Read "Don Juan" by Lord Byron online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
I / O Love! O Glory! what are ye who fly / Around us ever, rarely to alight? / There's not a meteor in the polar sky / Of such transcendent and more fleeting flight. / Chill, and chain'd to cold earth, we lift on high / Our eyes in search of either lovely light; / A thousand and a thousand colours they / Assume, then leave us on our freezing way.
II / And such as they are, such my present tale is, / A non-descript and ever-varying rhyme, / A versified Aurora Borealis, / Which flashes o'er a waste and icy clime. / When we know what all are, we must bewail us, / But ne'ertheless I hope it is no crime / To laugh at all things-for I wish to know / What, after all, are all things-but a show?