from Canto VI

21

A scolding wife, a sullen son, a bill
     To pay, unpaid, protested, or discounted
At a per-centage; a child cross, dog ill,
     A favourite horse fallen lame just as he’s mounted;
A bad old woman making a worse will,
     Which leaves you minus of the cash you counted
As certain;—these are paltry things, and yet
I’ve rarely seen the man they did not fret.

22

I’m a philosopher; confound them all!
     Bills, beasts, and men, and—no! not Womankind!
With one good hearty curse I vent my gall,
     And then my Stoicism leaves nought behind
Which it can either pain or evil call,
     And I can give my whole soul up to mind;
Though what is soul or mind, their birth or growth,
Is more than I know—the deuce take them both.

23

So now all things are damn’d, one feels at ease,
    As after reading Athanasius’ curse,
Which doth your true believer so much please:
     I doubt if any now could make it worse
O’er his worst enemy when at his knees,
    ‘Tis so sententious, positive, and terse,
And decorates the book of Common Prayer,
As doth a Rainbow the just clearing air.

24

Gulbeyaz and her lord were sleeping, or
     At least one of them—Oh the heavy night!
When wicked wives who love some bachelor
     Lie down in dudgeon to sigh for the light
Of the grey morning, and look vainly for
     Its twinkle through the lattice dusky quite,
To toss, to tumble, doze, revive, and quake
Lest their too lawful bed-fellow should wake.

25

These are beneath the canopy of heaven,
     Also beneath the canopy of beds
Four-posted and silk curtained, which are given
     For rich men and their brides to lay their heads
Upon, in sheets white as what bards call “driven
    Snow.” Well! ‘tis all hap-hazard when one weds.
Gulbeyaz was an empress, but had been
Perhaps as wretched if a peasant’s quean.

26

Don Juan in his feminine disguise,
     With all the damsels in their long array,
Had bowed themselves before the imperial eyes,
     And at the usual signal ta’en their way
Back to their chambers, those long galleries
     In the Seraglio, where the ladies lay
Their delicate limbs; a thousand bosoms there
Beating for love as the caged birds for air.

27

I love the sex, and sometimes would reverse
     The tyrant’s wish, “that mankind only had
One neck, which he with one fell stroke might pierce”:
     My wish is quite as wide, but not so bad,
And much more tender on the whole than fierce;
     It being (not now, but only while a lad)
That Womankind had but one rosy mouth,
To kiss them all at once from North to South.

28

Oh enviable Briareus! with thy hands
    And heads, if thou hadst all things multiplied
In such proportion!—But my Muse withstands
     The giant thought of being a Titan’s bride,
Or travelling in Patagonian lands;
    So let us back to Lilliput, and guide
Our hero through the labyrinth of love
In which we left him several lines above.

29

He went forth with the lovely Odalisques,
     At the given signal joined to their array;
And though he certainly ran many risks,
     Yet he could not at times keep, by the way,
(Although the consequences of such frisks
     Are worse than the worst damages men pay
In moral England, where the thing’s a tax)
From ogling all their charms from breasts to backs.

30

Still he forgot not his disguise:—along
     The galleries from room to room they walked,
A virgin-like and edifying throng,
    By eunuchs flanked; while at their head there stalked
A dame who kept up discipline among
     The female ranks, so that none stirred or talked
Without her sanction on their she-parades:
Her title was “the Mother of the Maids.”