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(Attributed to Lord Byron, c. 1865)
Se non e vero, e ben trovato.
FROM proud Venetia’s desolated strand | |
| Peruse these traces of a husband’s hand; | |
| Or, if that honoured word offends thy ear, | |
| Read for the sake of him who once was dear. | |
| An exile in a foreign clime I roam, | 5 |
| Expelled thy bed, and driven from my home. | |
| Be this enough to satisfy thy hate, | |
| If not enough my crime to expiate. | |
| My crime!—What was it?—Publish it aloud— | |
| Why thus in mystery thy dudgeon shroud? | 10 |
| Utter thy wrongs; or mine, if just, redress; | |
| Lady, be bold, and prove my wickedness; | |
| Nor let malicious calumny proclaim, | |
| With foulest tongue, dishonour on my name. | |
| Thou know’st, when first I wooed thy maiden vow, | 15 |
| A poet’s laurels decked my youthful brow; | |
| And, thou descended from a noble race, | |
| Whose blazon’d scutcheons might their issue grace, | |
| My pride was not by them alone to shine; | |
| The lustre borrowed I repaid with mine. | 20 |
| Thou know’st, how many matrons spread their wiles, | |
| How many daughters lavished all their smiles! | |
| All these I scorned—that scorn by thee returned, | |
| Whilst others burned for me, for thee I burned, | |
| Till, won at last, I to the altar led | 25 |
| Thy faltering steps: the priest his rubric said. | |
| Thy promised troth to honour and obey | |
| Was faintly pledged, and pledged but to betray, | |
| How rash the mariner would seem to be, | |
| Who launches forth his vessel on the sea | 30 |
| Without a compass, with no lead to sound; | |
| No marks to show the harbour where he’s bound: | |
| Unknown what shoals lie hid, what winds assail, | |
| What fogs mephitic on the coast prevail. | |
| So thoughtless man, who sets his mast afloat | 35 |
| To seek the haven of a petticoat, | |
| Upon an inauspicious strand may run, | |
| And mourn his folly e’er his course is done. | |
| Nay, e’en the morrow’s dawn may see him rise, | |
| In vain regretting his rash enterprise. | 40 |
| Oh! woman, oft the homage you inspire | |
| Is not on you bestowed, but your attire. | |
| For who can say if what delights our eyes | |
| Is nature’s self, or nature in disguise? | |
| The pallid cheek and bloodless lip we see, | 45 |
| But all the rest is clothed in mystery. | |
| In airy dreams imagination strays; | |
| Counts every charm, and, daring, seems to raise | |
| The jealous robe that hides your snowy limbs, | |
| Till, drunk with thought, the brain in pleasure swims. | 50 |
| Vain hopes! which cruel disappointments pay. | |
| That tissue covers only mortal clay. | |
| When marriage comes the gaudy vestments fall, | |
| And all our joys may prove apocryphal. | |
| For when the Abigail’s officious hand | 55 |
| Has loosened here a string, and there a band; | |
| When, slipping to the tag, the bursting lace | |
| Has given you breath; and, rumbling to their place, | |
| The joyous entrails set your flanks at ease; | |
| When nothing veils you but a thin chemise; | 60 |
| The bridegroom’s happy, who, between the sheets, | |
| Without alloy the promised banquet meets. | |
| What lot was mine—and, on my wedding night, | |
| What viands waited for my appetite— | |
| I will not say: but e’en the best repast, | 65 |
| Repeated often, surfeits us at last. | |
| The surfeit came: to this my crime amounts, | |
| I fain would slake my thirst from other founts. | |
| But, not like those, who, with adult’rous steps, | |
| Seek courtesans and hackneyed demireps, | 70 |
| I left thee not beneath a widow’d quilt, | |
| To take another partner of my guilt. | |
| Thy charms were still my refuge—only this, | |
| I hoped to find variety in bliss. | |
| Thou know’st, when married, from the church we came, | 75 |
| Heedless I called thee by thy maiden name. | |
| Unmeaning words!—yet some malignant fiend, | |
| Who under friendship’s garb the poison screened, | |
| Could draw an omen from a verbal slip, | |
| And drug the nuptial chalice at thy lip: | 80 |
| Could bid thee mark that man with evil eye, | |
| Whose thoughts still lingered on celibacy. | |
| Believe it not:—the scene my mind confused, | |
| Of coming joys, and not on past I mused. | |
| I saw the ring upon thy finger shine; | 85 |
| If that could make a wife, I saw thee mine. | |
| The surplice man his mockery had done, | |
| And Mother Church of two had made us one. | |
| Attesting hands had inked the feathered quill, | |
| And yet there seemed a something wanting still; | 90 |
| And yet, I know not why, my tongue denied | |
| To call thee dame, although thou wast my bride. | |
| For still thy virgin look and maiden guise | |
| Were seemings stronger than realities; | |
| Which said, “Beside thee hangs a lovely flower, | 95 |
| Pluck it, ’tis thine: thou only hast the power.” | |
| But nature whispered, till that hour arrived, | |
| Though fools might tell me so, I was not wived. | |
| And Cynthia’s lamp had lit the firmament; | |
| But when lone night had spread her sable tent, | 100 |
| When the flushed bride-maid had her office done, | |
| And ingress to the bridal bow’r was won; | |
| When on thy naked neck a fervent kiss | |
| Announced the prelude of impending bliss; | |
| When, half resisting, yielding half, I pressed | 105 |
| Thy trembling form; when—but thou know’st the rest. | |
