Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty’s form | |
1640 | Glasses itself in tempests; in all time, |
Calm or convulsed — in breeze, or gale, or storm, | |
Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime | |
Dark-heaving; – boundless, endless, and sublime – | |
The image of Eternity – the throne | |
1645 | Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime |
The monsters of the deep are made; each zone | |
Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone. | |
CLXXXIV | |
And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy | |
Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be | |
1650 | Borne, like thy bubbles, onward: from a boy |
I wanton’d with thy breakers – they to me | |
Were a delight; and if the freshening sea | |
Made them a terror – ’twas a pleasing fear, | |
For I was as it were a child of thee, | |
1655 | And trusted to thy billows far and near, |
And laid my hand upon thy mane — as I do here. | |
CLXXXV | |
My task is done – my song hath ceased – my theme | |
Has died into an echo; it is fit | |
The spell should break of this protracted dream. | |
1660 | The torch shall be extinguish’d which hath lit |
My midnight lamp – and what is writ, is writ, – | |
Would it were worthier! but I am not now | |
That which I have been — and my visions flit | |
Less palpably before me – and the glow | |
1665 | Which in my spirit dwelt is fluttering, faint, and low. |
CLXXXVI | |
Farewell! a word that must be, and hath been – | |
A sound which makes us linger; – yet – farewell! | |
Ye! who have traced the Pilgrim to the scene | |
Which is his last, if in your memories dwell | |
1670 | A thought which once was his, if on ye swell |
A single recollection, not in vain | |
He wore his sandal-shoon, and scallop-shell; | |
Farewell! with | |
If such there were – with |
Epistle from Mr Murray to Dr Polidori | |
Dear Doctor, I have read your play, | |
Which is a good one in its way, — | |
Purges the eyes and moves the bowels, | |
And drenches handkerchiefs like towels | |
5 | With tears, that, in a flux of grief, |
Afford hysterical relief | |
To shatter’d nerves and quicken’d pulses, | |
Which your catastrophe convulses. | |
I like your moral and machinery; | |
10 | Your plot, too, has such scope for scenery; |
Your dialogue is apt and smart; | |
The play’s concoction full of art; | |
Your hero raves, your heroine cries, | |
All stab, and every body dies. | |
15 | In short, your tragedy would be |
The very thing to hear and see: | |
And for a piece of publication, | |
If I decline on this occasion, | |
It is not that I am not sensible | |
20 | To merits in themselves ostensible, |
But — and I grieve to speak it — plays | |
Are drugs — mere drugs, sir — now-a-days. | |
I had a heavy loss by ‘Manuel,’ — | |
Too lucky if it prove not annual, — | |
25 | And Sotheby, with his ‘Orestes,’ |
(Which, by the by, the author’s best is,) | |
Has lain so very long on hand | |
That I despair of all demand. | |
I’ve advertised, but see my books, | |
30 | Or only watch my shopman’s looks; — |
Still Ivan, Ina, and such lumber, | |
My back-shop glut, my shelves encumber. | |
There’s Byron too, who once did better, | |
Has sent me, folded in a letter, | |
35 | A sort of — it’s no more a drama |
Than Darnley, Ivan, or Kehama; | |
So alter’d since last year his pen is, | |
I think he’s lost his wits at Venice, | |
Or drained his brains away as Stallion | |
40 | To some dark-eyed and warm Italian; |
In short, sir, what with one and t’other, | |
I dare not venture on another. | |
I write in haste; excuse each blunder; | |
The coaches through the street so thunder! | |
45 | My room’s so full – we’ve Gifford here |
Reading MS., with Hookham Frere, | |
Pronouncing on the nouns and particles | |
Of some of our forthcoming Articles. | |
The Quarterly — Ah, sir, if you | |
50 | Had but the genius to review! — |
A smart critique upon St Helena, | |
Or if you only would but tell in a | |
Short compass what — but, to resume: | |
As I was saying sir the room - | |
55 | The room’s so full of wits and bards, |
Crabbes, Campbells, Crokers, Freres, and Wards | |
And others, neither bards nor wits: — | |
My humble tenement admits | |
All persons in the dress of gent., | |
60 | From Mr Hammond to Dog Dent. |
A party dines with me to-day, | |
All clever men, who make their way; | |
Crabbe, Malcolm, Hamilton, and Chantrey, | |
Are all partakers of my pantry. | |
65 | They’re at this moment in discussion |
On poor De Stael’s late dissolution. | |
Her book, they say, was in advance — | |
Pray Heaven, she tell the truth of France! | |
Thus run our time and tongues away. — | |
70 | But, to return, sir, to your play: |
Sorry, sir, but I can not deal, | |
Unless ’twere acted by O’Neill. | |
My hands so full, my head so busy, | |
I’m almost dead, and always dizzy; | |
75 | And so, with endless truth and hurry, |
Dear Doctor, I am yours, |
J
OHN
M
URRAY
.
