If they were fitted for the purposed cage:
No lady e’er is ogled by a lover,
Horse by a blackleg, broadcloth by a tailor,
Fee by a counsel, felon by a jailor,
XXVII
As is a slave by his intended bidder.
’Tis pleasant purchasing our fellow-creatures;
And all are to be sold, if you consider
Their passions, and are dext’rous; some by features
Are bought up, others by a warlike leader,
Some by a place—as tend their years or natures:
The most by ready cash—but all have prices,
From crowns to kicks, according to their vices.
XXVIII
The eunuch, having eyed them o’er with care,
Turned to the merchant, and began to bid
First but for one, and after for the pair;
They haggled, wrangled, swore, too—so they did!
As though they were in a mere Christian fair,
Cheapening an ox, an ass, a lamb, or kid;
So that their bargain sounded like a battle
For this superior yoke of human cattle.
XXIX
At last they settled into simple grumbling,
And pulling out reluctant purses, and
Turning each piece of silver o’er, and tumbling
Some down, and weighing others in their hand,
And by mistake sequins437 with paras jumbling,
Until the sum was accurately scanned,
And then the merchant giving change, and signing
Receipts in full, began to think of dining.
XXX
I wonder if his appetite was good?
Or, if it were, if also his digestion?
Methinks at meals some odd thoughts might intrude,
And Conscience ask a curious sort of question,
About the right divine how far we should
Sell flesh and blood. When dinner has oppressed one,
I think it is perhaps the gloomiest hour
Which turns up out of the sad twenty-four.
XXXI
Voltaire says “No:” he tells you that Candide
Found life most tolerable after meals;438
He’s wrong—unless man were a pig, indeed,
Repletion rather adds to what he feels,
Unless he’s drunk, and then no doubt he’s freed
From his own brain’s oppression while it reels.
Of food I think with Philip’s son439 or rather
Ammon’s (ill pleased with one world and one father);440
XXXII
I think with Alexander, that the act
Of eating, with another act or two,
Makes us feel our mortality in fact
Redoubled; when a roast and a ragout,
And fish, and soup, by some side dishes backed,
Can give us either pain or pleasure, who
Would pique himself on intellects, whose use
Depends so much upon the gastric juice?
XXXIII
The other evening (’twas on Friday last)—
This is a fact, and no poetic fable—
Just as my great coat was about me cast,
My hat and gloves still lying on the table,
I heard a shot—’twas eight o’clock scarce past—
And, running out as fast as I was able,441
I found the military commandant
Stretched in the street, and able scarce to pant.
XXXIV
Poor fellow! for some reason, surely bad,
They had slain him with five slugs; and left him there
To perish on the pavement: so I had
Him borne into the house and up the stair,
And stripped, and looked to442—But why should I add
More circumstances? vain was every care;
The man was gone—in some Italian quarrel
Killed by five bullets from an old gun-barrel.
XXXV
I gazed upon him, for I knew him well;
And though I have seen many corpses, never
Saw one, whom such an accident befell,
So calm; though pierced through stomach, heart, and liver,
He seemed to sleep—for you could scarcely tell
(As he bled inwardly, no hideous river
Of gore divulged the cause) that he was dead:
So as I gazed on him, I thought or said—
XXXVI
“Can this be Death? then what is Life or Death?
Speak!” but he spoke not: “wake!” but still he slept:—
“But yesterday and who had mightier breath?
A thousand warriors by his word were kept
In awe: he said, as the Centurion saith,
‘Go,’ and he goeth; ‘come,’ and forth he stepped.
The trump and bugle till he spake were dumb—
And now nought left him but the muffled drum.”443
XXXVII
And they who waited once and worshipped—they
With their rough faces thronged about the bed
To gaze once more on the commanding clay
Which for the last, though not the first, time bled;
And such an end! that he who many a day
Had faced Napoleon’s foes until they fled—
The foremost in the charge or in the sally,
Should now be butchered in a civic alley.
XXXVIII
The scars of his old wounds were near his new,
Those honourable scars which brought him fame;
And horrid was the contrast to the view—
But let me quit the theme; as such things claim
Perhaps even more attention than is due
From me: I gazed (as oft I have gazed the same)
To try if I could wrench aught out of Death
Which should confirm, or shake, or make a faith;
XXXIX
But it was all a mystery. Here we are,
And there we go:—but where? five bits of lead,
Or three, or two, or one, send very far!
And is this blood, then, formed but to be shed?
Can every element our elements mar?
And Air—Earth—Water—Fire live—and we dead?
We, whose minds comprehend all things? No more;
But let us to the story as before.
XL
The purchaser of Juan and acquaintance
Bore off his bargains to a gilded boat,
Embarked himself and them, and off they went thence
As fast as oars could pull and water float;
They looked like persons being led to sentence,
Wondering what next, till the caïque444 was brought
Up in a little creek below a wall
O’ertopped with cypresses, dark-green and tall.
XLI
Here their conductor tapping at the wicket
Of a small iron door, ’twas opened, and
He led them onward, first through a low thicket
Flanked by large groves, which towered on either hand:
They almost lost their way, and had to pick it—
For night was closing ere they came to land.
The eunuch made a sign to those on board,
Who rowed off, leaving them without a word.
XLII
As they
