Though ’twas Don Juan’s first of fields, and though The nightly muster and the silent march In the chill dark, when courage does not glow So much as under a triumphal arch, Perhaps might make him shiver, yawn, or throw A glance on the dull clouds (as thick as starch, Which stiffen’d heaven) as if he wish’d for day;— Yet for all this he did not run away. Indeed he could not. But what if he had? There have been and are heroes who begun With something not much better, or as bad: Frederic the Great from Molwitz deign’d to run, For the first and last time; for, like a pad, Or hawk, or bride, most mortals after one Warm bout are broken into their new tricks, And fight like fiends for pay or politics. He was what Erin calls, in her sublime Old Erse or Irish, or it may be Punic (The antiquarians who can settle time, Which settles all things, Roman, Greek, or Runic, Swear that Pat’s language sprung from the same clime With Hannibal, and wears the Tyrian tunic Of Dido’s alphabet; and this is rational As any other notion, and not national);— But Juan was quite ‘a broth of a boy,’ A thing of impulse and a child of song; Now swimming in the sentiment of joy, Or the sensation (if that phrase seem wrong), And afterward, if he must needs destroy, In such good company as always throng To battles, sieges, and that kind of pleasure, No less delighted to employ his leisure; But always without malice: if he warr’d Or loved, it was with what we call ‘the best Intentions,’ which form all mankind’s trump card, To be produced when brought up to the test. The statesman, hero, harlot, lawyer—ward Off each attack, when people are in quest Of their designs, by saying they meant well; ’Tis pity ‘that such meaning should pave hell.’ I almost lately have begun to doubt Whether hell’s pavement—if it be so paved— Must not have latterly been quite worn out, Not by the numbers good intent hath saved, But by the mass who go below without Those ancient good intentions, which once shaved And smooth’d the brimstone of that street of hell Which bears the greatest likeness to Pall Mall. Juan, by some strange chance, which oft divides Warrior from warrior in their grim career, Like chastest wives from constant husbands’ sides Just at the close of the first bridal year, By one of those odd turns of Fortune’s tides, Was on a sudden rather puzzled here, When, after a good deal of heavy firing, He found himself alone, and friends retiring. I don’t know how the thing occurr’d—it might Be that the greater part were kill’d or wounded, And that the rest had faced unto the right About; a circumstance which has confounded Caesar himself, who, in the very sight Of his whole army, which so much abounded In courage, was obliged to snatch a shield, And rally back his Romans to the field.