from Canto V

51

And giving up all notions of resistance,
     They followed close behind their sable guide,
Who little thought that his own cracked existence
     Was on the point of being set aside:
He motioned them to stop at some small distance,
     And knocking at the gate, ‘twas opened wide,
And a magnificent large hall displayed
The Asian pomp of Ottoman parade.

52

I won’t describe; description is my forte,
     But every fool describes in these bright days
His wond’rous journey to some foreign court,
     And spawns his quarto, and demands your praise—
Death to his publisher, to him ‘tis sport;
     While Nature, tortured twenty thousand ways,
Resigns herself with exemplary patience
To guide-books, rhymes, tours, sketches, illustrations.

53

Along this hall, and up and down, some, squatted
     Upon their hams, were occupied at chess;
Others in monosyllable talk chatted,
     And some seemed much in love with their own dress,
And divers smoked superb pipes decorated
     With amber mouths of greater price or less;
And several strutted, others slept, and some
Prepared for supper with a glass of rum.

54

As the black eunuch entered with his brace
     Of purchased Infidels, some raised their eyes
A moment without slackening from their pace;
     But those who sate, ne’er stirred in any wise:
One or two stared the captives in the face,
     Just as one views a horse to guess his price;
Some nodded to the negro from their station,
But no one troubled him with conversation.

55

He leads them through the hall, and, without stopping,
     On through a farther range of goodly rooms,
Splendid but silent, save in one, where, dropping,
    A marble fountain echoes through the glooms
Of night, which robe the chamber, or where popping
     Some female head most curiously presumes
To thrust its black eyes through the door or lattice,
As wondering what the devil noise that is.

56

Some faint lamps gleaming from the lofty walls
     Gave light enough to hint their farther way,
But not enough to show the imperial halls
     In all the flashing of their full array;
Perhaps there’s nothing—I’ll not say appals,
     But saddens more by night as well as day,
Than an enormous room without a soul
To break the lifeless splendor of the whole.

57

Two or three seem so little, one seems nothing:
     In deserts, forests, crowds, or by the shore,
There solitude, we know, has her full growth in
     The spots which were her realms for evermore;
But in a mighty hall or gallery, both in
     More modern buildings and those built of yore,
A kind of death comes o’er us all alone
Seeing what’s meant for many with but one.

58

A neat, snug study on a winter’s night,
     A book, friend, single lady, or a glass
Of claret, sandwich, and an appetite,
     Are things which make an English evening pass;
Though certes by no means so grand a sight
     As is a theatre lit up by gas.
I pass my evenings in long galleries solely,
And that’s the reason I’m so melancholy.

59

Alas! man makes that great which makes him little:
     I grant you in a church ‘tis very well:
What speaks of Heaven should by no means be brittle,
     But strong and lasting, till no tongue can tell
Their names who reared it; but huge houses fit ill—
     And huge tombs worse—mankind, since Adam fell:
Methinks the story of the tower of Babel
Might teach them this much better than I’m able.

60

Babel was Nimrod’s hunting-box, and then
     A town of gardens, walls, and wealth amazing,
Where Nabuchadonosor, king of men,
     Reign’d, till one summer’s day he took to grazing,
And Daniel tamed the lions in their den,
     The people’s awe and admiration raising;
‘Twas famous, too, for Thisbe and for Pyramus,
And the calumniated Queen Semiramis.—