III
I’ll not gainsay them; it is not my cue;
I’ll leave them to their taste, no doubt the best;
An eye’s an eye, and whether black or blue,
Is no great matter, so ’tis in request;
’Tis nonsense to dispute about a hue—
The kindest may be taken as a test.
The fair sex should be always fair; and no man,
Till thirty, should perceive there’s a plain woman.
IV
And after that serene and somewhat dull
Epoch, that awkward corner turned for days
More quiet, when our moon’s no more at full,
We may presume to criticise or praise;
Because Indifference begins to lull
Our passions, and we walk in Wisdom’s ways;
Also because the figure and the face
Hint, that ’tis time to give the younger place.
V
I know that some would fain postpone this era,
Reluctant as all placemen to resign
Their post; but theirs is merely a chimera,
For they have passed Life’s equinoctial line:
But then they have their claret and Madeira,
To irrigate the dryness of decline;
And County meetings, and the Parliament,
And debt—and what not, for their solace sent.
VI
And is there not Religion, and Reform,
Peace, War, the taxes, and what’s called the “Nation”?
The struggle to be pilots in a storm?989
The landed and the monied speculation?
The joys of mutual hate to keep them warm,
Instead of Love, that mere hallucination?
Now Hatred is by far the longest pleasure;
Men love in haste, but they detest at leisure.
VII
Rough Johnson, the great moralist, professed,
Right honestly, “he liked an honest hater!”—990
The only truth that yet has been confessed
Within these latest thousand years or later.
Perhaps the fine old fellow spoke in jest:—
For my part, I am but a mere spectator,
And gaze where’er the palace or the hovel is,
Much in the mode of Goethe’s Mephistopheles;
VIII
But neither love nor hate in much excess;
Though ’twas not once so. If I sneer sometimes,
It is because I cannot well do less,
And now and then it also suits my rhymes.
I should be very willing to redress
Men’s wrongs, and rather check than punish crimes,
Had not Cervantes, in that too true tale
Of Quixote, shown how all such efforts fail.
IX991
Of all tales ’tis the saddest—and more sad,
Because it makes us smile: his hero’s right,
And still pursues the right;—to curb the bad
His only object, and ’gainst odds to fight
His guerdon: ’tis his virtue makes him mad!
But his adventures form a sorry sight;—
A sorrier still is the great moral taught
By that real Epic unto all who have thought.992
X
Redressing injury, revenging wrong,
To aid the damsel and destroy the caitiff;
Opposing singly the united strong,
From foreign yoke to free the helpless native:—
Alas! must noblest views, like an old song,
Be for mere Fancy’s sport a theme creative,
A jest, a riddle, Fame through thin and thick sought!
And Socrates himself but Wisdom’s Quixote?
XI
Cervantes smiled Spain’s chivalry away;
A single laugh demolished the right arm
Of his own country;—seldom since that day
Has Spain had heroes. While Romance could charm,
The World gave ground before her bright array;
And therefore have his volumes done such harm,
That all their glory, as a composition,
Was dearly purchased by his land’s perdition.
XII
I’m “at my old lunes”993—digression, and forget
The Lady Adeline Amundeville;
The fair most fatal Juan ever met,
Although she was not evil nor meant ill;
But Destiny and Passion spread the net
(Fate is a good excuse for our own will),
And caught them;—what do they not catch, methinks?
But I’m not Oedipus, and Life’s a Sphinx.
XIII
I tell the tale as it is told, nor dare
To venture a solution: “Davus sum!”994
And now I will proceed upon the pair.
Sweet Adeline, amidst the gay World’s hum,
Was the Queen-Bee, the glass of all that’s fair;
Whose charms made all men speak, and women dumb.
The last’s a miracle, and such was reckoned,
And since that time there has not been a second.
XIV
Chaste was she, to Detraction’s desperation,
And wedded unto one she had loved well—
A man known in the councils of the Nation,
Cool, and quite English, imperturbable,
Though apt to act with fire upon occasion,
Proud of himself and her: the World could tell
Nought against either, and both seemed secure—
She in her virtue, he in his hauteur.
XV
It chanced some diplomatical relations,
Arising out of business, often brought
Himself and Juan in their mutual stations
Into close contact. Though reserved, nor caught
By specious seeming, Juan’s youth, and patience,
And talent, on his haughty spirit wrought,
And formed a basis of esteem, which ends
In making men what Courtesy calls friends.
XVI
And thus Lord Henry, who was cautious as
Reserve and Pride could make him, and full slow
In judging men—when once his judgment was
Determined, right or wrong, on friend or foe,
Had all the pertinacity Pride has,
Which knows no ebb to its imperious flow,
And loves or hates, disdaining to be guided,
Because its own good pleasure hath decided.
XVII
His friendships, therefore, and no less aversions,
Though oft well founded, which confirmed but more
His prepossessions, like the laws of Persians
And Medes, would ne’er revoke what went before.
His feelings had not those strange fits, like tertians,
Of common likings, which make some deplore
What they should laugh at—the mere ague still
Of men’s regard, the fever or the chill.
XVIII
“ ’Tis not in mortals to command success:”995
But do you more, Sempronius—don’t deserve it,
And take my word, you won’t have any less.
Be wary, watch the time, and always serve it;
Give gently way, when there’s too great a press;
And for your conscience, only learn to nerve it;
For, like a racer, or a boxer training,
’Twill make, if proved, vast efforts without paining.
XIX
Lord Henry also liked to be superior,
As most men do, the little or the great;
The very lowest find out an inferior,
