from Canto XIV

21

“Haud ignara loquor”: these are Nugae, “quarum
    Pars parva fui,” but still Art and part.
Now I could much more easily sketch a harem,
     A battle, wreck, or history of the heart,
Than these things; and besides, I wish to spare ‘em,
     For reasons which I choose to keep apart.
“Vetabo Cereris sacrum qui vulgaret”—
Which means that vulgar people must not share it.

22

And therefore what I throw off is ideal—
    Lower’d, leaven’d, like a history of Freemasons;
Which bears the same relation to the real,
     As Captain Parry’s voyage may do to Jason’s.
The grand Arcanum’s not for men to see all;
    My music has some mystic diapasons;
And there is much which could not be appreciated
In any manner by the uninitiated.

23

Alas! Worlds fall—and Woman, since she fell’d
     The World (as, since that history, less polite
Than true, hath been a creed so strictly held)
     Has not yet given up the practice quite.
Poor Thing of Usages! Coerc’d, compell’d,
     Victim when wrong, and martyr oft when right,
Condemn’d to child-bed, as men for their sins
Have shaving too entailed upon their chins,—

24

A daily plague, which in the aggregate
    May average on the whole with parturition.
But as to women, who can penetrate
     The real sufferings of their she condition?
Man’s very sympathy with their estate
     Has much of selfishness and more suspicion.
Their love, their virtue, beauty, education,
But form good housekeepers, to breed a nation.

25

All this were very well and can’t be better;
     But even this is difficult, Heaven knows!
So many troubles from her birth beset her,
     Such small distinction between friends and foes,
The gilding wears so soon from off her fetter,
     That—but ask any woman if she’d choose
(Take her at thirty, that is) to have been
Female or male? a school-boy or a Queen?

26

“Petticoat Influence” is a great reproach,
     Which even those who obey would fain be thought
To fly from, as from hungry pikes a roach;
     But, since beneath it upon earth we are brought
By various joltings of life’s hackney coach,
     I for one venerate a petticoat—
A garment of a mystical sublimity,
No matter whether russet, silk, or dimity.

27

Much I respect, and much I have adored,
     In my young days, that chaste and goodly veil,
Which holds a treasure, like a Miser’s hoard,
     And more attracts by all it doth conceal—
A golden scabbard on a Damasque sword,
     A loving letter with a mystic seal,
A cure for grief—for what can ever rankle
Before a petticoat and peeping ancle?

28

And when upon a silent, sullen day,
    With a Sirocco, for example, blowing,
When even the sea looks dim with all its spray,
    And sulkily the river’s ripple’s flowing,
And the sky shows that very ancient gray,
     The sober, sad antithesis to glowing,—
‘Tis pleasant, if then any thing is pleasant,
To catch a glimpse even of a pretty peasant.

29

We left our heroes and our heroines
     In that fair clime which don’t depend on climate,
Quite independent of the Zodiac’s signs,
     Though certainly more difficult to rhyme at,
Because the sun and stars, and aught that shines,
     Mountains, and all we can be most sublime at,
Are there oft dull and dreary as a dun—
Whether a sky’s or tradesman’s, is all one.

30

And in-door life is less poetical;
     And out of door hath showers, and mists, and sleet,
With which I could not brew a pastoral
     But be it as it may, a bard must meet
All difficulties, whether great or small,
     To spoil his undertaking or complete,
And work away like spirit upon matter,
Embarrass’d somewhat both with fire and water.