Don Juan 06-006 ~ 010
 
Don Juan 06-006
Canto the Sixth
 
     VI
 
'T was the boy's "mite," and, like the "widow's," may
     Perhaps be weigh'd hereafter, if not now;
But whether such things do or do not weigh,
     All who have loved, or love, will still allow
Life has nought like it. God is love, they say,
     And Love's a god, or was before the brow
Of earth was wrinkled by the sins and tears
Of -- but Chronology best knows the years.
 
 
Don Juan 06-007
Canto the Sixth

     VII
 
We left our hero and third heroine in
     A kind of state more awkward than uncommon,
For gentlemen must sometimes risk their skin
     For that sad tempter, a forbidden woman:
Sultans too much abhor this sort of sin,
     And don't agree at all with the wise Roman,
Heroic, stoic Cato, the sententious,
Who lent his lady to his friend Hortensius.
 
 
Don Juan 06-008
Canto the Sixth

     VIII
 
I know Gulbeyaz was extremely wrong;
     I own it, I deplore it, I condemn it;
But I detest all fiction even in song,
     And so must tell the truth, howe'er you blame it.
Her reason being weak, her passions strong,
     She thought that her lord's heart (even could she claim it)
Was scarce enough; for he had fifty-nine
Years, and a fifteen-hundredth concubine.
 
 
Don Juan 06-009
Canto the Sixth

     IX
 
I am not, like Cassio, "an arithmetician,"
     But by "the bookish theoric" it appears,
If 't is summ'd up with feminine precision,
     That, adding to the account his Highness' years,
The fair Sultana err'd from inanition;
     For, were the Sultan just to all his dears,
She could but claim the fifteen-hundredth part
Of what should be monopoly -- the heart.
 
 
Don Juan 06-010
Canto the Sixth

     X
 
It is observed that ladies are litigious
     Upon all legal objects of possession,
And not the least so when they are religious,
     Which doubles what they think of the transgression:
With suits and prosecutions they besiege us,
     As the tribunals show through many a session,
When they suspect that any one goes shares
In that to which the law makes them sole heirs.
  

 
George Gordon Byron, Lord Byron (1788-1824)
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