from Canto III

21

Arriving at the summit of a hill
     Which overlook’d the white walls 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.

22

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.

23

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.

24

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.

25

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 connexions the most steady,
     And the true Hymen, (the first’s but a screen)—
Yet for all that keep not too long away,
I’ve known the absent wrong’d four times a-day.

26

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;
He loved his child, and would have wept the loss of her,
But knew the cause no more than a philosopher.

27

He saw his white walls shining in the sun,
     His garden trees all shadowy and green;
He heard his rivulet’s light bubbling run,
     The distant dog-bark; and perceived between
The umbrage of the wood so cool and dun
     The moving figures, and the sparkling sheen
Of arms (in the East all arm)—and various dyes
Of colour’d garbs, as bright as butterflies.

28

And as the spot where they appear he nears,
    Surprised at these unwonted signs of idling,
He hears—alas! no music of the spheres,
    But an unhallow’d, earthly sound of fiddling!
A melody which made him doubt his ears,
    The cause being past his guessing or unriddling;
A pipe, too, and a drum, and shortly after,
A most unoriental roar of laughter.

29

And still more nearly to the place advancing,
    Descending rather quickly the declivity,
Through the waved branches, o’er the greensward glancing,
     ‘Midst other indications of festivity,
Seeing a troop of his domestics dancing
    Like dervises, who turn as on a pivot, he
Perceived it was the Pyrrhic dance so martial,
To which the Levantines are very partial.

30

And further on a group of Grecian girls,
     The first and tallest her white kerchief waving,
Were strung together like a row of pearls;
     Link’d hand in hand, and dancing; each too having
Down her white neck long floating auburn curls—
     (The least of which would set ten poets raving);
Their leader sang—and bounded to her song,
With choral step and voice, the virgin throng.