Read "Don Juan" by Lord Byron online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
I / When amatory poets sing their loves / In liquid lines mellifluously bland, / And pair their rhymes as Venus yokes her doves, / They little think what mischief is in hand; / The greater their success the worse it proves, / As Ovid's verse may give to understand; / Even Petrarch's self, if judged with due severity, / Is the Platonic pimp of all posterity.
II / I therefore do denounce all amorous writing, / Except in such a way as not to attract; / Plain-simple-short, and by no means inviting, / But with a moral to each error tack'd, / Form'd rather for instructing than delighting, / And with all passions in their turn attack'd; / Now, if my Pegasus should not be shod ill, / This poem will become a moral model.