‘On the rough deep. But this last blow—’ and here He stopp’d again, and turn’d away his face. ‘Ay,’ quoth his friend, ‘I thought it would appear That there had been a lady in the case; And these are things which ask a tender tear, Such as I, too, would shed if in your place: I cried upon my first wife’s dying day, And also when my second ran away: ‘My third—’—‘Your third!’ quoth Juan, turning round; ‘You scarcely can be thirty: have you three?’ ‘No—only two at present above ground: Surely ’tis nothing wonderful to see One person thrice in holy wedlock bound!’ ‘Well, then, your third,’ said Juan; ‘what did she? She did not run away, too,—did she, sir?’ ‘No, faith.’—‘What then?’—‘I ran away from her.’ ‘You take things coolly, sir,’ said Juan. ‘Why,’ Replied the other, ‘what can a man do? There still are many rainbows in your sky, But mine have vanish’d. All, when life is new, Commence with feelings warm, and prospects high; But time strips our illusions of their hue, And one by one in turn, some grand mistake Casts off its bright skin yearly like the snake. ‘’Tis true, it gets another bright and fresh, Or fresher, brighter; but the year gone through, This skin must go the way, too, of all flesh, Or sometimes only wear a week or two;— Love ’s the first net which spreads its deadly mesh; Ambition, Avarice, Vengeance, Glory, glue The glittering lime-twigs of our latter days, Where still we flutter on for pence or praise.’ ‘All this is very fine, and may be true,’ Said Juan; ‘but I really don’t see how It betters present times with me or you.’ ‘No?’ quoth the other; ‘yet you will allow By setting things in their right point of view, Knowledge, at least, is gain’d; for instance, now, We know what slavery is, and our disasters May teach us better to behave when masters.’ ‘Would we were masters now, if but to try Their present lessons on our Pagan friends here,’ Said Juan,—swallowing a heart-burning sigh: ‘Heaven help the scholar whom his fortune sends here!’ ‘Perhaps we shall be one day, by and by,’ Rejoin’d the other, when our bad luck mends here; Meantime (yon old black eunuch seems to eye us) I wish to God that somebody would buy us! ‘But after all, what is our present state? ’Tis bad, and may be better—all men’s lot: Most men are slaves, none more so than the great, To their own whims and passions, and what not; Society itself, which should create Kindness, destroys what little we had got: To feel for none is the true social art Of the world’s stoics—men without a heart.’ Just now a black old neutral personage Of the third sex stept up, and peering over The captives, seem’d to mark their looks and age, And capabilities, as to discover If they were fitted for the purposed cage: No lady e’er is ogled by a lover, Horse by a blackleg, broadcloth by a tailor, Fee by a counsel, felon by a jailor,