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CVI.

The shrill cicalas, people of the pine,

Making their summer lives one ceaseless song, Were the sole echoes, save my steed's and mine,

And vesper bells that rose the boughs along;
The spectre huntsman of Onesti's line,

His hell-dogs, and their chase, and the fair throng,
Which learn'd from this example not to fly
From a true lover, shadow'd my mind's eye.

CVII.

* Oh Hesperus! thou bringest all good things-
Home to the weary, to the hungry cheer,
To the young bird the parent's brooding wings,

The welcome stall to the o'er labour'd steer;
Whate'er of peace about our hearthstone clings,
Whate'er our household gods protect of dear,
Are gather'd round us by thy look of rest;
Thou bring'st the child, too, to the mother's breast:

CVIII.

Soft hour! which wakes the wish and melts the heart Of those who sail the seas, on the first day When they form their sweet friends are torn apart Or fills with love the pilgrim on his way,

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+"Era gia l'ora che volge l' disio,

"A' naviganti, e 'ntenerisce il cuore;

"Lo di ch'han detto a' dolci amici a dio;
"E che lo nuovo peregrin' d' amore

"Punge, se ode Squilla di lontano,

"Che paia 'l giorno pianger che si muore."

Dante's Purgatory, Canto VIII.

This last line is the first of Gray's Elegy, taken by him without ac

knowledgment.

As the far.bell of vesper makes him start,
Seeming to weep the dying day's decay;
Is this a fancy which our reason scorns?
Ah! surely nothing dies but something mourns!

CIX.

When Nero perish'd by the justest doom
Which ever the destroyer yet destroy'd,
Amidst the roar of liberated Rome,

Of nations freed, and the world overjoy'd,
Some hands unseen strew'd flowers upon his tomb:*
Perhaps the weakness of a heart not void
Of feeling for some kindness, done, when power;
Had left the wretch an uncorrupted hour.

CX.

But I'm digressing; what on earth has Nero,
Or any such like sovereign buffoons,

To do with the transactions of my hero,

More than such madmen's fellow man-- -the moon's? Sure my invention must be down at zero,

And I grown one of many "wooden spoons"
Of verse (the name with which we Cantabs please
To dub the last of honours in degrees.)—

CXI.

I feel this tediousness will never do-
"Tis being too epic, and I must cut down
(In copying) this long canto into two;
They'll never find it out, unless I own
The fact, excepting some experienced few;

And then as an improvement 'twill be shown:
I'll prove that such the opinion of the critic is
From Aristotle passim.-See ПoinTiuns.

* See Suetonius for this fact.

END OF CANTO THIRD.

DON JUAN.

CANTO IV.

I.

NOTHING SO difficult as a beginning

In poesy, unless perhaps the end;

For oftentimes when Pegasus seems wining

The race, he sprains a wing, and down we tend, Like Lucifer when hurl'd from heaven for sinning; Our sin the same, and hard as his to mend, Being pride, which leads the mind to soar too far, Till our own weakness shows us what we are.

II.

But time, which brings all beings to their level,
And sharp Adversity, will teach at last
Man, and, as we would hope,-perhaps the devil,
That neither of their intellects are vast:

While youth's hot wishes in our red veins revel,
We know not this-the blood flows on too fast.
But as the torrent widens towards the ocean,
We ponder deeply on each past emotion.

III.

As boy, I thought myself a clever fellow,

And wish'd that others held the same opinion; They took it up when my days grew more mellow, And other minds acknowledged my dominion:

CANTO IV, A

Now my sere fancy "falls into the yellow

Leaf," and imagination droops her pinion, And the sad truth which hovers o'er my desk Turns what was once romantic to burlesque.

IV.

weep,

And if I laugh at any mortal thing,
'Tis that I may not weep; and if I
'Tis that our nature cannot always bring
Itself to apathy, which we must steep
First in the icy depths of Lethe's spring,

Ere what we least wish to behold will sleep.
Thetis baptized her mortal son in Styx;
A mortal mother would on Lethe fix.

V.

Some have accused me of a strange design
Against the creed and morals of the land,
And trace it in this poem every line:

I don't pretend that I quite understand
My own meaning when I would be very fine;
But the fact is, that I have nothing plann'd,
Unless it was to be a moment merry,-
A novel word in my vocabulary.

VI.

To the kind reader of our sober clime

This way of writing will appear exotic;

Pulci was sire of the half-serious rhyme,
Who sang when chivalry was more Quixotic,

And revell'd in the fancies of the time,

[potic;

True knights, chaste dames, huge giants, kings des

But all these, save the last, being obsolete,

I chose a modern subject as more meet.

VII.

How I have treated it, I do not know;

Perhaps no better than they have treated me Who have imputed such designs as show

Not what they saw, but what they wish'd to see; But if it gives them pleasure, be it so,

This is a liberal age, and thoughts are free:
Meantime Apollo plucks me by the ear,
And tells me to resume my story here.

VIII.

Young Juan and his lady-love were left
To their own hearts' most sweet society;
Even Time the pitiless in sorrow cleft

With bis rude sithe such gentle bosoms; he Sigh'd to behold them of their hours bereft, Though foe to love; and yet they could not be Meant to grow old, but die in happy spring, Before one charm or hope had taken wing.

IX.

Their faces were not made for wrinkles, their

Pure blood to stagnate, their great hearts to fail; The blank gray was not made to blast their hair, But like the climes that know nor snow nor hail, They were all summer: lightning might assail

And shiver them to ashes, but to trail

A long and snake-like life of dull decay,
Was not for them-they had too little clay.

X.

They were alone once more; for them to be
Thus was another Eden; they were never
Weary, unless when separate: the tree

Cut from its forest root of years-the river

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