The Works of Lord Byron Volume VI Part 30

{130}[bv]

_For without heart Love is not quite so good_; _Ceres is commissary to our bellies_, _And Love, which also much depends on food_: _While Bacchus will provide with wine and jellies_-- _Oysters and eggs are also living food_.--[MS.]

[bw]

_He was her own, her Ocean lover, cast_ _To be her soul's first idol, and its last_.--[MS.]

{131}[bx] _And saw the sunset and the rising moon_.--[MS.]

{132}[161] [The MS. and the editions of 1819, 1823, 1828, read "woman."

The edition of 1833 reads "women." The text follows the MS. and the earlier editions.]

[162] [Compare stanza prefixed to Dedication, vide ante, p. 2.]

[163] [Compare--

"Yes! thy Sherbet to-night will sweetly flow, See how it sparkles in its vase of snow!"

_Corsair_, Canto I. lines 427, 428, _Poetical Works_, 1900, iii. 242.]

[by]

_A pleasure naught but drunkenness can bring:_ _For not the blest sherbet all chilled with snow._ _Nor the full sparkle of the desert-spring,_ _Nor wine in all the purple of its glow_.--[MS.]

{134}[bz] _Spread like an Ocean, varied, vast, and bright._--[MS.]

[ca]

_---- I'm sure they never reckoned;_ _And being joined--like swarming bees they clung,_ _And mixed until the very pleasure stung._

or,

_And one was innocent, but both too young,_ _Their hearts the flowers, etc_.--[MS.]

{135}[cb]

_In all the burning tongues the Pa.s.sions teach_ _They had no further feeling, hope, nor care_ _Save one, and that was Love_.--[MS. erased.]

{136}[cc]

_Pillowed upon her beating heart--which panted With the sweet memory of all it granted_.--[MS.]

{138}[cd] _Some drown themselves, some in the vices grovel_.--[MS.]

[164] [Lady Caroline Lamb's _Glenarvon_ was published in 1816. For Byron's farewell letter of dismissal, which Lady Caroline embodied in her novel (vol. iii. chap. ix.), see _Letters_, 1898, ii. 135, note 1.

According to Medwin (_Conversations_, 1824, p. 274), Madame de Stael catechized Byron with regard to the relation of the story to fact.]

{139}[ce]

_In their sweet feelings holily united,_ _By Solitude (soft parson) they were wed_.--[MS.]

[165] [t.i.tus 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.]

[166] [Caesar's third wife, Pompeia, was suspected of infidelity with Clodius (see Langhorne's _Plutarch_, 1838, p. 498); Pompey's third wife, Mucia, intrigued with Caesar (_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).]

{140}[167] [Compare _Sardanapalus_, act i. sc. 2, line 252, _Poetical Works_, 1901, v. 23, note 1.]

{141}[cf] _--of ticklish dust_.--[MS. Alternative reading.]

{142}[168] ["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.]

[cg] _Two hundred stanzas reckoned as before._--[MS.]

CANTO THE THIRD.[169]

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 pa.s.sion Woman loves her lover, In all the others all she loves is Love, Which grows a habit she can ne'er get over, And fits her loosely--like an easy glove,[ch]

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 enc.u.mber.

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_.[170]

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--Pa.s.sion in a lover's glorious, But in a husband is p.r.o.nounced uxorious.

VII.

Men grow ashamed of being so very fond; They sometimes also get a little tired (But that, of course, is rare), and then despond: The same things cannot always be admired, Yet 't is "so nominated in the bond,"[171]

That both are tied till one shall have expired.

Sad thought! to lose the spouse that was adorning Our days, and put one's servants into mourning.

VIII.

There's doubtless something in domestic doings Which forms, in fact, true Love's ant.i.thesis; Romances paint at full length people's wooings, But only give a bust of marriages; For no one cares for matrimonial cooings, There's nothing wrong in a connubial kiss: Think you, if Laura had been Petrarch's wife, He would have written sonnets all his life?[ci]