The World’s Wit and Humor: An Encyclopedia in 15 Volumes. 1906.
Lord Byron (1788–1824)Don Juan’s Sea-Sickness
D
According to direction, then received
A lecture and some money: for four springs
He was to travel; and though Inez grieved
(As every kind of parting has its stings),
She hoped he would improve—perhaps believed.
A letter, too, she gave (he never read it)
Of good advice—and two or three of credit.
Brave Inez now set up a Sunday-school
For naughty children, who would rather play
(Like truant rogues) the devil, or the fool.
Infants of three years old were taught that day,
Dunces were whipt, or set upon a stool;
The great success of Juan’s education,
Spurred her to teach another generation.
The wind was fair, the water passing rough;
A devil of a sea rolls in that bay,
As I, who’ve crossed it oft, know well enough;
And, standing upon deck, the dashing spray
Flies in one’s face, and makes it weather-tough;
And there he stood to take, and take again,
His first—perhaps his last—farewell of Spain.
To see one’s native land receding through
The growing waters; it unmans one quite,
Especially when life is rather new.
I recollect Great Britain’s coast looks white,
But almost every other country’s blue,
When gazing on them, mystified by distance,
We enter on our nautical existence.
The wind sung, cordage strained, and sailors swore,
And the ship creaked, the town became a speck,
From which away so fair and fast they bore.
The best of remedies is a beef-steak
Against sea-sickness: try it, sir, before
You sneer, and I assure you this is true,
For I have found it answer—so may you.
Beheld his native Spain receding far:
First partings form a lesson hard to learn,
Even nations feel this when they go to war;
There is a sort of unexprest concern,
A kind of shock that sets one’s heart ajar;
At leaving even the most unpleasant people
And places, one keeps looking at the steeple.
His mother, and a mistress, and no wife,
So that he had much better cause to grieve
Than many persons more advanced in life;
And if we now and then a sigh must heave
At quitting even those we quit in strife,
No doubt we weep for those the heart endears—
That is, till deeper griefs congeal our tears.
By Babel’s waters, still remembering Sion.
I’d weep—but mine is not a weeping Muse,
And such light griefs are not a thing to die on;
Young men should travel, if but to amuse
Themselves; and the next time their servants tie on
Behind their carriages their new portmanteau,
Perhaps it may be lined with this my canto.
While his salt tears dropped into the salt sea,
“Sweets to the sweet” (I like so much to quote;
You must excuse this extract—’tis where she,
The Queen of Denmark, for Ophelia brought
Flowers to the grave); and, sobbing often, he
Reflected on his present situation,
And seriously resolved on reformation.
“Perhaps I may revisit thee no more,
But die, as many an exiled heart hath died,
Of its own thirst to see again thy shore.
Farewell, where Guadalquivir’s waters glide!
Farewell, my mother! And, since all is o’er,
Farewell, too, dearest Julia!” (Here he drew
Her letter out again, and read it through.)
But that’s impossible, and cannot be—
Sooner shall this blue ocean melt to air,
Sooner shall earth resolve itself to sea,
Than I resign thine image, oh, my fair!
Or think of anything excepting thee;
A mind diseased no remedy can physic.”
(Here the ship gave a lurch and he grew sea-sick.)
“Oh, Julia! what is every other woe?
(For God’s sake let me have a glass of liquor;
Pedro, Battista, help me down below.)
Julia, my love! (you rascal, Pedro, quicker)
Oh, Julia! (this curst vessel pitches so)
Beloved Julia, hear me still beseeching!”
(Here he grew inarticulate with retching.)
Or rather stomach, which, alas! attends,
Beyond the best apothecary’s art,
The loss of love, the treachery of friends,
Or death of those we dote on, when a part
Of us dies with them as each fond hope ends.
No doubt he would have been much more pathetic,
But the sea acted as a strong emetic.
Out through a fever caused by its own heat,
But be much puzzled by a cough and cold,
And find a quinsy very hard to treat;
Against all noble maladies he’s bold,
But vulgar illnesses don’t like to meet,
Nor that a sneeze should interrupt his sigh,
Nor inflammations redden his blind eye.
About the lower region of the bowels;
Love, who heroically breathes a vein,
Shrinks from the application of hot towels,
And purgatives are dangerous to his reign,
Sea-sickness death. His love was perfect, how else
Could Juan’s passion, while the billows roar,
Resist his stomach, ne’er at sea before?