Don Juan 08-086 ~ 090

Don Juan 08-086
Canto the Eighth
 
     LXXXVI
But then the fact's a fact -- and 't is the part
     Of a true poet to escape from fiction
Whene'er he can; for there is little art
     In leaving verse more free from the restriction
Of truth than prose, unless to suit the mart
     For what is sometimes called poetic diction,
And that outrageous appetite for lies
Which Satan angles with for souls, like flies.

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Don Juan 08-087
Canto the Eighth
 
     LXXXVII
The city's taken, but not render'd! -- No!
     There's not a Moslem that hath yielded sword:
The blood may gush out, as the Danube's flow
     Rolls by the city wall; but deed nor word
Acknowledge aught of dread of death or foe:
     In vain the yell of victory is roar'd
By the advancing Muscovite -- the groan
Of the last foe is echoed by his own.

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Don Juan 08-088
Canto the Eighth
 
     LXXXVIII
The bayonet pierces and the sabre cleaves,
     And human lives are lavish'd everywhere,
As the year closing whirls the scarlet leaves
     When the stripp'd forest bows to the bleak air,
And groans; and thus the peopled city grieves,
     Shorn of its best and loveliest, and left bare;
But still it falls in vast and awful splinters,
As oaks blown down with all their thousand winters.

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Don Juan 08-089
Canto the Eighth
 
     LXXXIX
It is an awful topic -- but 't is not
     My cue for any time to be terrific:
For checker'd as is seen our human lot
     With good, and bad, and worse, alike prolific
Of melancholy merriment, to quote
     Too much of one sort would be soporific; --
Without, or with, offence to friends or foes,
I sketch your world exactly as it goes.

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Don Juan 08-090
Canto the Eighth
 
     XC
And one good action in the midst of crimes
     Is "quite refreshing," in the affected phrase
Of these ambrosial, Pharisaic times,
     With all their pretty milk-and-water ways,
And may serve therefore to bedew these rhymes,
     A little scorch'd at present with the blaze
Of conquest and its consequences, which
Make epic poesy so rare and rich.


George Gordon Byron, Lord Byron (1788-1824) 
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