Classic Poem

In Saturn's reign, at Nature's early birth,
There was that thing called chastity on earth;
When in a narrow cave, their common shade,
The sheep, their shepherds and their gods were laid:
When reeds and leaves, and hides of beasts were spread
By mountain huswives for their homely bed,
And mossy pillows raised, for the rude husband's head.
Unlike the niceness of our modern dames
(Affected nymphs with new affected names),
The Cynthias and the Lesbias of our years,
Who for a sparrow's death dissolve in tears,
Those first unpolished matrons, big and bold,
Gave suck to infants of gigantic mould;
Rough as their savage lords who ranged the wood,
And fat with acorns belched their windy food.
For when the World was buxom, fresh, and young,
Her sons were undebauched, and therefore strong;
And whether born in kindly beds of earth,
Or struggling from the teeming oaks to birth,
Or from what other atoms they begun,
No sires they had, or if a sire the Sun.
Some thin remains of chastity appeared
Ev'n under Jove, but Jove without a beard;
Before the servile Greeks had learned to swear
By heads of kings; while yet the bounteous year
Her common fruits in open plains exposed,
Ere thieves were feared, or gardens were enclosed.
At length uneasy Justice upwards flew,
And both the sisters to the stars withdrew;
From that old era whoring did begin,
So venerably ancient is the sin.
Adult'rers next invade the nuptial state,
And marriage-beds creaked with a foreign weight;
All other ills did Iron times adorn;
But whores and Silver in one age were born.
Yet thou, they say, for marriage dost provide:
Is this an age to buckle with a bride?
They say thy hair the curling art is taught,
The wedding-ring perhaps already bought;
A sober man like thee to change his life!
What fury would possess thee with a wife?
Art thou of ev'ry other death bereft,
No knife, no ratsbane, no kind halter left
(For every noose compared to hers is cheap)?
Is there no city bridge from whence to leap?
Would'st thou become her drudge, who dost enjoy
A better sort of bedfellow, thy boy?
He keeps thee not awake with nightly brawls,
Nor with a begged reward thy pleasure palls;
Nor with insatiate heavings calls for more,
When all thy spirits were drained out before.
But still Ursidius courts the marriage bait,
Longs for a son, to settle his estate,
And takes no gifts though every gaping heir
Would gladly grease the rich old bachelor.
What revolution can appear so strange,
As such a lecher such a life to change?
A rank, notorious whoremaster, to choose
To thrust his neck into the marriage noose!
He who so often in a dreadful fright
Had in a coffer 'scaped the jealous cuckold's sight,
That he, to wedlock dotingly betrayed,
Should hope, in this lewd town, to find a maid!
The man's grown mad: to ease his frantic pain,
Run for the surgeon; breathe the middle vein;
But let a heifer with gilt horns be led
To Juno, Regent of the Marriage-bed,
And let him every deity adore,
If his new bride prove not an arrant whore,
In head and tail, and every other pore.
On Ceres' feast, restrained from their delight,
Few matrons, there, but curse the tedious night:
Few whom their fathers dare salute, such lust
Their kisses have, and come with such a gust.
With ivy now adorn thy doors, and wed;
Such is thy bride, and such thy genial bed.
Think'st thou one man is for one woman meant?
She sooner with one eye would be content.
And yet, 'tis noised, a maid did once appear
In some small village, though fame says not where:
'Tis possible; but sure no man she found;
'Twas desert, all, about her father's ground:
And yet some lustful god might there make bold;
Are Jove and Mars grown impotent and old?
Many a fair nymph has in a cave been spread,
And much good love, without a feather-bed.