University of Virginia Library

Let me for once my friendly verse employ
To wish a long continuance of your joy,
Far as consists with change of earthly state;
Nor teased by small ills, nor assail'd by great!
Break from your chains of form and visit soon,
But life, in all things else, be honey-moon.

And say, my friend, does woman still possess
No place in all your schemes of happiness?
Or have you now by sweet experience known
It was not good for man to be alone?
And sure, if God's authority suffice,
It was not good, no, not in Paradise.

Marriage in Drury-lane the' eternal jest,
To heaven exalted and to hell depress'd;
As fools adore the dreams themselves create,
Or throw their faults on providence or fate.
They more than life can give would fain receive:
This all experience, and yet few believe.
At sixty they discern, with vast surprise,
That none can come at heaven before he dies.
Their vows to meanest ends subservient prove,
And vice or madness takes the form of love,—
The statesman's tool to bring his ends to bear,
The miser's market, and the cully's snare;
By jilts a screen to veil dishonour made,
By fops derided, and by wits betray'd.

Our roving fancies will o'erpaint the truth:
Ill follows good, and age succeeds to youth.
No certain skies our various clime can boast;
We pant in dog-days, and we shake in frost.
No spring with us throughout the year can hold;
But June is hot, and January cold.
We see no fairy-groves, poetic bowers,
Laden with ripening fruits and opening flowers.
Alas! no shire in good old England yields
Romantic gardens or enchanted fields.

But what are dreams to you? May you possess
Your utmost share of nuptial happiness!
To which no flaming sword access denies,
And man may taste, though shut from Paradise;
No transports vain, by feverish fancy wrought,
But waking reason and reflecting thought.
Your days be friendly, and serene your nights;
Still in one bed,—though not for fear of sprites.
No sage adviser dash the sweets of life,
By whispering how to break and rule a wife:
No female friend instruct the reins to hold
By curtain-lectures, or by noon-day scold.
Without a third, to please yourselves combine,
And still in all things but in anger join.
With mutual frankness take your common way,
Together serious and together gay.
Be more than friends. When heavenly influence shed
With timely fruit shall bless the genial bed,
Let nurslings dear their mother's arms employ,
And rarely cause a tear, unless of joy;
With prattlings fond your yearning love engage,
But greater transports yield in riper age;
When gladness,—to behold the favourite son,
Or daughter fair, in paths of virtue run,—
Too big for words, the parents' hearts o'erflows,
And pays the father's cares and mother's throes.
Each changing scene your happiness improve
With new endearments of your plighted love;
Till grateful you shall own that wedded bliss
Is less, but only less, than Paradise.

As the “Rehearsal's” fiddlers in the cloud,
Though no Coranto, play'd a tune as good;
So these unpolish'd verses sent by me
May pass for truth, if not for poetry;
Wherein at least I this respect have shown,
To write your wedding-song before my own.