from Canto IV

51

The world is full of strange vicissitudes,
     And here was one exceedingly unpleasant:
A gentleman so rich in the world’s goods,
     Handsome and young, enjoying all the present,
Just at the very time when he least broods
     On such a thing is suddenly to sea sent,
Wounded and chain’d, so that he cannot move,
And all because a lady fell in love.

52

Here I must leave him, for I grow pathetic,
     Moved by the Chinese nymph of tears, green tea!
Than whom Cassandra was not more prophetic;
    For if my pure libations exceed three,
I feel my heart become so sympathetic,
    That I must have recourse to black Bohea:
‘Tis pity wine should be so deleterious,
For tea and coffee leave us much more serious,

53

Unless when qualified with thee, Cogniac!
    Sweet Naad of the Phlegethontic rill!
Ah! why the liver wilt thou thus attack,
     And make, like other nymphs, thy lovers ill?
I would take refuge in weak punch, but rack
     (In each sense of the word), whene’er I fill
My mild and midnight beakers to the brim,
Wakes me next morning with its synonym.

54

I leave Don Juan for the present, safe—
     Not sound, poor fellow, but severely wounded;
Yet could his corporal pangs amount to half
     Of those with which his Haide’s bosom bounded!
She was not one to weep, and rave, and chafe,
     And then give way, subdued because surrounded;
Her mother was a Moorish maid, from Fez,
Where all is Eden, or a wilderness.

55

There the large olive rains its amber store
     In marble fonts; there grain, and flower, and fruit,
Gush from the earth until the land runs o’er;
     But there too many a poison-tree has root,
And midnight listens to the lion’s roar,
     And long, long deserts scorch the camel’s foot,
Or heaving whelm the helpless caravan,
And as the soil is, so the heart of man.

56

Afric is all the sun’s, and as her earth
     Her human clay is kindled; full of power
For good or evil, burning from its birth,
    The Moorish blood partakes the planet’s hour,
And like the soil beneath it will bring forth:
     Beauty and love were Haide’s mother’s dower;
But her large dark eye show’d deep Passion’s force,
Though sleeping like a lion near a source.

57

Her daughter, temper’d with a milder ray,
     Like summer clouds all silvery, smooth, and fair,
Till slowly charged with thunder they display
     Terror to earth, and tempest to the air,
Had held till now her soft and milky way;
     But overwrought with passion and despair,
The fire burst forth from her Numidian veins,
Even as the Simoom sweeps the blasted plains.

58

The last sight which she saw was Juan’s gore,
    And he himself o’ermaster’d and cut down;
His blood was running on the very floor
     Where late he trod, her beautiful, her own;
Thus much she view’d an instant and no more,—
     Her struggles ceased with one convulsive groan;
On her sire’s arm, which until now scarce held
Her writhing, fell she like a cedar fell’d.

59

A vein had burst, and her sweet lips’ pure dyes
     Were dabbled with the deep blood which ran o’er;
And her head droop’d as when the lily lies
    O’ercharged with rain: her summon’d handmaids bore
Their lady to her couch with gushing eyes;
    Of herbs and cordials they produced their store,
But she defied all means they could employ,
Like one life could not hold, nor death destroy.

60

Days lay she in that state unchanged, though chill
     With nothing livid, still her lips were red;
She had no pulse, but death seem’d absent still;
     No hideous sign proclaim’d her surely dead;
Corruption came not in each mind to kill
     All hope; to look upon her sweet face bred
New thoughts of life, for it seem’d full of soul,
She had so much, earth could not claim the whole.