BEPPO
A Venetian Story
ROSALIND
: Farewell, Monsieur Traveller: Look, you lisp, and wear strange suits: disable all the benefits of your own country; be out of love with your Nativity, and almost chide God for making you that countenance you are; or I will scarce think that you have swam in a
Gondola
.
As You Like It
, Act IV. Sc. 1.
[
Annotation of the Commentators
.]
That is, been at
Venice
, which was much visited by the young English gentlemen of those times, and was then what
Paris
is
now
– the seat of all dissoluteness. S.A.
[Samuel Ayscough]
I | |
’Tis known, at least it should be, that throughout | |
All countries of the Catholic persuasion, | |
Some weeks before Shrove Tuesday comes about, | |
The people take their fill of recreation, | |
5 | And buy repentance, ere they grow devout, |
However high their rank, or low their station, | |
With fiddling, feasting, dancing, drinking, masquing, | |
And other things which may be had for asking. | |
II | |
The moment night with dusky mantle covers | |
10 | The skies (and the more duskily the better), |
The time less liked by husbands than by lovers | |
Begins, and prudery flings aside her fetter; | |
And gaiety on restless tiptoe hovers, | |
Giggling with all the gallants who beset her; | |
15 | And there are songs and quavers, roaring, humming, |
Guitars, and every other sort of strumming. | |
III | |
And there are dresses splendid, but fantastical, | |
Masks of all times and nations, Turks and Jews, | |
And harlequins and clowns, with feats gymnastical, | |
20 | Greeks, Romans, Yankee-doodles, and Hindoos; |
All kinds of dress, except the ecclesiastical, | |
All people, as their fancies hit, may choose, | |
But no one in these parts may quiz the clergy, – | |
Therefore take heed, ye Freethinkers! I charge ye. | |
IV | |
25 | You’d better walk about begirt with briars, |
Instead of coat and smallclothes, than put on | |
A single stitch reflecting upon friars, | |
Although you swore it only was in fun; | |
They’d haul you o’er the coals, and stir the fires | |
30 | Of Phlegethon with every mother’s son, |
Nor say one mass to cool the caldron’s bubble | |
That boil’d your bones, unless you paid them double. | |
V | |
But saving this, you may put on whate’er | |
You like by way of doublet, cape, or cloak, | |
35 | Such as in Monmouth-street, or in Rag Fair, |
Would rig you out in seriousness or joke; | |
And even in Italy such places are, | |
With prettier name in softer accents spoke, | |
For, bating Covent Garden, I can hit on | |
40 | No place that’s call’d ‘Piazza’ in Great Britain. |
VI | |
This feast is named the Carnival, which being | |
Interpreted, implies ‘farewell to flesh:’ | |
So call’d, because the name and thing agreeing, | |
Through Lent they live on fish both salt and fresh. | |
45 | But why they usher Lent with so much glee in, |
Is more than I can tell, although I guess | |
’Tis as we take a glass with friends at parting, | |
In the stage-coach or packet, just at starting. | |
VII | |
And thus they bid farewell to carnal dishes, | |
50 | And solid meats, and highly spiced ragouts, |
To live for forty days on ill-dress’d fishes, | |
Because they have no sauces to their stews, | |
A thing which causes many ‘poohs’ and ‘pishes,’ | |
And several oaths (which would not suit the Muse), | |
55 | From travellers accustom’d from a boy |
To eat their salmon, at the least, with soy; | |
VIII | |
And therefore humbly I would recommend | |
‘The curious in fish-sauce,’ before they cross | |
The sea, to bid their cook, or wife, or friend, | |
60 | Walk or ride to the Strand, and buy in gross |
(Or if set out beforehand, these may send | |
By any means least liable to loss), | |
Ketchup, Soy, Chili-vinegar, and Harvey, | |
Or, by the Lord! a Lent will well nigh starve ye; | |
IX | |
65 | That is to say, if your religion’s Roman, |
