from Canto IX

61

The two first feelings ran their course complete,
     And lighted first her eye and then her mouth:
The whole Court looked immediately most sweet,
    Like flowers well watered after a long drouth:—
But when on the Lieutenant at her feet
     Her Majesty, who liked to gaze on youth
Almost as much as on a new dispatch,
Glanced mildly, all the world was on the watch.

62

Though somewhat large, exuberant, and truculent,
    When wroth; while pleased, she was as fine a figure
As those who like things rosy, ripe, and succulent,
     Would wish to look on, while they are in vigour.
She could repay each amatory look you lent
     With interest, and in turn was wont with rigour
To exact of Cupid’s bills the full amount
At sight, nor would permit you to discount.

63

With her the latter, though at times convenient,
     Was not so necessary; for they tell
That she was handsome, and though fierce looked lenient,
    And always used her favourites too well.
If once beyond her boudoir’s precincts in ye went,
     Your “Fortune” was in a fair way “to swell
A Man,” as Giles says; for though she would widow all
Nations, she liked Man as an individual.

64

What a strange thing is man! and what a stranger
     Is woman! What a whirlwind is her head,
And what a whirlpool full of depth and danger
     Is all the rest about her! Whether wed,
Or widow, maid, or mother, she can change her
     Mind like the wind; whatever she has said
Or done, is light to what she’ll say or do;—
The oldest thing on record, and yet new!

65

Oh Catherine! (for of all interjections
     To thee both oh! and ah! belong of right
In love and war) how odd are the connections
     Of human thoughts, which jostle in their flight!
Just now your’s were cut out in different sections:
     First Ismail’s capture caught your fancy quite;
Next of new knights, the fresh and glorious hatch;
And thirdly, he who brought you the dispatch!

66

Shakspeare talks of “the Herald Mercury
     New lighted on a Heaven-kissing hill”;
And some such visions crossed her Majesty,
     While her young Herald knelt before her still.
‘Tis very true the hill seemed rather high
     For a Lieutenant to climb up; but skill
Smoothed even the Simplon’s steep, and by God’s blessing,
With Youth and Health all kisses are “heaven-kissing.”

67

Her Majesty looked down, the Youth looked up—
     And so they fell in love:—She with his face,
His grace, his God-knows-what: for Cupid’s cup
    With the first draught intoxicates apace,
A quintessential laudanum or “black drop,”
     Which makes one drunk at once, without the base
Expedient of full bumpers; for the eye
In love drinks all life’s fountains (save tears) dry.

68

He, on the other hand, if not in love,
     Fell into that no less imperious passion,
Self-love—which, when some sort of Thing above
     Ourselves, a singer, dancer, much in fashion,
Or dutchess, princess, Empress, “deigns to prove,”
     (‘Tis Pope’s phrase) a great longing, tho’ a rash one,
For one especial person out of many,
Makes us believe ourselves as good as any.

69

Besides, he was of that delighted age
     Which makes all female ages equal—when
We don’t much care with whom we may engage
     As bold as Daniel in the Lion’s den,
So that we can our native Sun assuage
     In the next Ocean, which may flow just then,
To make a twilight in, just as Sol’s heat is
Quenched in the lap of the salt Sea, or Thetis.

70

And Catherine (we must say thus much for Catherine)
     Though bold and bloody, was the kind of thing
Whose temporary passion was quite flattering,
     Because each lover looked a sort of king,
Made up upon an amatory pattern,
     A royal husband in all save the ring—
Which, being the damn’dest part of matrimony,
Seemed taking out the sting to leave the honey.