His sons were kept in prison, till they grew Of years to fill a bowstring or the throne, One or the other, but which of the two Could yet be known unto the fates alone; Meantime the education they went through Was princely, as the proofs have always shown: So that the heir apparent still was found No less deserving to be hang’d than crown’d.
His majesty saluted his fourth spouse With all the ceremonies of his rank, Who clear’d her sparkling eyes and smooth’d her brows, As suits a matron who has play’d a prank; These must seem doubly mindful of their vows, To save the credit of their breaking bank: To no men are such cordial greetings given As those whose wives have made them fit for heaven.
His Highness cast around his great black eyes, And looking, as he always look’d, perceived Juan amongst the damsels in disguise, At which he seem’d no whit surprised nor grieved, But just remark’d with air sedate and wise, While still a fluttering sigh Gulbeyaz heaved, ‘I see you’ve bought another girl; ’tis pity That a mere Christian should be half so pretty.’
This compliment, which drew all eyes upon The new-bought virgin, made her blush and shake. Her comrades, also, thought themselves undone: O! Mahomet! that his majesty should take Such notice of a giaour, while scarce to one Of them his lips imperial ever spake! There was a general whisper, toss, and wriggle, But etiquette forbade them all to giggle.
The Turks do well to shut—at least, sometimes— The women up, because, in sad reality, Their chastity in these unhappy climes Is not a thing of that astringent quality Which in the North prevents precocious crimes, And makes our snow less pure than our morality; The sun, which yearly melts the polar ice, Has quite the contrary effect on vice.
Thus in the East they are extremely strict, And Wedlock and a Padlock mean the same; Excepting only when the former ’s pick’d It ne’er can be replaced in proper frame; Spoilt, as a pipe of claret is when prick’d: But then their own Polygamy ’s to blame; Why don’t they knead two virtuous souls for life Into that moral centaur, man and wife?
Thus far our chronicle; and now we pause, Though not for want of matter; but ’tis time According to the ancient epic laws, To slacken sail, and anchor with our rhyme. Let this fifth canto meet with due applause, The sixth shall have a touch of the sublime; Meanwhile, as Homer sometimes sleeps, perhaps You’ll pardon to my muse a few short naps.
CANTO THE SIXTH.
‘There is a tide in the affairs of men Which,—taken at the flood,’—you know the rest, And most of us have found it now and then; At least we think so, though but few have guess’d The moment, till too late to come again. But no doubt every thing is for the best— Of which the surest sign is in the end: When things are at the worst they sometimes mend.
There is a tide in the affairs of women Which, taken at the flood, leads—God knows where: Those navigators must be able seamen Whose charts lay down its current to a hair; Not all the reveries of Jacob Behmen With its strange whirls and eddies can compare: Men with their heads reflect on this and that— But women with their hearts on heaven knows what!
And yet a headlong, headstrong, downright she, Young, beautiful, and daring—who would risk A throne, the world, the universe, to be Beloved in her own way, and rather whisk The stars from out the sky, than not be free As are the billows when the breeze is brisk— Though such a she ’s a devil (if that there be one), Yet she would make full many a Manichean.
Thrones, worlds, et cetera, are so oft upset By commonest ambition, that when passion O’erthrows the same, we readily forget, Or at the least forgive, the loving rash one. If Antony be well remember’d yet, ’Tis not his conquests keep his name in fashion, But Actium, lost for Cleopatra’s eyes, Outbalances all Caesar’s victories.
He died at fifty for a queen of forty; I wish their years had been fifteen and twenty, For then wealth, kingdoms, worlds are but a sport—I Remember when, though I had no great plenty Of worlds to lose, yet still, to pay my court, I Gave what I had—a heart: as the world went, I Gave what was worth a world; for worlds could never Restore me those pure feelings, gone forever.
’Twas 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.
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.
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.
I am not, like Cassio, ‘an arithmetician,’ But by ‘the bookish theoric’ it appears, If ’tis 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.
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.
Now, if this holds good in a Christian land, The heathen also, though with lesser latitude, Are apt to carry things with a high hand, And take what kings call ‘an imposing attitude,’ And for their rights connubial make a stand, When their liege husbands treat them with ingratitude: And as four wives must have quadruple claims, The Tigris hath its jealousies like Thames.
Gulbeyaz was the fourth, and (as I said) The favourite; but what ’s favour amongst four? Polygamy may well be held in dread, Not only as a sin, but as a bore: Most wise men, with one moderate woman wed, Will scarcely find philosophy for more; And all (except Mahometans) forbear To make the nuptial couch a ‘Bed of Ware.’
His Highness, the sublimest of mankind,— So styled according to the usual forms Of every monarch, till they are consign’d To those sad hungry jacobins the worms, Who on the very loftiest kings have dined,— His Highness gazed upon Gulbeyaz’ charms, Expecting all the welcome of a lover (A ‘Highland welcome’ all the wide world over).
Now here we should distinguish; for howe’er Kisses, sweet words, embraces, and all that, May look like what is—neither here nor there, They are put on as easily as a hat, Or rather bonnet, which the fair sex wear, Trimm’d either heads or hearts to decorate, Which form an ornament, but no more part Of heads, than their caresses of the heart.
A slight blush, a soft tremor, a calm kind Of gentle feminine delight, and shown More in the eyelids than the eyes, resign’d Rather to hide what pleases most unknown, Are the best tokens (to a modest mind) Of love, when seated on his loveliest throne, A sincere woman’s breast,—for over-warm Or over-cold annihilates the charm.
For over-warmth, if false, is worse than truth; If true, ’tis no great lease of its own fire; For no one, save in very early youth, Would like (I think) to trust all to desire, Which is but a precarious bond, in sooth, And apt to be transferr’d to the first buyer At a sad discount: while your over chilly Women, on t’ other hand, seem somewhat silly.
That is, we cannot pardon their bad taste, For so it seems to lovers swift or slow, Who fain would have a mutual flame confess’d, And see a sentimental passion glow, Even were St. Francis’ paramour their guest, In his monastic concubine of snow;— In short, the maxim for the amorous tribe is Horatian, ‘Medio tu tutissimus ibis.’
The ‘tu’ ’s too much,—but let it stand,—the verse Requires it, that ’s to say, the English rhyme, And not the pink of old hexameters; But, after all, there’s neither tune nor time In the last line, which cannot well be worse, And was thrust in to close the octave’s chime: I own no prosody can ever rate it As a rule, but truth may, if you translate it.
If fair Gulbeyaz overdid her part, I know not—it succeeded, and success Is much in most things, not less in the heart Than other articles of female dress. Self-love in man, too, beats all female art; They lie, we lie, all lie, but love no less; And no one virtue yet, except starvation, Could stop that worst of vices—propagation.