An outline of the customs of the East,
With all their chaste integrity of laws,
By which the more a Harem is increased,
The stricter doubtless grow the vestal duties
Of any supernumerary beauties.
LIX
And then she gave Juanna a chaste kiss:
Dudú was fond of kissing—which I’m sure
That nobody can ever take amiss,
Because ’tis pleasant, so that it be pure,
And between females means no more than this—
That they have nothing better near, or newer.
“Kiss” rhymes to “bliss” in fact as well as verse—
I wish it never led to something worse.
LX
In perfect innocence she then unmade
Her toilet, which cost little, for she was
A child of Nature, carelessly arrayed:
If fond of a chance ogle at her glass,
’Twas like the fawn, which, in the lake displayed,
Beholds her own shy, shadowy image pass,
When first she starts, and then returns to peep,
Admiring this new native of the deep.
LXI
And one by one her articles of dress
Were laid aside; but not before she offered
Her aid to fair Juanna, whose excess
Of modesty declined the assistance proffered:
Which passed well off—as she could do no less;
Though by this politesse she rather suffered,
Pricking her fingers with those cursed pins,
Which surely were invented for our sins—
LXII
Making a woman like a porcupine,
Not to be rashly touched. But still more dread,
Oh ye! whose fate it is, as once ’twas mine,
In early youth, to turn a lady’s maid;—
I did my very boyish best to shine
In tricking her out for a masquerade:
The pins were placed sufficiently, but not
Stuck all exactly in the proper spot.
LXIII
But these are foolish things to all the wise,
And I love Wisdom more than she loves me;
My tendency is to philosophise
On most things, from a tyrant to a tree;
But still the spouseless virgin Knowledge flies.
What are we? and whence came we? what shall be
Our ultimate existence? what’s our present?
Are questions answerless, and yet incessant.
LXIV
There was deep silence in the chamber: dim
And distant from each other burned the lights,
And slumber hovered o’er each lovely limb
Of the fair occupants: if there be sprites,
They should have walked there in their sprightliest trim,
By way of change from their sepulchral sites,
And shown themselves as ghosts of better taste
Than haunting some old ruin or wild waste.
LXV
Many and beautiful lay those around,
Like flowers of different hue, and clime, and root,
In some exotic garden sometimes found,
With cost, and care, and warmth induced to shoot.
One with her auburn tresses lightly bound,
And fair brows gently drooping, as the fruit
Nods from the tree, was slumbering with soft breath,
And lips apart, which showed the pearls beneath.
LXVI
One with her flushed cheek laid on her white arm,
And raven ringlets gathered in dark crowd
Above her brow, lay dreaming soft and warm;
And smiling through her dream, as through a cloud
The moon breaks, half unveiled each further charm,
As, slightly stirring in her snowy shroud,
Her beauties seized the unconscious hour of night
All bashfully to struggle into light.
LXVII
This is no bull, although it sounds so; for
’Twas night, but there were lamps, as hath been said.
A third’s all pallid aspect offered more
The traits of sleeping sorrow, and betrayed
Through the heaved breast the dream of some far shore
Belovèd and deplored; while slowly strayed
(As night-dew, on a cypress glittering, tinges
The black bough) tear-drops through her eyes’ dark fringes.
LXVIII
A fourth as marble, statue-like and still,
Lay in a breathless, hushed, and stony sleep;
White, cold, and pure, as looks a frozen rill,
Or the snow minaret on an Alpine steep,
Or Lot’s wife done in salt—or what you will;—
My similes are gathered in a heap,
So pick and choose—perhaps you’ll be content
With a carved lady on a monument.
LXIX
And lo! a fifth appears;—and what is she?
A lady of a “certain age,”558 which means
Certainly agèd—what her years might be
I know not, never counting past their teens;
But there she slept, not quite so fair to see,
As ere that awful period intervenes
Which lays both men and women on the shelf,
To meditate upon their sins and self.
LXX
But all this time how slept, or dreamed, Dudú?
With strict inquiry I could ne’er discover,
And scorn to add a syllable untrue;
But ere the middle watch was hardly over,
Just when the fading lamps waned dim and blue,
And phantoms hovered, or might seem to hover,
To those who like their company, about
The apartment, on a sudden she screamed out:
LXXI
And that so loudly, that upstarted all
The Oda, in a general commotion:
Matron and maids, and those whom you may call
Neither, came crowding like the waves of Ocean,
One on the other, throughout the whole hall,
All trembling, wondering, without the least notion
More than I have myself of what could make
The calm Dudù so turbulently wake.
LXXII
But wide awake she was, and round her bed,
With floating draperies and with flying hair,
With eager eyes, and light but hurried tread,
And bosoms, arms, and ankles glancing bare,
And bright as any meteor ever bred
By the North Pole—they sought her cause of care,
For she seemed agitated, flushed, and frightened,
Her eye dilated, and her colour heightened.
LXXIII
But what is strange—and a strong proof how great
A blessing is sound sleep—Juanna lay
As fast as ever husband by his mate
In holy matrimony snores away.
Not all the clamour broke her happy state
Of slumber, ere they shook her—so they say
At least—and then she, too, unclosed her eyes,
And yawned a good deal with discreet surprise.559
LXXIV
And now commenced a strict investigation,
Which, as all spoke at once, and more than once
Conjecturing, wondering, asking a narration,
Alike might puzzle either wit or dunce
To answer in a very clear oration.
Dudú had never passed for wanting sense,
But being “no orator as Brutus is,”560
Could not at first expound what was amiss.
LXXV
At length she said,
