from Canto XI

71

Or, if he dance not, but hath higher views
     Upon an heiress or his neighbour’s bride,
Let him take care that that which he pursues
    Is not at once too palpably descried.
Full many an eager gentleman oft rues
     His haste: impatience is a blundering guide
Amongst a people famous for reflection,
Who like to play the fool with circumspection.

72

But, if you can contrive, get next at supper;
     Or, if forestalled, get opposite and ogle:—
Oh, ye ambrosial moments! always upper
     In mind, a sort of sentimental bogle,
Which sits for ever upon Memory’s crupper,
     The ghost of vanished pleasures once in vogue! Ill
Can tender souls relate the rise and fall
Of hopes and fears which shake a single ball.

73

But these precautionary hints can touch
     Only the common run, who must pursue,
And watch, and ward; whose plans a word too much
     Or little overturns; and not the few
Or many (for the number’s sometimes such)
     Whom a good mien, especially if new,
Or fame, or name, for wit, war, sense, or nonsense,
Permits whate’er they please, or did not long since.

74

Our hero, as a hero, young and handsome,
     Noble, rich, celebrated, and a stranger,
Like other slaves of course must pay his ransom
     Before he can escape from so much danger
As will environ a conspicuous man. Some
     Talk about poetry, and “rack and manger,”
And ugliness, disease, as toil and trouble,—
I wish they knew the life of a young noble.

75

They are young, but know not youth—it is anticipated;
    Handsome but wasted, rich without a sou;
Their vigour in a thousand arms is dissipated;
     Their cash comes from, their wealth goes to a Jew;
Both senates see their nightly votes participated
    Between the tyrant’s and the tribunes’ crew;
And having voted, dined, drank, gamed, and whored,
The family vault receives another lord.

76

“Where is the world,” cries Young, “at eighty? Where
     The world in which a man was born?” Alas!
Where is the world of eight years past? ‘Twas there—
     I look for it—’tis gone, a Globe of Glass!
Cracked, shivered, vanished, scarcely gazed on, ere
     A silent change dissolves the glittering mass.
Statesmen, chiefs, orators, queens, patriots, kings,
And dandies, all are gone on the wind’s wings.

77

Where is Napoleon the Grand? God knows:
     Where little Castlereagh? The devil can tell:
Where Grattan, Curran, Sheridan, all those
     Who bound the bar or senate in their spell?
Where is the unhappy Queen, with all her woes?
     And where the Daughter, whom the Isles loved well?
Where are those martyred Saints the Five per Cents?
And where—oh where the devil are the Rents!

78

Where’s Brummell? Dished. Where’s Long Pole Wellesley? Diddled.
    Where’s Whitbread? Romilly? Where’s George the Third?
Where is his will? (That’s not so soon unriddled.)
    And where is “Fum” the Fourth, our “royal bird”?
Gone down it seems to Scotland, to be fiddled
    Unto by Sawney’s violin, we have heard:
“Caw me, caw thee”—for six months hath been hatching
This scene of royal itch and loyal scratching.

79

Where is Lord This? And where my Lady That?
     The Honourable Mistresses and Misses?
Some laid aside like an old opera hat,
     Married, unmarried, and remarried: (this is
An evolution oft performed of late).
     Where are the Dublin shouts—and London hisses?
Where are the Grenvilles? Turned as usual. Where
My friends the Whigs? Exactly where they were.

80

Where are the Lady Carolines and Franceses?
    Divorced or doing thereanent. Ye annals
So brilliant, where the list of routs and dances is,—
    Thou Morning Post, sole record of the pannels
Broken in carriages, and all the phantasies
     Of fashion,—say what streams now fill those channels?
Some die, some fly, some languish on the Continent,
Because the times have hardly left them one tenant.