from Canto V

131

Suppose, but you already have supposed,
    The spouse of Potiphar, the Lady Booby,
Phedra, and all which story has disclosed
     Of good examples; pity that so few by
Poets and private tutors are exposed,
     To educate—ye youth of Europe—you by!
But when you have supposed the few we know,
You can’t suppose Gulbeyaz’ angry brow.

132

A tigress robbed of young, a lioness,
     Or any interesting beast of prey,
Are similes at hand for the distress
     Of ladies who cannot 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 hopes of having any?

133

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;
And this extreme effect (to tire no longer
Your patience) shows the cause must still be stronger.

134

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.

135

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.

136

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,
    Like moderate Hotspur on the immortal page;
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,
And then her thirst of blood was quenched in tears.

137

A storm it raged, and like the storm it passed,
     Passed without words—in fact she could not speak;
And then her sex’s shame 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 her station.

138

It teaches them that they are flesh and blood,
     It also gently hints to them that others,
Although of clay, are yet not quite of mud;
    That urns and pipkins are but fragile brothers,
And works of the same pottery, bad or good,
     Though not all born of the same sires and mothers:
It teaches—Heaven knows only what it teaches,
But sometimes it may mend, and often reaches.

139

Her first thought was to cut off Juan’s head;
     Her second, to cut only his—acquaintance;
Her third, to ask him where he had been bred;
     Her fourth, to rally him into repentance;
Her fifth, to call her maids and go to bed;
     Her sixth, to stab herself; her seventh, to sentence
The lash to Baba:—but her grand resource
Was to sit down again, and cry of course.

140

She thought to stab herself, but then she had
     The dagger close at hand, which made it awkward;
For eastern stays are little made to pad,
    So that a poniard pierces if ‘tis stuck hard:
She thought of killing Juan—but, poor lad!
     Though he deserved it well for being so backward,
The cutting off his head was not the art
Most likely to attain her aim—his heart.