Don Juan 05-136 ~ 140
 
Don Juan 05-136
Canto the Fifth
 
     CXXXVI
 
A vulgar tempest 't were to a typhoon
     To match a common fury with her rage,
And yet she did not want to reach the moon,
     Like moderate Hotspur on the immortal page;
Her anger pitch'd into a lower tune,
     Perhaps the fault of her soft sex and age --
Her wish was but to "kill, kill, kill," like Lear's,
And then her thirst of blood was quench'd in tears.
 
 
Don Juan 05-137
Canto the Fifth
 
     CXXXVII
 
A storm it raged, and like the storm it pass'd,
     Pass'd without words -- in fact she could not speak;
And then her sex's shame broke in at last,
     A sentiment till then in her but weak,
But now it flow'd in natural and fast,
     As water through an unexpected leak;
For she felt humbled -- and humiliation
Is sometimes good for people in her station
 
 
Don Juan 05-138
Canto the Fifth
 
     CXXXVIII
 
It teaches them that they are flesh and blood,
     It also gently hints to them that others,
Although of clay, are yet not quite of mud;
     That urns and pipkins are but fragile brothers,
And works of the same pottery, bad or good,
     Though not all born of the same sires and mothers:
It teaches -- Heaven knows only what it teaches,
But sometimes it may mend, and often reaches.
 
 
Don Juan 05-139
Canto the Fifth
 
     CXXXIX
 
Her first thought was to cut off Juan's head;
     Her second, to cut only his -- acquaintance;
Her third, to ask him where he had been bred;
     Her fourth, to rally him into repentance;
Her fifth, to call her maids and go to bed;
     Her sixth, to stab herself; her seventh, to sentence
The lash to Baba: -- but her grand resource
Was to sit down again, and cry of course.
 
 
Don Juan 05-140
Canto the Fifth
 
     CXL

She thought to stab herself, but then she had
     The dagger close at hand, which made it awkward;
For Eastern stays are little made to pad,
     So that a poniard pierces if 't is stuck hard:
She thought of killing Juan -- but, poor lad!
     Though he deserved it well for being so backward,
The cutting off his head was not the art
Most likely to attain her aim -- his heart.
 
George Gordon Byron, Lord Byron (1788-1824)
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