from Canto V

31

Voltaire says “No”: he tells you that Candide
     Found life most tolerable after meals;
He’s wrong—unless man were a pig, indeed,
    Repletion rather adds to what he feels,
Unless he’s drunk, and then no doubt he’s freed
     From his own brain’s oppression while it reels.
Of food I think with Philip’s son, or rather
Ammon’s (ill pleased with one world and one father);

32

I think with Alexander, that the act
     Of eating, with another act or two,
Makes us feel our mortality in fact
    Redoubled; when a roast and a ragout,
And fish, and soup, by some side dishes backed,
     Can give us either pain or pleasure, who
Would pique himself on intellects, whose use
Depends so much upon the gastric juice?

33

The other evening (‘twas on Friday last)—
     This is a fact and no poetic fable—
Just as my great coat was about me cast,
     My hat and gloves still lying on the table,
I heard a shot—’twas eight o’clock scarce past—
     And running out as fast as I was able,
I found the military commandant
Stretched in the street, and able scarce to pant.

34

Poor fellow! for some reason, surely bad,
     They had slain him with five slugs; and left him there
To perish on the pavement: so I had
     Him borne into the house and up the stair,
And stripped, and looked to,—But why should I add
     More circumstances? vain was every care;
The man was gone: in some Italian quarrel
Killed by five bullets from an old gun-barrel.

35

I gazed upon him, for I knew him well;
     And though I have seen many corpses, never
Saw one, whom such an accident befell,
     So calm; though pierced through stomach, heart, and liver,
He seemed to sleep, for you could scarcely tell
     (As he bled inwardly, no hideous river
Of gore divulged the cause) that he was dead:
So as I gazed on him, I thought or said—

36

“Can this be death? then what is life or death?
     Speak!” but he spoke not: “wake!” but still he slept:—
“But yesterday and who had mightier breath?
     A thousand warriors by his word were kept
In awe: he said, as the centurion saith,
    ‘Go,’ and he goeth; ‘come,’ and forth he stepp’d.
The trump and bugle till he spake were dumb—
And now nought left him but the muffled drum.”

37

And they who waited once and worshipped—they
     With their rough faces thronged about the bed
To gaze once more on the commanding clay
     Which for the last though not the first time bled:
And such an end! that he who many a day
     Had faced Napoleon’s foes until they fled,—
The foremost in the charge or in the sally,
Should now be butchered in a civic alley.

38

The scars of his old wounds were near his new,
     Those honourable scars which brought him fame;
And horrid was the contrast to the view—
     But let me quit the theme; as such things claim
Perhaps even more attention than is due
     From me: I gazed (as oft I have gazed the same)
To try if I could wrench aught out of death
Which should confirm, or shake, or make a faith;

39

But it was all a mystery. Here we are,
     And there we go:—but where? five bits of lead,
Or three, or two, or one, send very far!
     And is this blood, then, formed but to be shed?
Can every element our elements mar?
     And air—earth—water—fire live—and we dead?
We, whose minds comprehend all things? No more;
But let us to the story as before.

40

The purchaser of Juan and acquaintance
     Bore off his bargains to a gilded boat,
Embarked himself and them, and off they went thence
     As fast as oars could pull and water float;
They looked like persons being led to sentence,
    Wondering what next, till the caque was brought
Up in a little creek below a wall
O’ertopped with cypresses dark-green and tall.