| Then, and then only, would my heart avow, | |
| This is the wedding—thou art madam now: | |
| And glibly to my lips the accents came | |
| At next day’s dawn, “How fares it with thee, dame?” | 110 |
| The happy moments in thy arms enjoyed, | |
| Whilst love was new, nor yet possession cloyed. | |
| Our joys, when virgin diffidence was o’er, | |
| I pass in silence: moments now no more. | |
| For oft a bride from modesty restrains | 115 |
| The latent heat that bubbles in her veins. | |
| From coyness checks the impulse that she feels, | |
| And on the sense by slow caresses steals. | |
| Thus passed the fleeting hours, and still had passed, | |
| But fate resolved our nuptial joys to blast. | 120 |
| One day a boon thou seemedst to require. | |
| “Leon, I go to see my honoured sire: | |
| “My mother, too—’tis long since we have met; | |
| “And, loving thee, I must not them forget.” | |
| “Speed thee,” I cried, “and brief, dame, make thy stay | 125 |
| “Dreary’s the husband’s couch whose wife’s away. | |
| “Nor let thy filial piety preclude | |
| “Some lines each day to cheer my solitude.” | |
| When thy much-longed for tablets came, | |
| To tell thy Leon thou wert still the same. | 130 |
| Another letter followed close the first. | |
| With eager hand the waxen seal I burst: | |
| But could I read, and credit what I read: | |
| “Leon, in future think of me as dead. | |
| “Take back the ring which late my finger wore; | 135 |
| “For, though thy wife, thou ne’er wilt see me more.” | |
| Aghast I stood, in motionless surprise, | |
| And whence, thought I, can such a change arise? | |
| At first I hoped there might some error be: | |
| But no! the hand was thine, and sent to me. | 140 |
| Not more amaz’d, while feasting in his hall, | |
| Belshazzar saw the writing on the wall: | |
| Not e’en the felon looks with deeper gloom | |
| Upon the warrant which decides his doom. | |
| In vain I passed my actions in review: | 145 |
| My faults were many, but they were not new. | |
| The harlot’s smile, the wassail’s merriment, | |
| With boon companions all my substance spent; | |
| All this was known before thou wast my bride; | |
| Methought for this ’twas now too late to chide. | 150 |
| Thus mused I long: ’till, with conjecture tired, | |
| Alone and sad I to my couch retired. | |
| The night was cold, the wind tempestuous blew: | |
| My curtain round me mournfully I drew. | |
| And wert thou there (thus to myself I said) | 155 |
| My breast should be a pillow for thy head, | |
| Lock’d in my arms the storm might rage its fill: | |
| ’Twould only make me clasp thee closer still, | |
| Then, as I lay, my memory portrayed | |
| A picture of thy charms; and Love, in aid, | 160 |
| Called up the tender pastimes of the night, | |
| When shame was lulled, and transport at its height. | |
| Yes, truth to tell (I cried) thy form was fair; | |
| Thy skin was alabaster, and thy hair | |
| Fell in profusion down thy taper waist. | 165 |
| And oh! what undulating beauties graced | |
| Those loins whose fall had mocked the sculptor’s hand, | |
| And gained thee worship in a Cnidian land. | |
| Whilst these reflections in my brains ferment, | |
| Sudden their course assumed another bent. | 170 |
| What! if by thoughtless indiscretion led, | |
| Thou couldst betray the secrets of our bed? | |
| I know thy unsuspecting soul too well— | |
| All, all thou would’st, interrogated tell. * * * * * | |
| Oh, lovely woman! by your Maker’s hand | 175 |
| For man’s delight and solace wisely planned. | |
| Thankless is she who nature’s bounty mocks, | |
| Nor gives Love entrance whereso’er he knocks. | |
| The breechless vagrant has no settled spot, | |
| Now seeks the brook, now nestles in the grot. | 180 |
| Where pleasure offers nectar to the lip, | |
| Anon he steals the honied draught to sip. | |
| Shall priest-born prejudice the honey’d draught deny | |
| And send away the thirsty votary? | |
| Matrons of Rome, held ye yourselves disgraced | 185 |
| In yielding to your husband’s wayward taste? | |
| Ah, no!—By tender complaisance ye reign’d: | |
| No wife of wounded modesty complained. | |
| Though Gracchus sometimes his libations poured | |
| In love’s unhallowed vase; yet, still adored | 190 |
| By sage Cornelia, ’twas her pride to be | |
| His paradise, with no forbidden tree. | |
| The blooming damsel, on the wedding night, | |
| Conducted to the hymenaeal fight, | |
| Would pray her lord to spare a virgin’s fear, | 195 |
| And take his restive courser to the rear— | |
| Put off the venue to another place, | |
| And dread the trial more than the disgrace. | |
| But now no couple can in safety lie; | |
| Between the sheets salacious lawyers pry. | 200 |
| Yet nature varies not:—desires we feel, | |
| As Romans felt; but woe if we reveal, | |
| For what were errors then, our happy times | |
| With sainted zeal have registered as crimes. | |
| Lady, inscribed in characters of gold | 205 |
| This adage—“Truth not always must be told.” | |
| Virtues and vices have no certain dye, | |
| But take the colour of society. | |
| The ore which bears the impress of the crown, | |
| Is passed as standard money through the town; | 210 |
| But what we fashion into private plate, | |
| We keep at home and never circulate. | |
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