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; His hell-dogs, and their chase, and the fair throng, CVII. * Oh Hesperus! thou bringest all good things- The welcome stall to the o'er labour'd steer; 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, +"Era gia l'ora che volge l' disio, "A' naviganti, e 'ntenerisce il cuore; "Lo di ch'han detto a' dolci amici a dio; "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, CIX. When Nero perish'd by the justest doom Of nations freed, and the world overjoy'd, CX. But I'm digressing; what on earth has Nero, 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" CXI. I feel this tediousness will never do- And then as an improvement 'twill be shown: * 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, While youth's hot wishes in our red veins revel, 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, Ere what we least wish to behold will sleep. V. Some have accused me of a strange design I don't pretend that I quite understand VI. To the kind reader of our sober clime This way of writing will appear exotic; Pulci was sire of the half-serious rhyme, 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: VIII. Young Juan and his lady-love were left 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, X. They were alone once more; for them to be Cut from its forest root of years-the river |