To the kind reader of our sober clime
This way of writing will appear exotic;
Pulci4 was sire of the half-serious rhyme,
Who sang when chivalry was more Quixotic,
45 And revell'd in the fancies of the time, True knights, chaste dames, huge giants, kings despotic;
But all these, save the last, being obsolete,
I chose a modern subject as more meet. 7
How I have treated it, I do not know;
50 Perhaps no better than they have treated me
Who have imputed such designs as show
Not what they saw, but what they wish'd to see;
But if it gives them pleasure, be it so,
This is a liberal age, and thoughts are free:
55 Meantime Apollo plucks me by the ear,
And tells me to resume my story here.
1. Cf. Shakespeare's Macbeth 5.3.22-24: 'My way 4. Author of the Morgante Maggiore, prototype of of life / Is fall'n into the sere, the yellow leaf.' the Italian seriocomic romance from which Byron 2. A river in Hades that brings forgetfulnessof life. derived the stanza and manner of Don Jnan (see 3. The river in Hades into which the nymph Thetis headnote, p. 669). dipped Achilles to make him invulnerable.
.
DON JUAN, CANTO 4 / 727
Juan and Haidee gazed upon each other
With swimming looks of speechless tenderness,
Which mix'd all feelings, friend, child, lover, brother,
All that the best can mingle and express
205 When two pure hearts are pour'd in one another,
And love too much, and yet can not love less;
But almost sanctify the sweet excess
By the immortal wish and power to bless.
27
Mix'd in each other's arms, and heart in heart,
210 Why did they not then die??they had lived too long
Should an hour come to bid them breathe apart;
Years could but bring them cruel things or wrong,
The world was not for them, nor the world's art5
For beings passionate as Sappho's song;
215 Love was born with them, in them, so intense,
It was their very spirit?not a sense.
28
They should have lived together deep in woods,
Unseen as sings the nightingale; they were
Unfit to mix in these thick solitudes
220 Call'd social, haunts of Hate, and Vice, and Care:
How lonely every freeborn creature broods! The sweetest song-birds nestle in a pair;
The eagle soars alone; the gull and crow
Flock o'er their carrion, just like men below.
29
225 Now pillow'd cheek to cheek, in loving sleep,
Haidee and Juan their siesta took,
A gentle slumber, but it was not deep,
For ever and anon a something shook
