However, I forgive him, and I trust
He will forgive himself;—if not, I must.
XII
Old enemies who have become new friends
Should so continue—’tis a point of honour;
And I know nothing which could make amends
For a return to Hatred: I would shun her
Like garlic, howsoever she extends
Her hundred arms and legs, and fain outrun her.
Old flames, new wives, become our bitterest foes—
Converted foes should scorn to join with those.
XIII
This were the worst desertion:—renegadoes,
Even shuffling Southey, that incarnate lie,813
Would scarcely join again the “reformadoes,”814
Whom he forsook to fill the Laureate’s sty;
And honest men from Iceland to Barbadoes,
Whether in Caledon or Italy,
Should not veer round with every breath, nor seize
To pain, the moment when you cease to please.
XIV
The lawyer and the critic but behold
The baser sides of literature and life,
And nought remains unseen, but much untold,
By those who scour those double vales of strife.
While common men grow ignorantly old,
The lawyer’s brief is like the surgeon’s knife,
Dissecting the whole inside of a question,
And with it all the process of digestion.
XV815
A legal broom’s a moral chimney-sweeper,
And that’s the reason he himself’s so dirty;
The endless soot816 bestows a tint far deeper
Than can be hid by altering his shirt; he
Retains the sable stains of the dark creeper,
At least some twenty-nine do out of thirty,
In all their habits;—not so you, I own;
As Caesar wore his robe you wear your gown.817
XVI
And all our little feuds, at least all mine,
Dear Jeffrey, once my most redoubted foe
(As far as rhyme and criticism combine
To make such puppets of us things below),
Are over: Here’s a health to “Auld Lang Syne!”
I do not know you, and may never know
Your face—but you have acted on the whole
Most nobly, and I own it from my soul.
XVII
And when I use the phrase of “Auld Lang Syne!”
’Tis not addressed to you—the more’s the pity
For me, for I would rather take my wine
With you, than aught (save Scott) in your proud city:
But somehow—it may seem a schoolboy’s whine,
And yet I seek not to be grand nor witty,
But I am half a Scot by birth, and bred
A whole one, and my heart flies to my head—818
XVIII
As “Auld Lang Syne” brings Scotland, one and all,819
Scotch plaids, Scotch snoods, the blue hills, and clear streams,
The Dee—the Don—Balgounie’s brig’s black wall—820
All my boy feelings, all my gentler dreams
Of what I then dreamt, clothed in their own pall—
Like Banquo’s offspring—floating past me seems
My childhood, in this childishness of mine:—
I care not—’tis a glimpse of “Auld Lang Syne.”
XIX
And though, as you remember, in a fit
Of wrath and rhyme, when juvenile and curly,
I railed at Scots to show my wrath and wit,
Which must be owned was sensitive and surly,
Yet ’tis in vain such sallies to permit,
They cannot quench young feelings fresh and early:
I “scotched not killed” the Scotchman in my blood,
And love the land of “mountain and of flood.”821
XX
Don Juan, who was real, or ideal—
For both are much the same, since what men think
Exists when the once thinkers are less real
Than what they thought, for Mind can never sink,
And ’gainst the Body makes a strong appeal;
And yet ’tis very puzzling on the brink
Of what is called Eternity to stare,
And know no more of what is here, than there;—
XXI
Don Juan grew a very polished Russian—
How we won’t mention, why we need not say:
Few youthful minds can stand the strong concussion
Of any slight temptation in their way;
But his just now were spread as is a cushion
Smoothed for a Monarch’s seat of honour: gay
Damsels, and dances, revels, ready money,
Made ice seem Paradise, and winter sunny.
XXII
The favour of the Empress was agreeable;
And though the duty waxed a little hard,
Young people at his time of life should be able
To come off handsomely in that regard.
He was now growing up like a green tree, able
For Love, War, or Ambition, which reward
Their luckier votaries, till old Age’s tedium
Make some prefer the circulating medium.
XXIII
About this time, as might have been anticipated,
Seduced by Youth and dangerous examples,
Don Juan grew, I fear, a little dissipated;
Which is a sad thing, and not only tramples
On our fresh feelings, but—as being participated
With all kinds of incorrigible samples
Of frail humanity—must make us selfish,
And shut our souls up in us like a shell-fish.
XXIV
This we pass over. We will also pass
The usual progress of intrigues between
Unequal matches, such as are, alas!
A young Lieutenant’s with a not old Queen,
But one who is not so youthful as she was
In all the royalty of sweet seventeen.822
Sovereigns may sway materials, but not matter,
And wrinkles, the d⸺d democrats! won’t flatter.
XXV
And Death, the Sovereign’s Sovereign, though the great
Gracchus of all mortality, who levels,
With his Agrarian laws,823 the high estate
Of him who feasts, and fights, and roars, and revels,
To one small grass-grown patch (which must await
Corruption for its crop) with the poor devils
Who never had a foot of land till now—
Death’s a reformer—all men must allow.
XXVI
He lived (not Death, but Juan) in a hurry
Of waste, and haste, and glare, and gloss, and glitter,
In this gay clime of bear-skins black and furry—
Which (though I hate to say a thing that’s bitter)
Peep out sometimes, when things are in a flurry,
Through all the “purple and fine linen,” fitter
For Babylon’s than Russia’s royal harlot—
And neutralise her outward show of scarlet.
XXVII
And this same state we won’t describe: we would
Perhaps from hearsay, or from recollection:
But getting nigh grim Dante’s “obscure wood,”824
