Our hearts first in the depths of Lethe's spring,
Ere what we least wish to behold will sleep:
Thetis baptized her mortal son in Styx ;(1)
A mortal mother would on Lethe fix. (2)

V.

Some have accused me of a strange design
Against the creed and morals of the land, (3)
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 were to be a moment merry,

A novel word in my vocabulary.

(1) [Achilles is said to have been dipped by his mother in the river Styx, to render him invulnerable.]

(2)

["a slow and silent stream, Lethe, the river of oblivion, rolls

Her watery labyrinth, whereof who drinks
Forthwith his former state and being forgets,
Forgets both joy and grief, pleasure and pain."

Paradise Lost, b. vi.]

(3) ["Lord Byron is the very Comus of poetry, who, by the bewitching airiness of his numbers, aims to turn the moral world into a herd of monsters."-WATKINS.

66 Deep as Byron has dipped his pen into vice, he has dipped it still deeper into immorality. Alas! he shines only to mislead-he flashes only to destroy."- COLTON.

"In Don Juan he is highly profane; but, in that poem, the profaneness is in keeping with all the other qualities, and religion comes in for a sneer, or a burlesque, only in common with every thing that is dear and valuable to us as moral and social beings."— Ecl. Rev.

"Dost thou aspire, like a Satanic mind,

With vice to waste and desolate mankind?
Toward every rude and dark and dismal deed
To see them hurrying on with swifter speed?

To make them, from restraint and conscience free,

Bad as thyself, or worse-if such can be?"— COTTLE.]

VI.

To the kind reader of our sober clime

This way of writing will appear exotic; Pulci was sire of the half-serious rhyme, (1) Who sang when chivalry was more Quixotic, And revell'd in the fancies of the time, [despotic; True knights, chaste dames, huge giants, kings 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. (2)`

VIII.

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

With his rude scythe 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.

(1) [See aniè, Vol. XI. p. 187.]

(2)

["Cum canerem reges et prælia, Cynthius aurem
Vellit, et admonuit."- VIRG. Ecl. vi.]

IX.

Their faces were not made for wrinkles, their

Pure blood to stagnate, their great hearts to fail; The blank grey 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 Damm'd from its fountain -the child from the knee And breast maternal wean'd at once for ever,Would wither less than these two torn apart; (1) Alas! there is no instinct like the heart

XI.

The heart-which may be broken: happy they! Thrice fortunate! who of that fragile mould, The precious porcelain of human clay,

Break with the first fall: they can ne'er behold The long year link'd with heavy day on day, And all which must be borne, and never told; While life's strange principle will often lie Deepest in those who long the most to die.

(1) [MS.-.

" from its mother's knee When its last weaning draught is drain'd for ever, The child divided - it were less to see,

Than these two from each other torn apart."]

XII.

"Whom the gods love die young," was said of

yore, (1)

And many deaths do they escape by this:

The death of friends, and that which slays even

more

The death of friendship, love, youth, all that is, Except mere breath; and since the silent shore

Awaits at last even those who longest miss The old archer's shafts, perhaps the early grave Which men weep over may be meant to save.(2)

XIII.

Haidée and Juan thought not of the dead. [them: The heavens, and earth, and air, seem'd made for They found no fault with Time, save that he fled; They saw not in themselves aught to condemn : Each was the other's mirror, and but read

Joy sparkling in their dark eyes like a gem, And knew such brightness was but the reflection Of their exchanging glances of affection.

XIV.

The gentle pressure, and the thrilling touch,

The least glance better understood than words, Which still said all, and ne'er could say too much; A language, too, but like to that of birds, Known but to them, at least appearing such As but to lovers a true sense affords;

Sweet playful phrases, which would seem absurd To those who have ceased to hear such, or ne'er heard:

(1) See Herodotus.

(2) ["The less of this cold world, the more of Heaven "- MILMAN.]

XV.

All these were theirs, for they were children still,
And children still they should have ever been;
They were not made in the real world to fill
A busy character in the dull scene,
But like two beings born from out a rill,
A nymph and her beloved, all unseen

To pass

their lives in fountains and on flowers,

And never know the weight of human hours.

XVI.

Moons changing had roll'd on, and changeless found
Those their bright rise had lighted to such joys
As rarely they beheld throughout their round;

And these were not of the vain kind which cloys,
For theirs were buoyant spirits, never bound

By the mere senses; and that which destroys (1)
Most love, possession, unto them appear'd
A thing which each endearment more endear'd.

god

XVII.

Oh beautiful! and rare as beautiful!

But theirs was love in which the mind delights
To lose itself, when the old world grows dull,

And we are sick of its hack sounds and sights,
Intrigues, adventures of the common school,
Its petty passions, marriages, and flights,
Where Hymen's torch but brands one strumpet more,
Whose husband only knows her not a wh—re.

mariage

(1) [MS,-"For theirs were buoyant spirits, which would bound
'Gainst common failings," &c.]