Don Juan is a scathing satire upon society. All its fondest idols,—love, faith, and hope,—are dragged in the mire. There is something almost grand in the way that this Titanic scoffer draws pictures of love only to mock at them, sings patriotic songs only to add—
"Thus sung, or would, or could, or should have sung
The modern Greek in tolerable verse,"
and mentions Homer, Milton, and Shakespeare only to show how accidental and worthless is fame.
Amid the splendid confusion of pathos, irony, passion, mockery, keen wit, and brilliant epigram, which display Byron's versatile and spontaneous genius at its height, there are some beautiful and powerful passages. There is an ideal picture of the love of Don Juan and Haidee:—
"Each was the other's mirror, and but read
Joy sparkling in their dark eyes like a gem."
"…they could not be
Meant to grow old, but die in happy spring,
Before one charm or hope had taken wing."
As she lightly slept—
"…her face so fair
Stirr'd with her dream, as rose-leaves with the air;
Or as the stirring of a deep clear stream
Within an Alpine hollow, when the wind
Walks o'er it."
General Characteristics.—The poetry of Wordsworth and Coleridge shows the revolutionary reaction against classicism in literature and tyranny in government; but their verse raises no cry of revolt against the proprieties and moral restrictions of the time. Byron was so saturated with the revolutionary spirit that he rebelled against these also; and for this reason England would not allow him to be buried in Westminster Abbey.
As Byron frequently wrote in the white heat of passionate revolt, his verse shows the effects of lack of restraint. Unfortunately he did not afterwards take the trouble to improve his subject matter, or the mold in which it was cast. Swinburne says, "His verse stumbles and jingles, stammers and halts, where is most need for a swift and even pace of musical sound."