from Canto VI

51

It was a spacious chamber (Oda is
     The Turkish title) and ranged round the wall
Were couches, toilets—and much more than this
     I might describe, as I have seen it all,
But it suffices—little was amiss;
     ‘Twas on the whole a nobly furnished hall,
With all things ladies want, save one or two,
And even those were nearer than they knew.

52

Dud, as has been said, was a sweet creature,
     Not very dashing, but extremely winning,
With the most regulated charms of feature,
     Which painters cannot catch like faces sinning
Against proportion—the wild strokes of nature
     Which they hit off at once in the beginning,
Full of expression, right or wrong, that strike,
And pleasing or unpleasing, still are like.

53

But she was a soft Landscape of mild Earth,
     Where all was harmony and calm and quiet,
Luxuriant, budding; cheerful without mirth,
     Which if not happiness, is much more nigh it
Than are your mighty passions and so forth,
    Which some call “the sublime”: I wish they’d try it:
I’ve seen your stormy seas and stormy women,
And pity lovers rather more than seamen.

54

But she was pensive more than melancholy,
     And serious more than pensive, and serene,
It may be, more than either—not unholy
     Her thoughts, at least till now, appear to have been.
The strangest thing was, beauteous, she was wholly
     Unconscious, albeit turned of quick seventeen,
That she was fair, or dark, or short, or tall;
She never thought about herself at all.

55

And therefore was she kind and gentle as
     The Age of Gold (when Gold was yet unknown,
By which its nomenclature came to pass;
     Thus most appropriately has been shown
“Lucus a non Lucendo,” not what was,
     But what was not; a sort of style that’s grown
Extremely common in this age, whose metal
The Devil may decompose but never settle;

56

I think it may be of “Corinthian Brass,”
     Which was a Mixture of all Metals, but
The Brazen uppermost.) Kind reader! pass
     This long parenthesis: I could not shut
It sooner for the soul of me, and class
    My faults even with your own! which meaneth, Put
A kind construction upon them and me:
But that you won’t—then don’t—I am not less free.

57

‘Tis time we should return to plain narration,
     And thus my narrative proceeds:—Dud,
With every kindness short of ostentation,
    Shewed Juan, or Juanna, through and through
This labyrinth of females, and each station
     Described—what’s strange—in words extremely few
I have but one simile, and that’s a blunder,
For wordless woman, which is silent Thunder.

58

And next she gave her (I say her, because
    The Gender still was Epicene, at least
In outward show, which is a saving clause)
     An outline of the Customs of the East,
With all their chaste integrity of laws,
    By which the more a Harem is encreased,
The stricter doubtless grow the vestal duties
Of any supernumerary beauties.

59

And then she gave Juanna a chaste kiss:
     Dud was fond of kissing—which I’m sure
That nobody can ever take amiss,
     Because ‘tis pleasant, so that it be pure,
And between females means no more than this—
     That they have nothing better near, or newer.
“Kiss rhymes to “bliss” in fact as well as verse—
I wish it never led to something worse.

60

In perfect Innocence she then unmade
     Her toilet, which cost little, for she was
A Child of Nature, carelessly arrayed:
     If fond of a chance ogle at her glass,
‘Twas like the Fawn which, in the lake displayed,
    Beholds her own shy, shadowy image pass,
When first she starts, and then returns to peep,
Admiring this new Native of the deep.