3)9

tiOtf Ju AN.

¥e could not know where lies a thing so fair.

No stone is there to show, no toDgue to say,

What was; no dirge, except the hollow sea's,Mourns o’er the beauty of the Cyclades .

Lxxiir.

But many a Greek maid in a loving song*

Sighs o’er her name; and many an islanderWith her sire’s story makes the night less long;

Valour was his, and beauty dwelt with her:

If she lov’d rashly, her life paid for wrong—

A heavy price must all pay •Who thus err,

In some shape; let none think to fly the danger,For soon or late Love is his own aveeger.

LXXIV.

But let me change this theme, which grows toosad,

And lay this Rheet of sorrows on the shelf;

I don’t much like describing people mad,

For fear of seeming rather touch’d myself—Besides, I’ve no more on this head to add;

And, as my Muse is a capricious elf,

We’ll put about, and try another tackWith Juan, left half-kill’d, some stanzas hack.

LXXV.

"Wounded and fetter’d, cabin'd, cribb’d, confin’d,"Some days and nights elapsed before that heCould altogether call the past to mind;

And when he did, he found himself at sea,Sailing six knots an hour befOTe the wind;

The shores of Ilion lay beneath their lee—^Another time he might have lik’d to see ’em,

But now was not much pleas’d with Cape Sigeeum.

LWXVI.

There, on the green and village-cotted hill, isvFlank’d by the Hellespont and by the sea)Entomb’d the bravest of the brave, Achilles;

They say bo— Bryant says the contrary):

And further downward, tall and towering still, isThe tumulus—of whom? Heaven knows; ’tmaybe

Fatroclus, Ajax, or Protesilaus;

All heroes, who, if living still, would slay ua

T.XXVII

High barrows, without marble or a name,

A vast, untiil’d, and mountain-skirted plain,

And Ida, in the distance, still the same,

And old Scamauder (if ’tis he) remain;

The situation seems still form'd for fame—

-A hundred thousand men might fight again,

With ease; but where I sought for Ilion's walls,•The quiet sheep feeds, and the tortoise crawls.

ixxviir.

Troops of untended horses; here and thereSome little hamlets, with new names uiicouth;Some shepherds (unlike Paris), led to stareA moment at the European youth,w hom to the spot their school-boy feelings boar;

A Turk, with beads in hand and pipe in mouth,extremely taken with his own religion,

A re what I found there, but the devil a Phrygian.

ttfxix.

Don Juan, here permitted to emergeFrom his dull cabin, found himself a slave;Forlorn, and gazing on the deep blue surge,O’ershadow’d there by many a hero’s grave;Weak still with loss of blood, he scare could urgeA few brief questions; and the answers gaveNo very satisfactory informationAbout his past or present situation.

LXXX.

Ho saw some fellow captives, who appear'dTo be Italians , as they were, in fact;

From them, at least, their destiny he heard,

Which was an odd one; a troop going to actIn Sicily —all singers, duly rear’dIn their vocation, had not been attack’d,

In sailing from Livorno , by the pirate,

But sold by the impresario, at no high rate,*

LXXXT.

By one of these, the buffo of the party,

Juan was told about their curious case;

For although destined to the Turkish mart, haStill kept his spirits up—at least his face;

The little fellow really look’d quite hearty,

And bore him with some gaiety and grace,Showing a much more reconcil’d demeanour,

Than did the prima donna and the tenor.

LXXXII.

In a few words he told their hapless story,

Saying. “ Our Machiavellian impresario,

Making a signal off some promontory,

Hail ’d a strange brig; Corpo di Caio MariolWe were transferr’d on board her, in a hurry,Without a single scudo of salario;

But if the sultan has a ta9to for song.

We will revive our fortunes before long.

LXXXIII.

** The prima donna, though a little old,

And haggard with a dissipated life,

And subject, when the house is thin, to cold,

Has some good notes: and then the tenor’s wifeWith no great voice, is pleasing to behold;

Last carnival, she made a deal of strife,

By carrying off Count Cesare CicognaFrom an old Roman princess, at Bologna.

LXXXIV.

“ And then there are the dancers; there’s tlieNinl,With more than one profession; gains by ail;Then there’s that laughing slut the Pelegrini,

She, too, was fortunate, last carnival,

And made at least five hundred good zecchini,

But spends so fast, she has not now a paul;

And then there’s the Grotescar—such a dancer!Where men have souls or bodies, she must answer.

LXXXV.

“ As for the flguranti, they are likeThe rest of all that tribe; with here and thereA pretty person, which perhaps may strike,

The rest are hardly fitted for a fair;

* This is a fact. A few years ago a man engaged a company for some foreign theatre; embarked theman Italian port, and, carrying them to Algeria , sold them all. One of the women, returned from her^aptivity, I heard sing, by a strange coincidence, in Rossini’s opera of “LTtalianain Algeria,” at Venice,m the beginning of 1817,