The Works of Lord Byron Volume I Part 15

8.

Your cheek's soft bloom is unimpair'd, New beauties, still, are daily bright'ning, Your eye, for conquest beams prepar'd, [v]

The forge of love's resistless lightning.

9.

Arm'd thus, to make their bosoms bleed, Many will throng, to sigh like me, love!

More constant they may prove, indeed; Fonder, alas! they ne'er can be, love!

1806.

[Footnote 1: "The lady's name was Julia Leacroft" ('Note by Miss E.

Pigot'). The word "Julia" (?) is added, in a lady's hand, in the annotated copy of 'P. on V. Occasions', p. 52 (British Museum)]

[Footnote i: 'To Julia'. [4to]]

[Footnote ii: 'Julia since'. [4to]]

[Footnote iii: 'And Julia'. [4to]]

[Footnote iv:

_Perhaps my soul's too pure for roving_.

[4to]]

[Footnote v:

_Your eye for conquest comes prepar'd_.

[4to]]

TO WOMAN.

Woman! experience might have told me [i]

That all must love thee, who behold thee: Surely experience might have taught Thy firmest promises are nought; [ii]

But, plac'd in all thy charms before me, All I forget, but to _adore_ thee.

Oh memory! thou choicest blessing, When join'd with hope, when still possessing; [iii]

But how much curst by every lover When hope is fled, and pa.s.sion's over.

Woman, that fair and fond deceiver, How prompt are striplings to believe her!

How throbs the pulse, when first we view The eye that rolls in glossy blue, Or sparkles black, or mildly throws A beam from under hazel brows!

How quick we credit every oath, And hear her plight the willing troth!

Fondly we hope 'twill last for ay, When, lo! she changes in a day.

This record will for ever stand,'

"Woman, thy vows are trac'd in sand." [1] [iv]

[Footnote i:

_Surely, experience_.

[4to]]

[Footnote ii:

_A woman's promises are naught_.

[4to]]

[Footnote iii: Here follows, in the Quarto, an additional couplet:--

_Thou whisperest, as our hearts are beating, "What oft we've done, we're still repeating_,"]

[Footnote iv:

_This Record will for ever stand That Woman's vows are writ in sand_.

[4to]]

[Footnote 1: The last line is almost a literal translation from a Spanish proverb.

(The last line is not "almost a literal translation from a Spanish proverb," but an adaptation of part of a stanza from the 'Diana' of Jorge de Montemajor--

"Mira, el Amor, lo que ordena; Que os viene a hazer creer Cosas dichas por muger, Y escriptas en el arena."

Southey, in his 'Letters from Spain', 1797, pp. 87-91, gives a specimen of the 'Diana', and renders the lines in question thus--

"And Love beheld us from his secret stand, And mark'd his triumph, laughing, to behold me, To see me trust a writing traced in sand, To see me credit what a woman told me."

Byron, who at this time had little or no knowledge of Spanish literature, seems to have been struck with Southey's paraphrase, and compressed the quatrain into an epigram.]