Don Juan - The Original Classic Edition. Byron Lord

of his home,

       He stopp'd.--What singular emotions fill

       Their bosoms who have been induced to roam!

       With fluttering doubts if all be well or ill-- With love for many, and with fears for some; All feelings which o'erleap the years long lost,

       And bring our hearts back to their starting-post.

       The approach of home to husbands and to sires, After long travelling by land or water,

       Most naturally some small doubt inspires-- A female family 's a serious matter

       (None trusts the sex more, or so much admires--

       But they hate flattery, so I never flatter);

       Wives in their husbands' absences grow subtler, And daughters sometimes run off with the butler.

       An honest gentleman at his return

       May not have the good fortune of Ulysses;

       Not all lone matrons for their husbands mourn, Or show the same dislike to suitors' kisses;

       The odds are that he finds a handsome urn

       To his memory--and two or three young misses

       Born to some friend, who holds his wife and riches,-- And that his Argus--bites him by the breeches.

       If single, probably his plighted fair

       Has in his absence wedded some rich miser; But all the better, for the happy pair

       May quarrel, and the lady growing wiser, He may resume his amatory care

       As cavalier servente, or despise her;

       And that his sorrow may not be a dumb one, Write odes on the Inconstancy of Woman.

       And oh! ye gentlemen who have already Some chaste liaison of the kind--I mean An honest friendship with a married lady-- The only thing of this sort ever seen

       To last--of all connections the most steady,

       And the true Hymen (the first 's but a screen)--

       Yet for all that keep not too long away,

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       I 've known the absent wrong'd four times a day.

       Lambro, our sea-solicitor, who had

       Much less experience of dry land than ocean, On seeing his own chimney-smoke, felt glad; But not knowing metaphysics, had no notion Of the true reason of his not being sad,

       Or that of any other strong emotion;