from Canto X

21

Don Juan grew a very polished Russian—
     How we won’t mention, why we need not say:
Few youthful minds can stand the strong concussion
     Of any slight temptation in their way:
But his just now were spread as is a cushion
     Smoothed for a monarch’s seat of honour: gay
Damsels, and dances, revels, ready money,
Made ice seem Paradise, and winter sunny.

22

The favour of the Empress was agreeable;
     And though the duty waxed a little hard,
Young people at his time of life should be able
     To come off handsomely in that regard.
He now was growing up like a green tree, able
     For love, war, or ambition, which reward
Their luckier votaries, till old Age’s tedium
Make some prefer the circulating medium.

23

About this time, as might have been anticipated,
     Seduced by youth and dangerous examples,
Don Juan grew, I fear, a little dissipated;
     Which is a sad thing, and not only tramples
On our fresh feelings, but—as being participated
     With all kinds of incorrigible samples
Of frail humanity—must make us selfish,
And shut our souls up in us like a shell-fish.

24

This we pass over. We will also pass
     The usual progress of intrigues between
Unequal matches, such as are, alas!
     A young Lieutenant’s with a not old Queen,
But one who is not so youthful as she was
     In all the royalty of sweet seventeen.
Sovereigns may sway materials, but not matter,
And wrinkles (the d—d democrats) won’t flatter.

25

And Death, the sovereign’s Sovereign, though the great
    Gracchus of all mortality, who levels
With his Agrarian laws, the high estate
     Of him who feasts, and fights, and roars, and revels,
To one small grass-grown patch (which must await
     Corruption for its crop) with the poor devils
Who never had a foot of land till now—
Death’s a reformer, all men must allow.

26

He lived (not Death, but Juan) in a hurry
     Of waste, and haste, and glare, and gloss, and glitter,
In this gay clime of bear-skins black and furry—
     Which (though I hate to say a thing that’s bitter)
Peep out sometimes, when things are in a flurry,
     Through all the “purple and fine linen,” fitter
For Babylon’s than Russia’s royal harlot—
And neutralize her outward show of Scarlet.

27

And this same state we won’t describe: we could
     Perhaps from hearsay, or from recollection;
But getting nigh grim Dante’s “obscure wood,”
     That horrid equinox, that hateful section
Of human years, that half-way house, that rude
     Hut, whence wise travellers drive with circumspection
Life’s sad post-horses o’er the dreary frontier
Of age, and looking back to youth, give one tear;—

28

I won’t describe—that is, if I can help
     Description; and I won’t reflect—that is,
If I can stave off thought, which, as a whelp
     Clings to its teat, sticks to me through the abyss
Of this odd labyrinth; or as the kelp
     Holds by the rock; or as a lover’s kiss
Drains its first draught of lips:—but, as I said,
I won’t philosophize, and will be read.

29

Juan, instead of courting courts, was courted,
     A thing which happens rarely: this he owed
Much to his youth, and much to his reported
     Valour; much also to the blood he showed,
Like a race-horse; much to each dress he sported,
     Which set the beauty off in which he glowed,
As purple clouds befringe the sun; but most
He owed to an old woman and his post.

30

He wrote to Spain:—and all his near relations,
     Perceiving he was in a handsome way
Of getting on himself, and finding stations
     For cousins also, answered the same day.
Several prepared themselves for emigrations;
    And, eating ices, were o’erheard to say,
That with the addition of a slight pelisse,
Madrid’s and Moscow’s climes were of a-piece.