from Canto XIV

51

The Lady Adeline’s serene severity
     Was not confined to feeling for her friend,
Whose fame she rather doubted with posterity,
     Unless her habits should begin to mend;
But Juan also shared in her austerity,
     But mix’d with pity, pure as e’er was penn’d:
His inexperience moved her gentle ruth,
And (as her junior by six weeks) his youth.

52

These forty days’ advantage of her years—
     And her’s were those which can face calculation,
Boldly referring to the list of peers
     And noble births, nor dread the enumeration—
Gave her a right to have maternal fears
     For a young gentleman’s fit education,
Though she was far from that leap year, whose leap,
In female dates, strikes Time all of a heap.

53

This may be fixed at somewhere before thirty—
     Say seven-and-twenty; for I never knew
The strictest in chronology and virtue
     Advance beyond, while they could pass for new.
Oh, Time! Why dost not pause? Thy scythe, so dirty
     With rust, should surely cease to hack and hew.
Reset it; shave more smoothly, also slower,
If but to keep thy credit as a mower.

54

But Adeline was far from that ripe age,
    Whose ripeness is but bitter at the best:
‘Twas rather her experience made her sage,
     For she had seen the world, and stood its test,
As I have said in—I forget what page;
     My Muse despises reference, as you have guess’d
By this time;—but strike six from seven-and-twenty,
And you will find her sum of years in plenty.

55

At sixteen she came out; presented, vaunted,
     She put all coronets into commotion:
At seventeen too the world was still enchanted
     With the new Venus of their brilliant ocean:
At eighteen, though below her feet still panted
    A hecatomb of suitors with devotion,
She had consented to create again
That Adam, called “the Happiest of Men.”

56

Since then she had sparkled through three glowing winters,
     Admired, adored; but also so correct,
That she had puzzled all the acutest hinters,
     Without the apparel of being circumspect:
They could not even glean the slightest splinters
     From off the marble, which had no defect.
She had also snatch’d a moment since her marriage
To bear a son and heir—and one miscarriage.

57

Fondly the wheeling fire-flies flew around her
    Those little glitterers of the London night;
But none of these possess’d a sting to wound her—
    She was a pitch beyond a coxcomb’s flight.
Perhaps she wish’d an aspirant profounder;
     But whatsoe’er she wished, she acted right;
And whether coldness, pride, or virtue, dignify
A Woman, so she’s good, what does it signify?

58

I hate a motive like a lingering bottle,
     Which with the landlord makes too long a stand,
Leaving all claretless the unmoistened throttle,
     Especially with politics on hand;
I hate it, as I hate a drove of cattle,
    Who whirl the dust as Simooms whirl the sand;
I hate it, as I hate an argument,
A Laureate’s ode, or servile Peer’s “Content.”

59

‘Tis sad to hack into the roots of things,
    They are so much intertwisted with the earth:
So that the branch a goodly verdure flings,
     I reck not if an acorn gave it birth.
To trace all actions to their secret springs
     Would make indeed some melancholy mirth;
But this is not at present my concern,
And I refer you to wise Oxenstiern.

60

With the kind view of saving an eclt,
    Both to the Duchess and diplomatist,
The Lady Adeline, as soon’s she saw
     That Juan was unlikely to resist—
(For foreigners don’t know that a faux pas
     In England ranks quite on a different list
From those of other lands unblest with Juries,
Whose verdict for such sin a certain cure is);—