And how should the most fierce of all be firm?
Would you have endless lightning in the skies?
Methinks Love's very title says enough:
How should "the tender passion" e'er be tough?

XCV.

Alas! by all experience, seldom yet

(I merely quote what I have heard from many) Had lovers not some reason to regret

The passion which made Solomon a zany." I've also seen some wives (not to forget

The marriage state, the best or worst of any) Who were the very paragons of wives,

Yet made the misery of at least two lives.".

XCVI.

iii.

I've also seen some female friends1 ('t is odd,"
But true-as, if expedient, I could prove)
That faithful were through thick and thin, abroad,iv.
At home, far more than ever yet was Love-
Who did not quit me when Oppression trod

Upon me; whom no scandal could remove;
Who fought, and fight, in absence, too, my battles,
Despite the snake Society's loud rattles.

XCVII.

Whether Don Juan and chaste Adeline
Grew friends in this or any other sense,

i. Alas! I quote experience-seldom yet

I had a paramour-and I've had many-
Whom I had not some reason to regret-
For whom I did not make myself a

ii. I also had a wife-not to forget

Zany.-[MS.]

The marriage state-the best or worst of any,
Who was the very paragon of wives

many

Yet made the misery of both our

several

lives.-[MS. erased.]

iii. I also had some female friends-by G-d!

Or if the oath seem strong-I swear by Jove !-[MS.]

-.-[MS. erased.]

iv. Who stuck to me.-.

1. [Lady Holland, Lady Jersey, Madame de Staël, and before and above all, his sister, Mrs. Leigh.]

Will be discussed hereafter, I opine:

At present I am glad of a pretence
To leave them hovering, as the effect is fine,
And keeps the atrocious reader in suspense ;
The surest way-for ladies and for books—
To bait their tender-or their tenter-hooks.

XCVIII.

Whether they rode, or walked, or studied Spanish,
To read Don Quixote in the original,
A pleasure before which all others vanish;

Whether their talk was of the kind called "small,"

Or serious, are the topics I must banish

To the next Canto; where perhaps I shall Say something to the purpose, and display Considerable talent in my way.

XCIX.

Above all, I beg all men to forbear
Anticipating aught about the matter:
They'll only make mistakes about the fair,
And Juan, too, especially the latter.
And I shall take a much more serious air

Than I have yet done, in this Epic Satire.
It is not clear that Adeline and Juan

Will fall; but if they do, 't will be their ruin.

C.

But great things spring from little :-Would you think,
That in our youth, as dangerous a passion

As e'er brought Man and Woman to the brink
Of ruin, rose from such a slight occasion,
As few would ever dream could form the link
Of such a sentimental situation?

You'll never guess, I'll bet you millions, milliards —
It all sprung from a harmless game at billiards.

CI.

"T is strange, but true; for Truth is always strange— Stranger than fiction: if it could be told,

1. [Byron must have been among the first to naturalize the French milliard (a thousand millions), which was used by Voltaire.]

How much would novels gain by the exchange!

How differently the World would men behold! How oft would Vice and Virtue places change!

The new world would be nothing to the old,
If some Columbus of the moral seas
Would show mankind their Souls' antipodes.

CII.

1

What "antres vast and deserts idle," 1 then,
Would be discovered in the human soul !
What icebergs in the hearts of mighty men,

With self-love in the centre as their Pole !
What Anthropophagi are nine of ten

Of those who hold the kingdoms in control! Were things but only called by their right name, Cæsar himself would be ashamed of Fame.2

1. [Othello, act i. sc. 3, line 140.]
2. B. March 4th 1823.-[MS.]

CANTO THE FIFTEENTH.

I.

AH!-What should follow slips from my reflection;
Whatever follows ne'ertheless may be
As à-propos of Hope or Retrospection,

As though the lurking thought had followed free.
All present life is but an Interjection,

An "Oh!" or "Ah!" of Joy or Misery,

Or a "Ha! ha!" or "Bah!"-a yawn, or "Pooh!" Of which perhaps the latter is most true.

II.

But, more or less, the whole 's a Syncopé
Or a Singultus-emblems of Emotion,
The grand Antithesis to great Ennui, ›

Wherewith we break our bubbles on the OceanThat Watery Outline of Eternity,

Or miniature, at least, as is my notion-
Which ministers unto the Soul's delight,
In seeing matters which are out of sight.1

III.

But all are better than the sigh suppressed,

Corroding in the cavern of the heart,

1. [It is impossible to persuade the metaphor to march "on allfours," but, to drag it home, by a kind of "frog's march," the unfulfilled wants of the soul, the "lurking thoughts" are as it were bubbles, which we would fain "break on the invisible Ocean" of Passion or Emotion the begetter of bubbles-Passion which, like the visible Ocean, images Eternity and portrays, but not to the sensual eye, the beatific vision of the things which are not seen, and, even so, "ministers to the Soul's delight"! But "who can tell "?]

Making the countenance a masque of rest
And turning Human Nature to an art.
Few men dare show their thoughts of worst or best;
Dissimulation always sets apart

A corner for herself; and, therefore, Fiction
Is that which passes with least contradiction.

IV.

Ah! who can tell? Or rather, who can not
Remember, without telling, Passion's errors?
The drainer of Oblivion, even the sot,

Hath got blue devils for his morning mirrors:
What though on Lethe's stream he seem to float,
He cannot sink his tremours or his terrors;
The ruby glass that shakes within his hand
Leaves a sad sediment of Time's worst sand.

V.

And as for Love-O Love!We will proceed :-
The Lady Adeline Amundeville,

A pretty name as one would wish to read,
Must perch harmonious on my tuneful quill.
There's Music in the sighing of a reed;

There's Music in the gushing of a rill;
There's Music in all things, if men had ears:
Their Earth is but an echo of the Spheres.

VI.

The Lady Adeline, Right Honourable,

And honoured, ran a risk of growing less so; For few of the soft sex are very stable

In their resolves-alas! that I should say so;
They differ as wine differs from its label,

When once decanted;-I presume to guess so,
But will not swear: yet both upon occasion,
Till old, may undergo adulteration.

VII.

But Adeline was of the purest vintage,

The unmingled essence of the grape; and yet

i. While all without's indicative of rest.-[MS. erased.] VOL. VI.

2 N