Classic Poem

Those awful words, Till Death do part !
May well alarm the youthful heart:
No after-thought, when once a wife,
The dye is cast, and cast for life.
Yet thousands venture every day,
As some base passion leads the way.

Pert Sylvia talks of wedlock scenes,
Tho' hardly enter'd on her teens;
Smiles on her whining spark and hears,
The sugar'd speech with raptur'd ears:
Impatient of a parent's rule,
She leaves the sire, and weds a fool.

Want enters at the guardless door,
And love is fled to come no more.
Some few there are of sordid mould,
Who barter youth and bloom for gold;
Careless with whom, or who they mate,
Love's passion's all they will forsake.
Such rebels given beneath the rod;
For Hymen's a vindicate God.

Be eyeless every night he said,
And barren be thy nuptial bed;
Attend my fair to Wisdom's voice,
A better fate may be thy choice;
A marriage life to speak the best,
Is all a lottery confest,
'Tis an important point to know,
There's no perfection here below.

Man's an odd compound, after all,
And ever has been since the fall;
Says that he loves you from his soul,
Still man is proud, nor brooks controul,
And tho' a slave in love's soft school,
In wedlock claims a right to rule.

The best, in short, his faults has got:
If few these faults, then flout him not.
With some indeed you can't dispense,
And want of temper, and of sense.
For when the sun deserts the skies,
And the dull winter's evenings rise,
Then for a husband's social pow'r,
To form the calm, conversive hour:
The treasures of thy breast explore,
And prize that more than golden ore.