If only from the Devil they would insure us,

How pleasant were the maxim (not quite new), "Eat, drink, and love, what can the rest avail us?" So said the royal sage Sardanapalus.1

CCVIII.

But Juan had he quite forgotten Julia?
And should he have forgotten her so soon?
I can't but say it seems to me most truly a
Perplexing question; but, no doubt, the moon
Does these things for us, and whenever newly a
Strong palpitation rises, 't is her boon,

Else how the devil is it that fresh features
Have such a charm for us poor human creatures?

CCIX.

I hate inconstancy-I loathe, detest,

Abhor, condemn, abjure the mortal made
Of such quicksilver clay that in his breast
No permanent foundation can be laid;
Love, constant love, has been my constant guest,
And yet last night, being at a masquerade,
I saw the prettiest creature, fresh from Milan,
Which gave me some sensations like a villain.

CCX.

But soon Philosophy came to my aid,

And whispered, "Think of every sacred tie!"

"I will, my dear Philosophy!" I said,

"But then her teeth, and then, oh, Heaven! her eye! I'll just inquire if she be wife or maid,

Or neither-out of curiosity."

"Stop!" cried Philosophy, with air so Grecian,
(Though she was masqued then as a fair Venetian ;)

CCXI.

"Stop!" so I stopped.-But to return: that which
Men call inconstancy is nothing more
Than admiration due where Nature's rich
Profusion with young beauty covers o'er

1. [Compare Sardanapalus, act i. sc. 2, line 252, Poetical Works, 1901, V. 23, note 1.]

Some favoured object; and as in the niche
A lovely statue we almost adore,
This sort of adoration of the real
Is but a heightening of the beau ideal.

CCXII.

'T is the perception of the Beautiful, A fine extension of the faculties, Platonic, universal, wonderful,

Drawn from the stars, and filtered through the skies, Without which Life would be extremely dull;

In short, it is the use of our own eyes, With one or two small senses added, just To hint that flesh is formed of fiery dust.

CCXIII.

Yet 't is a painful feeling, and unwilling,
For surely if we always could perceive
In the same object graces quite as killing
As when she rose upon us like an Eve,
'T would save us many a heartache, many a shilling,
(For we must get them anyhow, or grieve),
Whereas if one sole lady pleased for ever,
How pleasant for the heart, as well as liver!

CCXIV.

The Heart is like the sky, a part of Heaven,
But changes night and day, too, like the sky;
Now o'er it clouds and thunder must be driven,
And Darkness and Destruction as on high:
But when it hath been scorched, and pierced, and riven,
Its storms expire in water-drops; the eye
Pours forth at last the Heart's blood turned to tears,
Which make the English climate of our years.

CCXV.

The liver is the lazaret of bile,

But very rarely executes its function,
For the first passion stays there such a while,
That all the rest creep in and form a junction,

i. — of ticklish dust.—[MS. Alternative reading.]

Like knots of vipers on a dunghill's soil-1

Rage, fear, hate, jealousy, revenge, compunction

So that all mischiefs spring up from this entrail,

Like Earthquakes from the hidden fire called "central."

CCXVI.

In the mean time, without proceeding more
In this anatomy, I've finished now
Two hundred and odd stanzas as before,i

That being about the number I'll allow
Each canto of the twelve, or twenty-four;
And, laying down my pen, I make my bow,
Leaving Don Juan and Haidée to plead
For them and theirs with all who deign to read.

i. Two hundred stanzas reckoned as before.-[MS.]

1. ["Mr. Hobhouse is at it again about indelicacy. There is no indelicacy. If he wants that, let him read Swift, his great idol; but his imagination must be a dunghill, with a viper's nest in the middle, to engender such a supposition about this poem."-Letter to Murray, May 15, 1819, Letters, 1900, iv. 295.]

CANTO THE THIRD.'

I.

HAIL, Muse! et cetera.-We left Juan sleeping,
Pillowed upon a fair and happy breast,

And watched by eyes that never yet knew weeping,
And loved by a young heart, too deeply blest
To feel the poison through her spirit creeping,
Or know who rested there, a foe to rest,
Had soiled the current of her sinless years,
And turned her pure heart's purest blood to tears!

II.

Oh, Love! what is it in this world of ours

Which makes it fatal to be loved? Ah why With cypress branches hast thou wreathed thy bowers, And made thy best interpreter a sigh?

As those who dote on odours pluck the flowers,

And place them on their breast-but place to die— Thus the frail beings we would fondly cherish Are laid within our bosoms but to perish.

III.

In her first passion Woman loves her lover,
In all the others all she loves is Love,

1. [November 30, 1819. Copied in 1820 (MS. D.). Moore (Life, 421) says that Byron was at work on the third canto when he stayed with him at Venice, in October, 1819. "One day, before dinner, [he] read me two or three hundred lines of it; beginning with the stanzas "Oh Wellington," etc., which, at the time, formed the opening of the third canto, but were afterwards reserved for the commencement of the ninth." The third canto, as it now stands, was completed by November 8, 1819; see Letters, 1900, iv. 375. The date on the MS. may refer to the first fair copy.]

L

Which grows a habit she can ne'er get over,
And fits her loosely-like an easy glove,
As you may find, whene'er you like to prove her :
One man alone at first her heart can move;
She then prefers him in the plural number,
Not finding that the additions much encumber.

IV.

I know not if the fault be men's or theirs ;

But one thing 's pretty sure; a woman planted (Unless at once she plunge for life in prayers)After a decent time must be gallanted; Although, no doubt, her first of love affairs

Is that to which her heart is wholly granted; Yet there are some, they say, who have had none, But those who have ne'er end with only one.1

V.

'T is melancholy, and a fearful sign

Of human frailty, folly, also crime,
That Love and Marriage rarely can combine,
Although they both are born in the same clime;
Marriage from Love, like vinegar from wine-
A sad, sour, sober beverage-by Time
Is sharpened from its high celestial flavour
Down to a very homely household savour.

VI.

There's something of antipathy, as 't were,
Between their present and their future state;

A kind of flattery that 's hardly fair

Is used until the truth arrives too late

Yet what can people do, except despair?

The same things change their names at such a rate; For instance-Passion in a lover 's glorious, But in a husband is pronounced uxorious.

i. And fits her like a stocking or a glove.—[MS. D.]

1. [On peut trouver des femmes qui n'ont jamais eu de galanterie, mais il est rare d'en trouver qui n'en aient jamais eu qu'une."-Réflexions ... du Duc de la Rochefoucauld, No. Ixxiii.

Byron prefixed the maxim as a motto to his "Ode to a Lady whose Lover was killed by a Ball, which at the same time shivered a Portrait next his Heart."-Poetical Works, 1901, iv. 552.]