And being told it was ‘God’s house,’ she said He was well lodged, but only wonder’d how He suffer’d Infidels in his homestead, The cruel Nazarenes, who had laid low His holy temples in the lands which bred The True Believers:—and her infant brow Was bent with grief that Mahomet should resign A mosque so noble, flung like pearls to swine. O! oh! through meadows managed like a garden, A paradise of hops and high production; For after years of travel by a bard in Countries of greater heat, but lesser suction, A green field is a sight which makes him pardon The absence of that more sublime construction, Which mixes up vines, olives, precipices, Glaciers, volcanos, oranges, and ices. And when I think upon a pot of beer— But I won’t weep!—and so drive on, postilions! As the smart boys spurr’d fast in their career, Juan admired these highways of free millions; A country in all senses the most dear To foreigner or native, save some silly ones, Who ‘kick against the pricks’ just at this juncture, And for their pains get only a fresh puncture. What a delightful thing ’s a turnpike road! So smooth, so level, such a mode of shaving The earth, as scarce the eagle in the broad Air can accomplish, with his wide wings waving. Had such been cut in Phaeton’s time, the god Had told his son to satisfy his craving With the York mail;—but onward as we roll, ‘Surgit amari aliquid’—the toll! Alas, how deeply painful is all payment! Take lives, take wives, take aught except men’s purses: As Machiavel shows those in purple raiment, Such is the shortest way to general curses. They hate a murderer much less than a claimant On that sweet ore which every body nurses;— Kill a man’s family, and he may brook it, But keep your hands out of his breeches’ pocket. So said the Florentine: ye monarchs, hearken To your instructor. Juan now was borne, Just as the day began to wane and darken, O’er the high hill, which looks with pride or scorn Toward the great city.—Ye who have a spark in Your veins of Cockney spirit, smile or mourn According as you take things well or ill;— Bold Britons, we are now on Shooter’s Hill! The sun went down, the smoke rose up, as from A half-unquench’d volcano, o’er a space Which well beseem’d the ‘Devil’s drawing-room,’ As some have qualified that wondrous place: But Juan felt, though not approaching home, As one who, though he were not of the race, Revered the soil, of those true sons the mother, Who butcher’d half the earth, and bullied t’ other. A mighty mass of brick, and smoke, and shipping, Dirty and dusky, but as wide as eye Could reach, with here and there a sail just skipping In sight, then lost amidst the forestry Of masts; a wilderness of steeples peeping On tiptoe through their sea-coal canopy; A huge, dun cupola, like a foolscap crown On a fool’s head—and there is London Town!