CANTO THE SIXTH.1

I.

"THERE is a tide in the affairs of men,

Which, taken at the flood,"-you know the rest,2 And most of us have found it now and then :

At least we think so, though but few have guessed The moment, till too late to come again.

But no doubt everything is for the best

Of which the surest sign is in the end:

When things are at the worst they sometimes mend.

II.

There is a tide in the affairs of women,

Which, taken at the flood, leads-God knows where : Those navigators must be able seamen

Whose charts lay down its currents to a hair;

Not all the reveries of Jacob Behmen 3

With its strange whirls and eddies can compare:

1. [Two MSS. (A, B) are extant, A in Byron's handwriting, Ba transcription by Mrs. Shelley. The variants are marked respectively MS. A., MS. B.

Motto: "Thinkest thou that because thou art virtuous there shall be no more cakes and ale? Aye! and ginger shall be hot in the mouth too."-Twelfth Night, or What You Will, Shakespeare, act ii. sc. 3, lines 109-112.-[MS. B.]

This motto, in an amended form, which was prefixed to the First Canto in 1833, appears on the title-page of the first edition of Cantos VI., VII., VIII., published by John Hunt in 1823.]

2. [See Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, act iv. sc. 3, lines 216, 217.]

3. Jacob Behmen (or Boehm) stands for "mystic." Byron twice compares him with Wordsworth (see Letters, 1899, iii. 239, 1900, iv. 238).]

Men with their heads reflect on this and that

But women with their hearts on Heaven knows what !i

III.

And yet a headlong, headstrong, downright She,
Young, beautiful, and daring—who would risk
A throne-the world-the universe-to be

Beloved in her own way-and rather whisk
The stars from out the sky, than not be free i

As are the billows when the breeze is briskThough such a She's a devil (if 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 Anthony be well remembered yet,

'T is not his conquests keep his name in fashion, But Actium, lost for Cleopatra's eyes,

Outbalances all Cæsar's victories."

V.

iii.

He died at fifty for a queen of forty;

iv.

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

i. Man with his head reflects (as Spurzheim tells),
But Woman with the heart-or something else.
or, Man's pensive part is (now and then) the head,
Woman's the heart or anything instead.-

ii. Like to a Comet's tail

[MS. A. Alternative reading.] —.—[MS. A. erased.]

iii. O'erbalance all the Cæsar's victories.-[MS. A.]
Outbalance all the Caesar's victories.-[MS. B.]

In the Shelley copy "o'erbalance" has been erased and "outbalance" inserted in Byron's handwriting. The lines must have been intended to run thus

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

iv. I wish that they had been eighteen —.—[MS. A. erased.]

Of worlds to lose, yet still, to pay my court, I

Gave what I had-a heart;1 as the world went, I Gave what was worth a world; for worlds could never Restore me those pure feelings, gone for ever.

VI.

'T was 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.2

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 passions strong,

She thought that her Lord's heart (even could she claim it)

1. [To Mary Chaworth. Compare "Our union would have healed feuds... it would have joined lands broad and rich; it would have joined at least one heart."-Detached Thoughts, 1821, Letters, 1901, V. 441.]

2. [Cato gave up his wife Martia to his friend Hortensius; but, on the death of the latter, took her back again. This conduct was censured by Cæsar, who observed that Cato had an eye to the main chance. "It was the wealth of Hortensius. He lent the young man his wife, that he might make her a rich widow."-Langhorne's Plutarch, 1838, pp. 539, 547.]

Was scarce enough; for he had fifty-nine
Years, and a fifteen-hundredth concubine.

IX.

" 1

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

For, were the Sultan just to all his dears,
She could but claim the fifteen-hundredth 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,i

Are apt to carry things with a high hand,

And take, what Kings call "an imposing attitude;

And for their rights connubial 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:

i.

· though with greater latitude.—MS. A.]

1. [Othello, act i. sc. 1, lines 19-24.]

Most wise men with one moderate woman wed,i.
Will scarcely find philosophy for more;
And all (except Mahometans) forbear

To make the nuptial couch a "Bed of Ware." 1

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 it 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, resigned
Rather to hide what pleases most unknown,

i.

with one foolish woman wed.—[MS. B.}

ii. His Highness the sublimest of mankind,
The greatest, wisest, bravest, [and the] best,
Proved by his edicts somewhat blind,

Who saw his virtues as they saw the rest-
His Highness quite connubially inclined

Had deigned that night to be Gulbeyaz' guest.—MS. A.]

iii. May look like what I need not mention here.—[MS. A.]

iii.

1. [The famous bed, measuring twelve feet square, to which an allusion is made by Shakespeare in Twelfth Night, act iii. sc. 2, line 44, was formerly preserved at the Saracen's Head at Ware, in Hertfordshire. The bed was removed from Ware to the Rye House in 1869.] 2. See Waverley [chap. xx.].