from Canto VI

1

“There is a tide in the affairs of men
     Which taken at the flood”—you know the rest,
And most of us have found it, now and then;
     At least we think so, though but few have guess’d
The moment, till too late to come again.
     But no doubt every thing is for the best—
Of which the surest sign is in the end:
When things are at the worst they sometimes mend.

2

There is a tide in the affairs of women
     “Which taken at the flood leads”—God knows where
Those navigators must be able seamen
     Whose charts lay down its currents to a hair;
Not all the reveries of Jacob Behmen
    With its strange whirls and eddies can compare:—
Men with their heads reflect on this and that—
But women with their hearts or heaven knows what!

3

And yet a headlong, headstrong, downright she,
     Young, beautiful, and daring—who would risk
A throne, the world, the universe, to be
     Beloved in her own way, and rather whisk
The stars from out the sky, than not be free
     As are the billows when the breeze is brisk—
Though such a she’s a devil (if that there be one)
Yet she would make full many a Manichean.

4

Thrones, worlds, et cetera, are so oft upset
    By commonest Ambition, that when Passion
O’erthrows the same, we readily forget,
     Or at the least forgive, the loving rash one.
If Anthony be well remembered yet,
     ‘Tis not his conquests keep his name in fashion,
But Actium lost, for Cleopatra’s eyes
Outbalance all the Caesar’s victories.

5

He died at fifty for a queen of forty;
     I wish their years had been fifteen and twenty,
For then wealth, kingdoms, worlds are but a sport—I
     Remember when, though I had no great plenty
Of worlds to lose, yet still, to pay my court, I
     Gave what I had—a heart:—as the world went, I
Gave what was worth a world; for worlds could never
Restore me those pure feelings, gone for ever.

6

‘Twas the boy’s “mite,” and like the “widow’s” may
     Perhaps be weighed hereafter, if not now;
But whether such things do or do not weigh,
     All who have loved, or love, will still allow
Life has nought like it. God is love, they say,
     And Love’s a God, or was before the brow
Of Earth was wrinkled by the sins and tears
Of—but Chronology best knows the years.

7

We left our hero and third heroine in
     A kind of state more awkward than uncommon,
For gentlemen must sometimes risk their skin
    For that sad tempter, a forbidden woman:
Sultans too much abhor this sort of sin,
     And don’t agree at all with the wise Roman,
Heroic, stoic Cato, the sententious,
Who lent his lady to his friend Hortensius.

8

I know Gulbeyaz was extremely wrong;
     I own it, I deplore it, I condemn it;
But I detest all fiction even in song,
     And so must tell the truth, howe’er you blame it.
Her reason being weak, her passions strong,
     She thought that her lord’s heart (even could she claim it)
Was scarce enough; for he had fifty-nine
Years, and a fifteen-hundredth concubine.

9

I am not, like Cassio, “an arithmetician,”
    But by “the bookish theoric” it appears,
If ‘tis summed up with feminine precision,
     That, adding to the account his Highness’ years,
The fair Sultana erred from inanition;
    For were the Sultan just to all his dears,
She could but claim the fifteenth hundred part
Of what should be monopoly—the heart.

10

It is observed that ladies are litigious
     Upon all legal objects of possession,
And not the least so when they are religious,
     Which doubles what they think of the transgression.
With suits and prosecutions they besiege us,
     As the tribunals show through many a session,
When they suspect that any one goes shares
In that to which the law makes them sole heirs.