Was much embarrassed, never having met
In all her life with aught save prayers and praise;
And as she also risked her life to get
Him whom she meant to tutor in love’s ways
Into a comfortable tête-à-tête,
To lose the hour would make her quite a martyr,
And they had wasted now almost a quarter.
CXXIII
I also would suggest the fitting time
To gentlemen in any such like case,
That is to say in a meridian clime—
With us there is more law given to the chase,
But here a small delay forms a great crime:
So recollect that the extremest grace
Is just two minutes for your declaration—
A moment more would hurt your reputation.
CXXIV
Juan’s was good; and might have been still better,
But he had got Haidée into his head:
However strange, he could not yet forget her,
Which made him seem exceedingly ill-bred.
Gulbeyaz, who looked on him as her debtor
For having had him to her palace led,
Began to blush up to the eyes, and then
Grow deadly pale, and then blush back again.
CXXV
At length, in an imperial way, she laid
Her hand on his, and bending on him eyes
Which needed not an empire to persuade,
Looked into his for love, where none replies:
Her brow grew black, but she would not upbraid,
That being the last thing a proud woman tries;
She rose, and pausing one chaste moment threw
Herself upon his breast, and there she grew.
CXXVI
This was an awkward test, as Juan found,
But he was steeled by Sorrow, Wrath, and Pride:
With gentle force her white arms he unwound,
And seated her all drooping by his side,
Then rising haughtily he glanced around,
And looking coldly in her face he cried,
“The prisoned eagle will not pair, nor I
Serve a Sultana’s sensual fantasy.
CXXVII
“Thou ask’st, if I can love? be this the proof
How much I have loved—that I love not thee!
In this vile garb, the distaff, web, and woof,
Were fitter for me: Love is for the free!
I am not dazzled by this splendid roof;
Whate’er thy power, and great it seems to be,
Heads bow, knees bend, eyes watch around a throne,
And hands obey—our hearts are still our own.”
CXXVIII
This was a truth to us extremely trite;
Not so to her, who ne’er had heard such things:
She deemed her least command must yield delight,
Earth being only made for Queens and Kings.
If hearts lay on the left side or the right
She hardly knew, to such perfection brings
Legitimacy its born votaries, when
Aware of their due royal rights o’er men.
CXXIX
Besides, as has been said, she was so fair
As even in a much humbler lot had made
A kingdom or confusion anywhere,
And also, as may be presumed, she laid
Some stress on charms, which seldom are, if e’er,
By their possessors thrown into the shade:
She thought hers gave a double “right divine;”
And half of that opinion’s also mine.
CXXX
Remember, or (if you can not) imagine,
Ye! who have kept your chastity when young,
While some more desperate dowager has been waging
Love with you, and been in the dog-days stung486
By your refusal, recollect her raging!
Or recollect all that was said or sung
On such a subject; then suppose the face
Of a young downright beauty in this case!
CXXXI
Suppose—but you already have supposed,
The spouse of Potiphar, the Lady Booby,487
Phaedra,488 and all which story has disclosed
Of good examples; pity that so few by
Poets and private tutors are exposed,489
To educate—ye youth of Europe—you by!
But when you have supposed the few we know,
You can’t suppose Gulbeyaz’ angry brow.
CXXXII
A tigress robbed of young, a lioness,
Or any interesting beast of prey,
Are similes at hand for the distress
Of ladies who can not have their own way;
But though my turn will not be served with less,
These don’t express one half what I should say:
For what is stealing young ones, few or many,
To cutting short their hope of having any?
CXXXIII
The love of offspring’s Nature’s general law,
From tigresses and cubs to ducks and ducklings;
There’s nothing whets the beak, or arms the claw
Like an invasion of their babes and sucklings;
And all who have seen a human nursery, saw
How mothers love their children’s squalls and chucklings:
This strong extreme effect (to tire no longer
Your patience) shows the cause must still be stronger.490
CXXXIV
If I said fire flashed from Gulbeyaz’ eyes,
’Twere nothing—for her eyes flashed always fire;
Or said her cheeks assumed the deepest dyes,
I should but bring disgrace upon the dyer,
So supernatural was her passion’s rise;
For ne’er till now she knew a checked desire:
Even ye who know what a checked woman is
(Enough, God knows!) would much fall short of this.
CXXXV
Her rage was but a minute’s, and ’twas well—
A moment’s more had slain her; but the while
It lasted ’twas like a short glimpse of Hell:
Nought’s more sublime than energetic bile,
Though horrible to see, yet grand to tell,
Like Ocean warring ’gainst a rocky isle;
And the deep passions flashing through her form
Made her a beautiful embodied storm.
CXXXVI
A vulgar tempest ’twere to a typhoon
To match a common fury with her rage,
And yet she did not want to reach the moon,491
Like moderate Hotspur on the immortal page;492
Her anger pitched into a lower tune,
Perhaps the fault of her soft sex and age—
Her wish was but to “kill, kill, kill,” like Lear’s,493
And then her thirst of blood was quenched in tears.
CXXXVII
A storm it raged, and like the storm it passed,
Passed without words—in fact she could not speak;
And then her sex’s shame494 broke in at last,
A sentiment till then in her but weak,
But now it flowed in natural and fast,
As water through an unexpected leak;
For she felt humbled—and humiliation
Is sometimes good for people in
