He

being a man who seldom used a word Too much, and wishing gladly to surprise (In general he surprised men with the sword) His daughter had not sent before to advise Of his arrival, so that no one stirr'd;

And long he paused to re-assure his eyes, In fact much more astonish'd than delighted, To find so much good company invited.

He did not know (alas! how men will lie)
That a report (especially the Greeks)
Avouch'd his death (such people never die),

And put his house in mourning several weeks,
But now their eyes and also lips were dry;

The bloom, too, had return'd to Haidée's cheeks. Her tears, too, being return'd into their fount, She now kept house upon her own account.

Hence all this rice, meat, dancing, wine, and fiddling,
Which turn'd the isle into a place of pleasure;
The servants all were getting drunk or idling,

A life which made them happy beyond measure.
Her father's hospitality seem'd middling,

Compared with what Haidée did with his treasure; T was wonderful how things went on improving, While she had not one hour to spare from loving.

Perhaps you think in stumbling on this feast
He flew into a passion, and in fact
There was no mighty reason to be pleased;
Perhaps you prophesy some sudden act,

The whip, the rack, or dungeon at the least,
To teach his people to be more exact,
And that, proceeding at a very high rate,
He show'd the royal penchants of a pirate.

You 're wrong.

He was the mildest manner'd man
That ever scuttled ship or cut a throat;
With such true breeding of a gentleman,
You never could divine his real thought;
No courtier could, and scarcely woman can
Gird more deceit within a petticoat;
Pity he loved adventurous life's variety,
He was so great a loss to good society.

A STORMED CITY.

(DON JUAN, Canto viii. Stanzas 123-127.)

ALL that the mind would shrink from of excesses;
All that the body perpetrates of bad;

All that we read, hear, dream, of man's distresses;
All that the devil would do if run stark mad;
All that defies the worst which pen expresses;

All by which hell is peopled, or as sad
As hell-

mere mortals who their power abuse Was here (as heretofore and since) let loose.

If here and there some transient trait of pity

Was shown, and some more noble heart broke through Its bloody bond, and saved, perhaps, some pretty

Child, or an aged, helpless man or two

What 's this in one annihilated city,

Where thousand loves, and ties, and duties grow? Cockneys of London! Muscadins of Paris!

Just ponder what a pious pastime war is.

Think how the joys of reading a Gazette

Are purchased by all agonies and crimes: Or if these do not move you, don't forget

Such doom may be your own in after-times. Meantime the Taxes, Castlereagh, and Debt,

Are hints as good as sermons, or as rhymes. Read your own hearts and Ireland's present story Then feed her famine fat with Wellesley's glory.

But still there is unto a patriot nation,

Which loves so well its country and its king,

A subject of sublimest exultation

Bear it, ye Muses, on your brightest wing!

Howe'er the mighty locust, Desolation,

Strip your green fields, and to your harvests cling,

Gaunt famine never shall approach the throne

Though Ireland starve, great George weighs twenty ston

But let me put an end unto my theme:

There was an end of Ismail - hapless town!

Far flash'd her burning towers o'er Danube's stream,
And redly ran his blushing waters down.
The horrid war-whoop and the shriller scream
Rose still; but fainter were the thunders grown:
Of forty thousand who had mann'd the wall,
Some hundreds breathed-the rest were silent all!

ATION

EXHORTATION TO MR. WILBERFORCE.

(DON JUAN, Canto xiv. Stanzas 82-84.)

O WILBERFORCE! thou man of black renown,
Whose merit none enough can sing or say,
Thou hast struck one immense Colossus down,
Thou moral Washington of Africa!
But there's another little thing, I own,

Which you should perpetrate some summer's day,

And set the other half of earth to rights;

You have freed the blacks—now pray shut up the whites.

Shut up the bald-coot bully Alexander !

Ship off the Holy Three to Senegal;

Teach them that "sauce for goose is sauce for gander," And ask them how they like to be in thrall?

Shut up each high heroic salamander,

Who eats fire gratis (since the pay 's but small);
Shut up no, not the King, but the Pavilion,
Or else 't will cost us all another million.

Shut up the world at large, let Bedlam out;
And you will be perhaps surprised to find
All things pursue exactly the same route,

As now with those of soi-disant sound mind.
This I could prove beyond a single doubt,
Were there a jot of sense among mankind;
But till that point d'appui is found, alas!
Like Archimedes, I leave earth as 't was.

EXHORTATION TO MRS. FRY.

(DON JUAN, Canto x. Stanzas 85-87.)

OH Mrs. Fry! Why go to Newgate? Why
Preach to poor rogues? And wherefore not begin
With Carlton, or with other houses? Try
Your hand at harden'd and imperial sin.
To mend the people 's an absurdity.

A jargon, a mere philanthropic din,

Unless you make their betters better: - Fy!
I thought you had more religion, Mrs. Fry.

Teach them the decencies of good threescore;

Cure them of tours, hussar and highland dresses; Tell them that youth once gone returns no more, That hired huzzas redeem no land's distresses; Tell them Sir William Curtis is a bore,

Too dull even for the dullest of excesses, The witless Falstaff of a hoary Hal,

A fool whose bells have ceased to ring at all.

Tell them, though it may be perhaps too late
On life's worn confine, jaded, bloated, sated,

To set up vain pretences of being great,

'T is not so to be good; and be it stated, The worthiest kings have ever loved least state; And tell them But you won't, and I have prated Just now enough; but by and by I'll prattle Like Roland's horn in Roncesvalles' battle.