; we’ll say
‘Twas in November, but I’m not so sure
About the day—the era’s more obscure.

122

We’ll talk of that anon.—’Tis sweet to hear
     At midnight on the blue and moonlit deep
The song and oar of Adria’s gondolier,
     By distance mellow’d, o’er the waters sweep;
‘Tis sweet to see the evening star appear;
    ‘Tis sweet to listen as the nightwinds creep
From leaf to leaf; ‘tis sweet to view on high
The rainbow, based on ocean, span the sky.

123

‘Tis sweet to hear the watchdog’s honest bark
     Bay deep-mouth’d welcome as we draw near home;
‘Tis sweet to know there is an eye will mark
     Our coming, and look brighter when we come;
‘Tis sweet to be awaken’d by the lark,
     Or lull’d by falling waters; sweet the hum
Of bees, the voice of girls, the song of birds,
The lisp of children, and their earliest words.

124

Sweet is the vintage, when the showering grapes
    In Bacchanal profusion reel to earth
Purple and gushing: sweet are our escapes
     From civic revelry to rural mirth;
Sweet to the miser are his glittering heaps,
     Sweet to the father is his first-born’s birth,
Sweet is revenge—especially to women,
Pillage to soldiers, prize-money to seamen.

125

Sweet is a legacy, and passing sweet
     The unexpected death of some old lady
Or gentleman of seventy years complete,
     Who’ve made “us youth” wait too—too long already
For an estate, or cash, or country-seat,
     Still breaking, but with stamina so steady,
That all the Israelites are fit to mob its
Next owner for their double-damn’d post-obits.

126

‘Tis sweet to win, no matter how, one’s laurels
     By blood or ink; ‘tis sweet to put an end
To strife; ‘tis sometimes sweet to have our quarrels,
     Particularly with a tiresome friend;
Sweet is old wine in bottles, ale in barrels;
     Dear is the helpless creature we defend
Against the world; and dear the schoolboy spot
We ne’er forget, though there we are forgot.

127

But sweeter still than this, than these, than all,
     Is first and passionate love—it stands alone,
Like Adam’s recollection of his fall;
     The tree of knowledge has been pluck’d—all’s known—
And life yields nothing further to recall
     Worthy of this ambrosial sin, so shown,
No doubt in fable, as the unforgiven
Fire which Prometheus filch’d for us from heaven.

128

Man’s a strange animal, and makes strange use
     Of his own nature, and the various arts,
And likes particularly to produce
     Some new experiment to show his parts;
This is the age of oddities let loose,
     Where different talents find their different marts;
You’d best begin with truth, and when you’ve lost your
Labour, there’s a sure market for imposture.

129

What opposite discoveries we have seen!
     (Signs of true genius, and of empty pockets.)
One makes new noses, one a guillotine,
     One breaks your bones, one sets them in their sockets;
But vaccination certainly has been
    A kind antithesis to Congreve’s rockets,
With which the Doctor paid off an old pox,
By borrowing a new one from an ox.

130

Bread has been made (indifferent) from potatoes;
    And galvanism has set some corpses grinning,
But has not answer’d like the apparatus
     Of the Humane Society’s beginning,
By which men are unsuffocated gratis:
     What wondrous new machines have late been spinning!
I said the small-pox has gone out of late;
Perhaps it may be follow’d by the great.