Beauty upon the beautiful they lighted: Ocean their witness, and the cave their bed, By their own feelings hallowed and united, Their priest was Solitude, and they were wed: And they were happy-for to their young eyes Each was an angel, and earth Paradise. CCV. Oh, Love! of whom great Cæsar was the suitor, Horace, Catullus, scholars-Ovid tutor— Sappho the sage blue-stocking, in whose grave CCVI. Thou mak'st the chaste connubial state precarious, Have much employed the Muse of History's pen: Their lives and fortunes were extremely various, Such worthies Time will never see again; Yet to these four in three things the same luck holds, They all were heroes, conquerors, and cuckolds. CCVII. Thou mak'st philosophers; there's Epicurus i. In their sweet feelings holily united, By Solitude (soft parson) they were wed.—[MS.] 1. [Titus forebore to marry "Incesta" Berenice (see Juv., Sat. vi. 158), the daughter of Agrippa I., and wife of Herod, King of Chalcis, out of regard to the national prejudice against intermarriage with an alien.] 2. [Cæsar's third wife, Pompeia, was suspected of infidelity with Clodius (see Langhorne's Plutarch, 1838, p. 498); Pompey's third wife, Mucia, intrigued with Cæsar (vide ibid., p. 447); Mahomet's favourite wife, Ayesha, on one occasion incurred suspicion; Antonina, the wife of Belisarius, was notoriously profligate (see Gibbon's Decline and Fall, 1825, iii. 432, 102).] 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? Else how the devil is it that fresh features CCIX. I hate inconstancy-I loathe, detest, Abhor, condemn, abjure the mortal made 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, CCXI. "Stop!" so I stopped. But to return: that which Than admiration due where Nature's rich 1. [Compare Sardanapalus, act i. sc. 2, line 252, Poetical Works, 1901, v. 23, note 1.] Some favoured object; and as in the niche 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, CCXIV. The Heart is like the sky, a part of Heaven, Pours forth at last the Heart's blood turned to tears, CCXV. The liver is the lazaret of bile, But very rarely executes its function, 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 And, laying down my pen, I make my bow, 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, 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, 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.] |