from Canto VI

11

Now if this holds good in a Christian land,
     The heathen also, though with lesser latitude,
Are apt to carry things with a high hand,
     And take, what kings call “an imposing attitude”;
And for their rights connubial make a stand,
    When their liege husbands treat them with ingratitude;
And as four wives must have quadruple claims,
The Tigris hath its jealousies like Thames.

12

Gulbeyaz was the fourth, and (as I said)
     The favourite; but what’s favour amongst four?
Polygamy may well be held in dread,
     Not only as a sin, but as a bore:—
Most wise men with one moderate woman wed,
     Will scarcely find philosophy for more;
And all (except Mahometans) forbear
To make the nuptial couch a “Bed of Ware.”

13

His Highness, the sublimest of mankind,—
     So styled according to the usual forms
Of every monarch, till they are consigned
    To those sad hungry jacobins the worms,
Who on the very loftiest kings have dined,—
     His Highness gazed upon Gulbeyaz’ charms,
Expecting all the welcome of a lover,
(A “Highland welcome” all the wide world over).

14

Now here we should distinguish; for howe’er
     Kisses, sweet words, embraces, and all that,
May look like what is—neither here nor there,
     They are put on as easily as a hat,
Or rather bonnet, which the fair sex wear,
     Trimmed either heads or hearts to decorate,
Which form an ornament, but no more part
Of heads, than their caresses of the heart.

15

A slight blush, a soft tremor, a calm kind
     Of gentle feminine delight, and shown
More in the eyelids than the eyes, resigned
     Rather to hide what pleases most unknown,
Are the best tokens (to a modest mind)
    Of love, when seated on his loveliest throne,
A sincere woman’s breast,—for over warm
Or over cold annihilates the charm.

16

For over warmth, if false, is worse than truth;
     If true, ‘tis no great lease of its own fire;
For no one, save in very early youth,
     Would like (I think) to trust all to desire,
Which is but a precarious bond, in sooth,
     And apt to be transferred to the first buyer
At a sad discount: while your over chilly
Women, on t’other hand, seem somewhat silly.

17

That is, we cannot pardon their bad taste,
     For so it seems to lovers swift or slow,
Who fain would have a mutual flame confest,
     And see a sentimental passion glow,
Even were St. Francis’ paramour their guest,
     In his Monastic Concubine of Snow;—
In short, the maxim for the amorous tribe is
Horatian, “Medio tu tutissimus ibis.”

18

The “tu” ’s too much,—but let it stand—the verse
     Requires it, that’s to say, the English rhyme,
And not the pink of old Hexameters;
     But, after all, there’s neither tune nor time
In the last line, which cannot well be worse,
     And was thrust in to close the octave’s chime:
I own no prosody can ever rate it
As a rule, but Truth may, if you translate it.

19

If fair Gulbeyaz overdid her part,
     I know not—it succeeded, and success
Is much in most things, not less in the heart
     Than other articles of female dress.
Self-love in man too beats all female art;
     They lie, we lie, all lie, but love no less:
And no one virtue yet, except Starvation,
Could stop that worst of vices—Propagation.

20

We leave this royal couple to repose;
     A bed is not a throne, and they may sleep,
Whate’er their dreams be, if of joys or woes;
     Yet disappointed joys are woes as deep
As any man’s clay mixture undergoes.
     Our least of sorrows are such as we weep;
‘Tis the vile daily drop on drop which wears
The soul out (like the stone) with petty cares.