Don Juan 07-41 ~ 45
  

Don Juan 07-41
Canto the Seventh
 
     XLI

"Let there be light! said God, and there was light!"
     "Let there be blood!" says man, and there's a sea!
The fiat of this spoil'd child of the Night
     (For Day ne'er saw his merits) could decree
More evil in an hour, than thirty bright
     Summers could renovate, though they should be
Lovely as those which ripen'd Eden's fruit;
For war cuts up not only branch, but root.


Don Juan 07-42
Canto the Seventh
 
     XLII

Our friends the Turks, who with loud "Allahs" now
     Began to signalise the Russ retreat,
Were damnably mistaken; few are slow
     In thinking that their enemy is beat
(Or beaten, if you insist on grammar, though
     I never think about it in a heat),
But here I say the Turks were much mistaken,
Who hating hogs, yet wish'd to save their bacon.


Don Juan 07-43
Canto the Seventh
 
     XLIII

For, on the sixteenth, at full gallop, drew
     In sight two horsemen, who were deem'd Cossacques
For some time, till they came in nearer view.
     They had but little baggage at their backs,
For there were but three shirts between the two;
     But on they rode upon two Ukraine hacks,
Till, in approaching, were at length descried
In this plain pair, Suwarrow and his guide.


Don Juan 07-44
Canto the Seventh
 
     XLIV

"Great joy to London now!" says some great fool,
     When London had a grand illumination,
Which to that bottle-conjurer, John Bull,
     Is of all dreams the first hallucination;
So that the streets of colour'd lamps are full,
     That Sage (said john) surrenders at discretion
His purse, his soul, his sense, and even his nonsense,
To gratify, like a huge moth, this one sense.


Don Juan 07-45
Canto the Seventh
 
     XLV

'T is strange that he should farther "damn his eyes,"
     For they are damn'd; that once all-famous oath
Is to the devil now no farther prize,
     Since John has lately lost the use of both.
Debt he calls wealth, and taxes Paradise;
     And Famine, with her gaunt and bony growth,
Which stare him in the face, he won't examine,
Or swears that Ceres hath begotten Famine.
 
 
George Gordon Byron, Lord Byron (1788-1824) 
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