How beautiful she look’d! her conscious heart
Glow’d in her cheek, and yet she felt no wrong.
O Love! how perfect is thy mystic art,
Strengthening the weak, and trampling on the strong,
How self-deceitful is the sagest part
Of mortals whom thy lure hath led along—
The precipice she stood on was immense,
So was her creed in her own innocence.
She thought of her own strength, and Juan’s youth,
And of the folly of all prudish fears,
Victorious virtue, and domestic truth,
And then of Don Alfonso’s fifty years:
I wish these last had not occurr’d, in sooth,
Because that number rarely much endears,
And through all climes, the snowy and the sunny,
Sounds ill in love, whate’er it may in money.
When people say, ‘I’ve told you fifty times,’
They mean to scold, and very often do;
When poets say, ‘I’ve written fifty rhymes,’
They make you dread that they’ll recite them too;
In gangs of fifty, thieves commit their crimes;
At fifty love for love is rare, ’tis true,
But then, no doubt, it equally as true is,
A good deal may be bought for fifty Louis.
Julia had honour, virtue, truth, and love,
For Don Alfonso; and she inly swore,
By all the vows below to powers above,
She never would disgrace the ring she wore,
Nor leave a wish which wisdom might reprove;
And while she ponder’d this, besides much more,
One hand on Juan’s carelessly was thrown,
*Canto I, est. 103-108: Julia jura fidelidad a Don Alfonso mientras la mano de Juan la atrae.*