The stars from out the sky, than not be free

As are the billows when the breeze is briskThough such a she's a devil (if that there be one) Yet she would make full many a Manichean.

IV.

Thrones, worlds, et cetera, are so oft upset
By commonest Ambition, that when Passion
O'erthrows the same, we readily forget,

Or at the least forgive, the loving rash one.
If Antony be well remembered yet,

'Tis not his conquests keep his name in fashion; But Actium, lost for Cleopatra's eyes, Outbalance all the Cæsars' victories.

V.

He died at fifty for a queen of forty;

I wish their years had been fifteen and twenty, For then wealth, kingdoms, worlds are but a sport-I Remember when, though I had no great plenty Of worlds to lose, yet still, to pay my court, I

Gave what I had a heart:-as the world went, I Gave what was worth a world; for worlds could never Restore me those pure feelings, gone for ever.

VI.

'Twas the boy's "mite;" and like the "widow's" may Perhaps be weighed hereafter, if not now;

But whether such things do or do not weigh,
All who have loved, or love, will still allow
Life has nought like it. God is love, they say,
And Love's a God, or was before the brow
Of Earth was wrinkled by the sins and tears
Of-but Chronology best knows the years.

VII.

We left our hero and third heroine in

A kind of state more awkward than uncommon, For gentlemen must sometimes risk their skin For that sad tempter, a forbidden woman: Sultans too much abhor this sort of sin,

And don't agree at all with the wise Roman, Heroic, stoic Cato, the sententious,

Who lent his lady to his friend Hortensius.

VIII.

I know Gulbeyaz was extremely wrong;
I own it, I deplore it, I condemn it;
But I detest all fiction, even in song,

And so must tell the truth, howe'er you blame it.
Her reason being weak, her passion strong, [claim it)
She thought that her lord's heart (even could she
Was scarce enough; for he had fifty-nine
Years, and a fifteen-hundredth concubine.

IX.

I am not, like Cassio, "an arithmetician,"
But by "the bookish theoric" it appears,
If 'tis summed up with feminine precision,
That, adding to the account bis Highness' years,
The fair Sultana erred from inanition;

For were the Sultan just to all his dears,

She could but claim the fifteenth hundred part
Of what should be monopoly-the heart.

X.

It is observed that ladies are litigious
Upon all legal objects of possession,

And not the least so when they are religious,

Which doubles what they think of the transgression

With suits and prosecutions they besiege us,
As the tribunals show through many a session,
When they suspect that any one goes shares
In that to which the law makes them sole heirs.

XI.

Now if this holds good in a Christian land,
The heathen also, though with lesser latitude,
Are apt to carry things with a high hand,

And take, what kings call" an imposing attitude;" And for their rights conuubial make a stand,

When their liege husbands treat them with ingratitude; And as four wives must have quadruple claims, The Tigris hath its jealousies like Thames.

XII.

Gulbeyaz was the fourth, and (as I said)

The favourite; but what's favour amongst four?
Polygamy may well be held in dread,
Not only as a sin, but as a bore:

Most wise men with one moderate woman wed,
Will scarcely find philosophy for more;

And all (except Mahometans) forbear
To make the nuptial couch a " Bed of Ware."

XIII.

His Highness, the sublimest of mankind,—
So styled according to the usual forms
Of every monarch, till they are consigned
To those sad hungry jacobins the worms,
Who on the very loftiest kings have dined,-
His Highness gazed upon Gulbeyaz' charms,
Expecting all the welcome of a lover,

(A "Highland welcome" all the wide world over.)

XIV.

Now here we should distinguish; for howe'er

Kisses, sweet words, embraces, and all that, May look like what is-neither here nor there, They are put on as easily as a hat,

Or rather bonnet, which the fair sex wear,
Trimmed either heads or hearts to decorate,
Which form an ornament, but no more part
Of heads, than their caresses of the heart.

XV.

A slight blush, a soft tremor, a calm kind
Of gentle feminine delight, and shown
More in the eyelids than the eyes, designed
Rather to hide what pleases most unknown,
Are the best tokens (to a modest mind)

Of love, when seated on his loveliest throne,
A sincere woman's breast,—for over warm
Or over cold annihilates the charm.

XVI.

For over warmth, if false, is worse than truth; If true, 'tis no great lease of its own fire; For no one, save in very early youth,

Would like (I think) to trust all to desire, Which is but a precarious bond, in sooth,

And apt to be transferred to the first buyer At a sad discount: while your over chilly Women, on t'other hand, seem somewhat silly.

XVII.

That is, we cannot pardon their bad taste, For so it seems to lovers swift or slow, Who fain would have a mutual flame confest, And see a sentimental passion glow,

Even were St. Francis' paramour their guest,
In his Monastic Concubine of Snow ;—
In short, the maxim for the amorous tribe is
Horatian" Medio tu tutissimus ibis."

XVIII.

The "tu" 's too much,-but let it stand-the verse Requires it, that's to say, the English rhyme, And not the pink of old Hexameters;

But, after all, there's neither tune nor time In the last line, which cannot well be worse, And was thrust in to close the octave's chime: I own no prosody can ever rate it

As a rule, but Truth may, if you translate it.

XIX

If fair Gulbeyaz overdid her part,

I know not-it succeeded, and success
Is much in most things, not less in the heart
Than other articles of female dress.

Self-love in man too beats all female art;

They lie, we lie, all lie, but love no less: And no one virtue yet, except Starvation, Could stop that worst of vices-Propagation.

XX.

We leave this royal couple to repose;

A bed is not a throne, and they may sleep,
Whate'er their dreams be, if of joys or woes;
Yet disappointed joys are woes as deep
As any man's clay mixture undergoes.

Our least of sorrows are such as we weep;
"Tis the vile daily drop on drop which wears
The soul out (like the stone) with petty cares.