What a strange thing is man? and what a stranger Is woman! What a whirlwind is her head, And what a whirlpool full of depth and danger Is all the rest about her! Whether wed Or widow, maid or mother, she can change her Mind like the wind: whatever she has said Or done, is light to what she’ll say or do;— The oldest thing on record, and yet new! O Catherine! (for of all interjections, To thee both oh! and ah! belong of right In love and war) how odd are the connections Of human thoughts, which jostle in their flight! Just now yours were cut out in different sections: First Ismail’s capture caught your fancy quite; Next of new knights, the fresh and glorious batch; And thirdly he who brought you the despatch! Shakspeare talks of ‘the herald Mercury New lighted on a heaven-kissing hill;’ And some such visions cross’d her majesty, While her young herald knelt before her still. ’Tis very true the hill seem’d rather high, For a lieutenant to climb up; but skill Smooth’d even the Simplon’s steep, and by God’s blessing With youth and health all kisses are ‘heaven-kissing.’ Her majesty look’d down, the youth look’d up— And so they fell in love;—she with his face, His grace, his God-knows-what: for Cupid’s cup With the first draught intoxicates apace, A quintessential laudanum or ‘black drop,’ Which makes one drunk at once, without the base Expedient of full bumpers; for the eye In love drinks all life’s fountains (save tears) dry. He, on the other hand, if not in love, Fell into that no less imperious passion, Self-love—which, when some sort of thing above Ourselves, a singer, dancer, much in fashion, Or duchess, princess, empress, ‘deigns to prove’ (’Tis Pope’s phrase) a great longing, though a rash one, For one especial person out of many, Makes us believe ourselves as good as any. Besides, he was of that delighted age Which makes all female ages equal—when We don’t much care with whom we may engage, As bold as Daniel in the lion’s den, So that we can our native sun assuage In the next ocean, which may flow just then, To make a twilight in, just as Sol’s heat is Quench’d in the lap of the salt sea, or Thetis. And Catherine (we must say thus much for Catherine), Though bold and bloody, was the kind of thing Whose temporary passion was quite flattering, Because each lover look’d a sort of king, Made up upon an amatory pattern, A royal husband in all save the ring— Which, being the damn’dest part of matrimony, Seem’d taking out the sting to leave the honey. And when you add to this, her womanhood In its meridian, her blue eyes or gray (The last, if they have soul, are quite as good, Or better, as the best examples say: Napoleon’s, Mary’s (queen of Scotland), should Lend to that colour a transcendent ray; And Pallas also sanctions the same hue, Too wise to look through optics black or blue)—