Don Juan. Baron George Gordon Byron Byron

and destruction as on high:

       But when it hath been scorch'd, and pierced, and riven,

       Its storms expire in water-drops; the eye

       Pours forth at last the heart's blood turn'd to tears,

       Which make the English climate of our years.

       The liver is the lazaret of bile,

       But very rarely executes its function,

       For the first passion stays there such a while,

       That all the rest creep in and form a junction,

       Life knots of vipers on a dunghill's soil—

       Rage, fear, hate, jealousy, revenge, compunction—

       So that all mischiefs spring up from this entrail,

       Like earthquakes from the hidden fire call'd 'central,'

       In the mean time, without proceeding more

       In this anatomy, I 've finish'd now

       Two hundred and odd stanzas as before,

       That being about the number I 'll allow

       Each canto of the twelve, or twenty-four;

       And, laying down my pen, I make my bow,

       Leaving Don Juan and Haidee to plead

       For them and theirs with all who deign to read.