 | Original Poems and Translations |  |
169
COMFORTS of MATRIMONY.
You judge quite wrong to think your fortune hard;
Life's troubles, not its blessings, you regard:
Believe me, friend, the race of man can know
No earthly comfort unallay'd with woe.
Much plague, no doubt, attends a sumptuous wife;
She's the sure torment of her husband's life.
Yet ev'n from her some benefits accrue,
She brings him sons, she brings him daughters too:
When ill, her care administers relief,
When Fortune frowns, she solaces his grief:
When age, or sickness, brings him to his end,
She decently inters him, like a friend.
Think, think on this, when slight vexations teaze;
The mighty charm will set your heart at ease:
But if you let wild sorrow thus prevail,
And place no comforts in the other scale;
Not weighing gain with loss, nor good with ill,
Still you must murmur, and be wretched still.
Life's troubles, not its blessings, you regard:
Believe me, friend, the race of man can know
No earthly comfort unallay'd with woe.
Much plague, no doubt, attends a sumptuous wife;
She's the sure torment of her husband's life.
Yet ev'n from her some benefits accrue,
She brings him sons, she brings him daughters too:
When ill, her care administers relief,
When Fortune frowns, she solaces his grief:
When age, or sickness, brings him to his end,
She decently inters him, like a friend.
Think, think on this, when slight vexations teaze;
The mighty charm will set your heart at ease:
But if you let wild sorrow thus prevail,
And place no comforts in the other scale;
Not weighing gain with loss, nor good with ill,
Still you must murmur, and be wretched still.
| Original Poems and Translations | |