Poèmes et textes

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;
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.

 

Poèmes

Lord Byron

I said that like a picture by Giorgione
Venetian women were, and so they are,
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,
And rather like to show it, more’s the pity!

 

Poèmes

Lord Byron

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,
In many a nameless being we retrace,
whose course, and home we knew not, nor shall know,
Like the lost Pleiad seen no more below.

 

Poèmes

Lord Byron

Love in full life and length, not love ideal,
No, nor ideal beauty, that fine name,
But something better still, so very real,
That the sweet model must have been the same;
A thing that you would purchase, beg, or steal,
Were ‘t not impossible, besides a shame:
The face recalls some face, as’t were with pain,
You once have seen, but ne’er will see again.

 

Poèmes

Lord Byron

Whose tints are truth and beauty at their best;
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 your zest,
And that’s the cause I rhyme upon it so:
‘Tis but a portrait of his son, and wife,
And self; but such a woman! love in life!

 

Poèmes

Lord Byron

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;

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,

 

Poèmes

Lord Byron

Of all the places where the Carnival
Was most facetious in the days of yore,
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,
That sea-born city was in all her glory.

 

Poèmes

Lord Byron

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,
Would rather dine in sin on a ragout —
Dine and be d—d! I don’t mean to be coarse,
But that’s the penalty, to say no worse.

 

Poèmes

Lord Byron

And therefore humbly I would recommend
“The curious in fish-sauce,” before they cross
The sea, to bid their cook, or wife, or friend,
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;

 

Poèmes

Lord Byron

And thus they bid farewell to carnal dishes,
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),
From travellers accustom’d from a boy
To eat their salmon, at the least, with soy;

 

Poèmes

Lord Byron