from Canto XI

81

Some who once set their caps at cautious Dukes,
     Have taken up at length with younger brothers:
Some heiresses have bit at sharpers’ hooks;
     Some maids have been made wives, some merely mothers;
Others have lost their fresh and fairy looks:
     In short, the list of alterations bothers:
There’s little strange in this, but something strange is
The unusual quickness of these common changes.

82

Talk not of seventy years as age! in seven
     I have seen more changes, down from monarchs to
The humblest individual under heaven,
     Than might suffice a moderate century through.
I knew that nought was lasting, but now even
     Change grows too changeable, without being new:
Nought’s permanent among the human race,
Except the Whigs not getting into place.

83

I have seen Napoleon, who seemed quite a Jupiter,
     Shrink to a Saturn. I have seen a Duke
(No matter which) turn politician stupider,
     If that can well be, than his wooden look.
But it is time that I should hoist my “blue Peter,”
     And sail for a new theme:—I have seen—and shook
To see it—the King hissed, and then carest;
But don’t pretend to settle which was best.

84

I have seen the landholders without a rap—
    I have seen Johanna Southcote—I have seen
The House of Commons turned to a tax-trap—
     I have seen that sad affair of the late Queen—
I have seen crowns worn instead of a fool’s-cap—
     I have seen a Congress doing all that’s mean—
I have seen some nations like o’erloaded asses
Kick off their burthens—meaning the high classes.

85

I have seen small poets, and great prosers, and
     Interminable—not eternal—speakers—
I have seen the Funds at war with house and land—
     I’ve seen the Country Gentlemen turn squeakers—
I’ve seen the people ridden o’er like sand
     By slaves on horseback—I have seen malt liquors
Exchanged for “thin potations” by John Bull—
I have seen John half detect himself a fool.—

86

But “Carpe diem,” Juan, “Carpe, carpe!”
     To-morrow sees another race as gay
And transient, and devoured by the same harpy.
     “Life’s a poor player,”—then “play out the play,
Ye villains!” and above all keep a sharp eye
     Much less on what you do than what you say:
Be hypocritical, be cautious, be
Not what you seem, but always what you see.

87

But how shall I relate in other Cantos
     Of what befell our hero in the land,
Which ‘tis the common cry and lie to vaunt as
     A moral country? But I hold my hand—
For I disdain to write an Atalantis;
     But ‘tis as well at once to understand,
You are not a moral people, and you know it
Without the aid of too sincere a poet.

88

What Juan saw and underwent, shall be
     My topic, with of course the due restriction
Which is required by proper courtesy;
     And recollect the work is only fiction,
And that I sing of neither mine nor me,
     Though every scribe, in some slight turn of diction,
Will hint allusions never meant. Ne’er doubt
This—when I speak, I don’t hint, but speak out.

89

Whether he married with the third or fourth
     Offspring of some sage, husband-hunting Countess,
Or whether with some virgin of more worth
     (I mean in Fortune’s matrimonial bounties)
He took to regularly peopling Earth,
    Of which your lawful awful wedlock fount is,—
Or whether he was taken in for damages,
For being too excursive in his homages,—

90

Is yet within the unread events of time.
     Thus far, go forth, thou Lay! which I will back
Against the same given quantity of rhyme,
     For being as much the subject of attack
As ever yet was any work sublime,
     By those who love to say that white is black.
So much the better!—I may stand alone,
But would not change my free thoughts for a throne.