I NOW mean to be serious;- it is time, Since laughter now-a-days is deem'd too serious.
A jest at Vice by Virtue 's call'd a crime, And critically held as deleterious:
Besides, the sad 's a source of the sublime, Although when long a little apt to weary us;
And therefore shall my lay soar high and solemn, As an old temple dwindled to a column.
The Lady Adeline Amundeville ('T is an old Norman name, and to be found In pedigrees, by those who wander still Along the last fields of that Gothic ground)
Was high-born, wealthy by her father's will, And beauteous, even where beauties most abound, In Britain- which of course true patriots find The goodliest soil of body and of mind.
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 't is in request, 'T is 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.
And after that serene and somewhat dull Epoch, that awkward corner turn'd 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 't is time to give the younger place.
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 pass'd 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.
And is there not religion, and reform, Peace, war, the taxes, and what 's call'd the 'Nation'?
The struggle to be pilots in a storm?
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.
Rough Johnson, the great moralist, profess'd, Right honestly, 'he liked an honest hater!'-The only truth that yet has been confest 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;
But neither love nor hate in much excess;
Though 't was 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.
Of all tales 't is 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: 't is 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.
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?
Cervantes smiled Spain's chivalry away;
A single laugh demolish'd 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.
I 'm 'at my old lunes'- 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.
I tell the tale as it is told, nor dare To venture a solution: 'Davus sum!'
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 reckon'd, And since that time there has not been a second.
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 seem'd secure-She in her virtue, he in his hauteur.
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 form'd a basis of esteem, which ends In making men what courtesy calls friends.
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.
His friendships, therefore, and no less aversions, Though oft well founded, which confirm'd 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.
''T is not in mortals to command success:
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;
