The Finding of Don Juan by Haidee — Ford Madox Brown

The Finding of Don Juan by Haidee, 1869 by Ford Madox Brown (1821-1893)

From Canto II of Lord Byron’s Don Juan:

He had an only daughter, call’d Haidee,
The greatest heiress of the Eastern Isles;
Besides, so very beautiful was she,
Her dowry was as nothing to her smiles:
Still in her teens, and like a lovely tree
She grew to womanhood, and between whiles
Rejected several suitors, just to learn
How to accept a better in his turn.

And walking out upon the beach, below
The cliff, towards sunset, on that day she found,
Insensible,—not dead, but nearly so,—
Don Juan, almost famish’d, and half drown’d;
But being naked, she was shock’d, you know,
Yet deem’d herself in common pity bound,
As far as in her lay, ‘to take him in,
A stranger’ dying, with so white a skin.