And you at Rome would do as Romans do, | |
According to the proverb, – although no man, | |
If foreign, is obliged to fast; and you, | |
If Protestant, or sickly, or a woman, | |
70 | Would rather dine in sin on a ragout – |
Dine and be d—d! I dont mean to be coarse, | |
But that’s the penalty, to say no worse. | |
X | |
Of all the places where the Carnival | |
Was most facetious in the days of yore, | |
75 | For dance, and song, and serenade, and ball, |
And masque, and mime, and mystery and more, | |
Than I have time to tell now, or at all, | |
Venice the bell from every city bore, — | |
And at the moment when I fix my story, | |
80 | That sea-born city was in all her glory. |
XI | |
They’ve pretty faces yet, those same Venetians, | |
Black eyes, arch’d brows, and sweet expressions still; | |
Such as of old were copied from the Grecians, | |
In ancient arts by moderns mimick’d ill; | |
85 | And like so many Venuses of Titian’s |
(The best’s at Florence – see it, if ye will,) | |
They look when leaning over the balcony, | |
Or stepp’d from out a picture by Giorgione, | |
XII | |
Whose tints are truth and beauty at their best; | |
90 | And when you to Manfrini’s palace go, |
That picture (howsoever fine the rest) | |
Is loveliest to my mind of all the show; | |
It may perhaps be also to | |
And that’s the cause I rhyme upon it so: | |
95 | ‘Tis but a portrait of his son, and wife, |
And self; but | |
XIII | |
Love in full life and length, not love ideal, | |
No, nor ideal beauty, that fine name. | |
But something better still, so very real, | |
100 | That the sweet model must have been the same; |
A thing that you would purchase, beg, or steal, | |
Wer’t not impossible, besides a shame: | |
The face recalls some face, as ’twere with pain, | |
You once have seen, but ne’er will see again; | |
XIV | |
105 | One of those forms which flit by us, when we |
Are young, and fix our eyes on every face; | |
And, oh! the loveliness at times we see | |
In momentary gliding, the soft grace, | |
The youth, the bloom, the beauty which agree, | |
110 | In many a nameless being we retrace, |
Whose course and home we knew not, nor shall know, | |
Like the lost Pleiad | |
XV | |
I said that like a picture by Giorgione | |
Venetian women were, and so they | |
115 | Particularly seen from a balcony, |
(For beauty’s sometimes best set off afar) | |
And there, just like a heroine of Goldoni, | |
They peep from out the blind, or o’er the bar; | |
And truth to say, they’re mostly very pretty, | |
120 | And rather like to show it, more’s the pity! |
XVI | |
For glances beget ogles, ogles sighs, | |
Sighs wishes, wishes words, and words a letter, | |
Which flies on wings of light-heel’d Mercuries, | |
Who do such things because they know no better; | |
125 | And then, God knows, what mischief may arise, |
When love links two young people in one fetter, | |
Vile assignations, and adulterous beds, | |
Elopements, broken vows, and hearts, and heads. | |
XVII | |
Shakspeare described the sex in Desdemona | |
130 | As very fair, but yet suspect in fame, |
And to this day from Venice to Verona | |
Such matters may be probably the same, | |
Except that since those times was never known a | |
Husband whom mere suspicion could inflame | |
135 | To suffocate a wife no more than twenty, |
Because she had a ‘cavalier servente.’ | |
XVIII | |
Their jealousy (if they are ever jealous) | |
Is of a fair complexion altogether, | |
Not like that sooty devil of Othello’s | |
140 | Which smothers women in a bed of feather, |
But worthier of these much more jolly fellows, | |
When weary of the matrimonial tether | |
His head for such a wife no mortal bothers, | |
But takes at once another, or another’s. | |
XIX | |
145 | Didst ever see a Gondola? For fear |
You should not, I’ll describe it you exactly: | |
’Tis a long cover’d boat that’s common here, |