Or, like all very clever people, could not.
XCVIII
This may seem strange, but yet ’tis very common;
For instance—gentlemen, whose ladies take
Leave to o’erstep the written rights of Woman,
And break the—Which commandment is ’t they break?
(I have forgot the number, and think no man
Should rashly quote, for fear of a mistake;)
I say, when these same gentlemen are jealous,
They make some blunder, which their ladies tell us.
XCIX
A real husband always is suspicious,
But still no less suspects in the wrong place,81
Jealous of some one who had no such wishes,
Or pandering blindly to his own disgrace,
By harbouring some dear friend extremely vicious;
The last indeed’s infallibly the case:
And when the spouse and friend are gone off wholly,
He wonders at their vice, and not his folly.
C
Thus parents also are at times short-sighted:
Though watchful as the lynx, they ne’er discover,
The while the wicked world beholds delighted,
Young Hopeful’s mistress, or Miss Fanny’s lover,
Till some confounded escapade has blighted
The plan of twenty years, and all is over;
And then the mother cries, the father swears,
And wonders why the devil he got heirs.
CI
But Inez was so anxious, and so clear
Of sight, that I must think, on this occasion,
She had some other motive much more near
For leaving Juan to this new temptation,
But what that motive was, I shan’t say here;
Perhaps to finish Juan’s education,
Perhaps to open Don Alfonso’s eyes,
In case he thought his wife too great a prize.
CII
It was upon a day, a summer’s day;—
Summer’s indeed a very dangerous season,
And so is spring about the end of May;
The sun, no doubt, is the prevailing reason;
But whatsoe’er the cause is, one may say,
And stand convicted of more truth than treason,
That there are months which nature grows more merry in—
March has its hares, and May must have its heroine.
CIII
’Twas on a summer’s day—the sixth of June:
I like to be particular in dates,
Not only of the age, and year, but moon;
They are a sort of post-house, where the Fates
Change horses, making History change its tune,82
Then spur away o’er empires and o’er states,
Leaving at last not much besides chronology,
Excepting the post-obits of theology.83
CIV
’Twas on the sixth of June, about the hour
Of half-past six—perhaps still nearer seven—
When Julia sate within as pretty a bower
As e’er held houri in that heathenish heaven
Described by Muhammad, and Anacreon Moore,84
To whom the lyre and laurels have been given,
With all the trophies of triumphant song—
He won them well, and may he wear them long!
CV
She sate, but not alone; I know not well
How this same interview had taken place,
And even if I knew, I should not tell—
People should hold their tongues in any case;
No matter how or why the thing befell,
But there were she and Juan, face to face—
When two such faces are so, ’t would be wise,
But very difficult, to shut their eyes.
CVI
How beautiful she looked! her conscious heart
Glowed in her cheek, and yet she felt no wrong:
Oh Love! how perfect is thy mystic art,
Strengthening the weak, and trampling on the strong!
How self-deceitful is the sagest part
Of mortals whom thy lure hath led along!—
The precipice she stood on was immense,
So was her creed in her own innocence.85
CVII
She thought of her own strength, and Juan’s youth,
And of the folly of all prudish fears,
Victorious Virtue, and domestic Truth,
And then of Don Alfonso’s fifty years:
I wish these last had not occurred, in sooth,
Because that number rarely much endears,
And through all climes, the snowy and the sunny,
Sounds ill in love, whate’er it may in money.
CVIII
When people say, “I’ve told you fifty times,”
They mean to scold, and very often do;
When poets say, “I’ve written fifty rhymes,”
They make you dread that they’ll recite them too;
In gangs of fifty, thieves commit their crimes;
At fifty love for love is rare, ’tis true,
But then, no doubt, it equally as true is,
A good deal may be bought for fifty Louis.
CIX
Julia had honour, virtue, truth, and love
For Don Alfonso; and she inly swore,
By all the vows below to Powers above,
She never would disgrace the ring she wore,
Nor leave a wish which wisdom might reprove;
And while she pondered this, besides much more,
One hand on Juan’s carelessly was thrown,
Quite by mistake—she thought it was her own;
CX
Unconsciously she leaned upon the other,
Which played within the tangles of her hair;
And to contend with thoughts she could not smother
She seemed by the distraction of her air.
’Twas surely very wrong in Juan’s mother
To leave together this imprudent pair,86
She who for many years had watched her son so—
I’m very certain mine would not have done so.
CXI
The hand which still held Juan’s, by degrees
Gently, but palpably confirmed its grasp,
As if it said, “Detain me, if you please;”
Yet there’s no doubt she only meant to clasp
His fingers with a pure Platonic squeeze;
She would have shrunk as from a toad, or asp,
Had she imagined such a thing could rouse
A feeling dangerous to a prudent spouse.
CXII
I cannot know what Juan thought of this,
But what he did, is much what you would do;
His young lip thanked it with a grateful kiss,
And then, abashed at its own joy, withdrew
In deep despair, lest he had done amiss—
Love is so very timid when ’tis new:
She blushed, and frowned not, but she strove to speak,
And held her tongue, her voice was grown so weak.
CXIII
The sun set, and up rose the yellow moon:
The Devil’s in the moon for mischief; they
Who called her chaste, methinks, began too soon
Their nomenclature; there is not a day,
The longest, not the twenty-first of June,
Sees half the business
