And never straining hard to versify,
I rattle on exactly as I’d talk
With anybody in a ride or walk.
XX
I don’t know that there may be much ability
Shown in this sort of desultory rhyme;
But there’s a conversational facility,
Which may round off an hour upon a time.
Of this I’m sure at least, there’s no servility
In mine irregularity of chime,
Which rings what’s uppermost of new or hoary,1117
Just as I feel the Improvvisatore.
XXI
“Omnia vult belle Matho dicere—dic aliquando
Et bene, dic neutrum, dic aliquando male.”1118
The first is rather more than mortal can do;
The second may be sadly done or gaily;
The third is still more difficult to stand to;
The fourth we hear, and see, and say too, daily:
The whole together is what I could wish
To serve in this conundrum of a dish.
XXII
A modest hope—but Modesty’s my forte,
And Pride my feeble:1119—let us ramble on.
I meant to make this poem very short,
But now I can’t tell where it may not run.1120
No doubt, if I had wished to pay my court
To critics, or to hail the setting sun
Of Tyranny of all kinds, my concision1121
Were more;—but I was born for opposition.
XXIII
But then ’tis mostly on the weaker side;
So that I verily believe if they
Who now are basking in their full-blown pride1122
Were shaken down, and “dogs had had their day,”1123
Though at the first I might perchance deride
Their tumble, I should turn the other way,
And wax an ultra-royalist in Loyalty,
Because I hate even democratic Royalty.1124
XXIV
I think I should have made a decent spouse,
If I had never proved the soft condition;
I think I should have made monastic vows
But for my own peculiar superstition:
’Gainst rhyme I never should have knocked my brows,
Nor broken my own head, nor that of Priscian,1125
Nor worn the motley mantle of a poet,
If some one had not told me to forego it.1126
XXV
But laissez aller—Knights and Dames I sing,
Such as the times may furnish. ’Tis a flight
Which seems at first to need no lofty wing,
Plumed by Longinus or the Stagyrite:1127
The difficulty lies in colouring
(Keeping the due proportions still in sight)
With Nature manners which are artificial,
And rend’ring general that which is especial.
XXVI
The difference is, that in the days of old
Men made the Manners; Manners now make men—
Pinned like a flock, and fleeced too in their fold,
At least nine, and a ninth beside of ten.
Now this at all events must render cold
Your writers, who must either draw again
Days better drawn before, or else assume
The present, with their common-place costume.
XXVII
We’ll do our best to make the best on ’t:—March!
March, my Muse! If you cannot fly, yet flutter;
And when you may not be sublime, be arch,
Or starch, as are the edicts statesmen utter.
We surely may find something worth research:
Columbus found a new world in a cutter,
Or brigantine, or pink, of no great tonnage,
While yet America was in her non-age.1128
XXVIII
When Adeline, in all her growing sense
Of Juan’s merits and his situation,
Felt on the whole an interest intense—
Partly perhaps because a fresh sensation,
Or that he had an air of innocence,
Which is for Innocence a sad temptation—
As Women hate half measures, on the whole,1129
She ’gan to ponder how to save his soul.
XXIX
She had a good opinion of Advice,
Like all who give and eke receive it gratis,
For which small thanks are still the market price,
Even where the article at highest rate is:
She thought upon the subject twice or thrice,
And morally decided—the best state is
For Morals—Marriage; and, this question carried,
She seriously advised him to get married.
XXX
Juan replied, with all becoming deference,
He had a predilection for that tie;
But that, at present, with immediate reference
To his own circumstances, there might lie
Some difficulties, as in his own preference,
Or that of her to whom he might apply:
That still he’d wed with such or such a lady,
If that they were not married all already.
XXXI
Next to the making matches for herself,
And daughters, brothers, sisters, kith or kin,
Arranging them like books on the same shelf,
There’s nothing women love to dabble in
More (like a stock-holder in growing pelf)
Than match-making in general: ’tis no sin
Certes, but a preventative, and therefore
That is, no doubt, the only reason wherefore.
XXXII
But never yet (except of course a miss
Unwed, or mistress never to be wed,
Or wed already, who object to this)
Was there chaste dame who had not in her head
Some drama of the marriage Unities,
Observed as strictly both at board and bed,
As those of Aristotle, though sometimes
They turn out Melodrames or Pantomimes.
XXXIII
They generally have some only son,
Some heir to a large property, some friend
Of an old family, some gay Sir John,
Or grave Lord George, with whom perhaps might end
A line, and leave Posterity undone,
Unless a marriage was applied to mend
The prospect and their morals: and besides,
They have at hand a blooming glut of brides.
XXXIV
From these they will be careful to select,
For this an heiress, and for that a beauty;
For one a songstress who hath no defect,
For t’ other one who promises much duty;
For this a lady no one can reject,
Whose sole accomplishments were quite a booty;
A second for her excellent connections;
A third, because there can be no objections.
XXXV
When Rapp the Harmonist embargoed Marriage1130
In his harmonious settlement—(which flourishes
Strangely enough as yet without miscarriage,
Because it breeds no more mouths than it nourishes,
Without those sad expenses which disparage
What Nature naturally most encourages)—
Why called he “Harmony” a
