Explore "To Eliza" by Lord Byron on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Eliza, what fools are the Mussulman sect, / Who to woman deny the soul's future existence! / Could they see thee, Eliza, they'd own their defect, / And this doctrine would meet with a general resistance.
Had their prophet possess'd half an atom of sense, / He ne'er would have woman from paradise driven; / Instead of his houris, a flimsy pretence, / With woman alone he had peopled his heaven.
Yet still, to increase your calamities more, / Not content with depriving your bodies of spirit, / He allots one poor husband to share amongst four! - / With souls you'd dispense; but this last, who could bear it?
His religion to please neither party is made; / On husbands 'tis hard, to the wives most uncivil; / Still I can't contradict, what so oft has been said, / 'Though women are angels, yet wedlock's the devil. '