from Canto XV

51

And wherefore not? A reasonable reason,
     If good, is none the worse for repetition;
If bad, the best way’s certainly to teaze on
    And amplify: you lose much by concision,
Whereas insisting in or out of season
     Convinces all men, even a politician;
Or—what is just the same—it wearies out.
So the end’s gain’d, what signifies the route?

52

Why Adeline had this slight prejudice—
     For prejudice it was—against a creature
As pure as sanctity itself from vice,
     With all the added charm of form and feature,
For me appears a question far too nice,
     Since Adeline was liberal by Nature;
But Nature’s Nature, and has more caprices
Than I have time, or will, to take to pieces.

53

Perhaps she did not like the quiet way
     With which Aurora on those baubles look’d,
Which charm most people in their earlier day:
     For there are few things by mankind less brook’d,
And womankind too, if we so may say,
     Than finding thus their genius stand rebuked,
Like “Anthony’s by Caesar,” by the few
Who look upon them as they ought to do.

54

It was not envy—Adeline had none;
     Her place was far beyond it, and her mind.
It was not scorn—which could not light on one
     Whose greatest fault was leaving few to find.
It was not jealousy, I think: but shun
    Following the “Ignes Fatui” of mankind.
It was not—but ‘tis easier far, alas!
To say what it was not, than what it was.

55

Little Aurora deem’d she was the theme
     Of such discussion. She was there a guest,
A beauteous ripple of the brilliant stream
     Of rank and youth, though purer than the rest,
Which flow’d on for a moment in the beam
     Time sheds a moment o’er each sparkling crest.
Had she known this, she would have calmly smiled—
She had so much, or little, of the child.

56

The dashing and proud air of Adeline
     Imposed not upon her: she saw her blaze
Much as she would have seen a glowworm shine,
     Then turn’d unto the stars for loftier rays.
Juan was something she could not divine,
     Being no Sibyl in the new world’s ways;
Yet she was nothing dazzled by the meteor,
Because she did not pin her faith on feature.

57

His fame too,—for he had that kind of fame
     Which sometimes plays the deuce with womankind,
A heterogeneous mass of glorious blame,
     Half virtues and whole vices being combined;
Faults which attract because they are not tame;
     Follies trick’d out so brightly that they blind:—
These seals upon her wax made no impression,
Such was her coldness or her self-possession.

58

Juan knew nought of such a character—
     High, yet resembling not his lost Haide;
Yet each was radiant in her proper sphere:
     The Island girl, bred up by the lone sea,
More warm, as lovely, and not less sincere,
     Was Nature’s all: Aurora could not be
Nor would be thus;—the difference in them
Was such as lies between a flower and gem.

59

Having wound up with this sublime comparison,
     Methinks we may proceed upon our narrative,
And, as my friend Scott says, “I sound my Warison”;
     Scott, the superlative of my comparative—
Scott, who can paint your Christian knight or Saracen,
     Serf, Lord, Man, with such skill as none would share it, if
There had not been one Shakespeare and Voltaire,
Of one or both of whom he seems the heir.

60

I say, in my slight way I may proceed
     To play upon the surface of Humanity.
I write the world, nor care if the world read,
     At least for this I cannot spare its vanity.
My Muse hath bred, and still perhaps may breed
     More foes by this same scroll: when I began it, I
Thought that it might turn out so—now I know it,
But still I am, or was, a pretty poet.