To pass his times of recreation
In choice and noble conversation,
Catch truth and reason unawares,
As men do health in wholesome airs;
(While fools their conversants possess
As unawares with sottishness)
To gain access a private way
To man's best sense, by its own key,
Which painful judges strive in vain
By any other course to obtain;
To pull off all disguise, and view
Things as they 're natural and true;
Discover fools and knaves, allow'd
For wise and honest in the crowd;
With innocent and virtuous sport
Make short days long, and long nights short,
And mirth, the only antidote
Against diseases ere they're got;
To save health harmless from the' access
Both of the medicine and disease;
Or make it help itself, secure
Against the desperatest fit, the cure,
All these sublime prerogatives
Of happiness to human lives,
He vainly throws away, and slights
For madness, noise, and bloody fights;
When nothing can decide, but swords
And pots, the right or wrong of words,
Like princes' titles; and he's outed
The justice of his cause, that 's routed.
No sooner has a charge been sounded
With-son of a whore, and damn'd confounded,
And the bold signal given, the lie;
But instantly the bottles fly,
Where cups and glasses are small shot,
And cannon-ball a pewter-pot:
That blood, that's hardly in the vein,
Is now remanded back again;
Though sprung from wine of the same piece,
And near a-kin, within degrees,
Strives to commit assassinations
On its own natural relations;
And those twin-spirits, so kind-hearted,
That from their friends so lately parted,
No sooner several ways are gone,
But by themselves are set upon,
Surprised like brother against brother,
And put to the' sword by one another :
So much more fierce are civil wars,
Than those between mere foreigners;
And man himself, with wine possess'd,
More savage than the wildest beast.
For serpents, when they meet to water,
Lay by their poison and their nature;
And fiercest creatures, that repair,
In thirsty deserts, to their rare
And distant rivers' banks to drink,
In love and close alliance link;
And from their mixture of strange seeds
Produce new, never-heard-of breeds,
To whom the fiercer unicorn
Begins a large health with his horn;
As cuckolds put their antidotes,
When they drink coffee, into the' pots:
While man, with raging drink inflamed,
Is far more savage and untamed;
Supplies his loss of wit and sense
With barbarousness and insolence;
Believes himself, the less he's able,
The more heroic' and formidable;
Lays by his reason in his bowls,
(As Turks are said to do their souls)
Until it has so often been
Shut out of its lodging, and let in,
At length it never can attain
To find the right way back again;
Drinks all his time away, and prunes
The end of 's life, as vignerons
Cut short the branches of a vine,
To make it bear more plenty o' wine;
And that which Nature did intend
To' enlarge his life, perverts to' its end.
So Noah, when he anchor'd safe on
The mountain's top, his lofty haven,
And all the passengers he bore
Were on the new world set ashore,
He made it next his chief design
To plant and propagate a vine;
Which since has overwhelm'd and drown'd
Far greater numbers, on dry ground,
Of wretched mankind, one by one,
Than all the flood before had done.
SURE marriages were never so well fitted,
As when to matrimony' men were committed,
Like thieves by justices; and to a wife
Bound, like to good behaviour, during life:
For then, 'twas but a civil contract made
Between two partners that set up a trade;
And if both fail'd, there was no conscience
Nor faith invaded in the strictest sense;
No canon of the church nor vow was broke,
When men did free their gall'd necks from the yoke;
But when they tired, like other horned beasts,
Might have it taken off, and take their rests,
Without being bound in duty to show cause,
Or reckon with divine or human laws.
For since, what use of matrimony' has been
But to make gallantry a greater sin?
As if there were no appetite nor gust,
Below adultery, in modish lust;
Or no debauchery were exquisite,
Until it has attain'd its perfect height.
For men do now take wives to nobler ends,
Not to bear children, but to bear them friends,
Whom nothing can oblige at such a rate
As these endearing offices of late.
For men are now grown wise, and understand
How to improve their crimes as well as land;
And if they 'ave issue, make the infants pay
Down for their own begetting on the day,
The charges of the gossiping disburse,
And pay beforehand (ere they 're born) the nurse;
As he that got a monster on a cow,
Out of design of setting up a show.
For why should not the brats for all account,
As well as for the christening at the font,
When those that stand for them, lay down the rate
O'the' banquet and the priest in spoons and plate?
The ancient Romans made the state allow
For getting all men's children above two;
Then married men, to propagate the breed,
Had great rewards for what they never did,
Were privileged, and highly honour'd too,
For owning what their friends were fain to do;
For so they 'ad children, they regarded not
By whom (good men) or how they were begot.
To borrow wives (like money) or to lend,
Was then the civil office of a friend;
And he that made a scruple in the case,
Was held a miserable wretch and base;
For when they 'ad children by them, the' honest men
Return'd them to their husbands back again.
Then, for the' encouragement and propagation
Of such a great concernment to the nation,
All people were so full of complaisance,
And civil duty to the public sense,
They had no name to' express a cuckold then,
But that which signified all married men ;
Nor was the thing accounted a disgrace,
Unless among the dirty populace,
And no man understands on what account
Less civil nations after hit upon 't:
For to be known a cuckold can be no
Dishonour, but to him that thinks it so ;
For if he feel no chagrin or remorse,
His forehead's shot-free, and he's ne'er the worse:
For horns (like horny calluses) are found
grow on skulls that have received a wound, Are crack'd, and broken; not at all on those That are invulnerate, and free from blows. What a brave time had cuckold-makers then, When they were held the worthiest of men, The real fathers of the commonwealth, That planted colonies in Rome itself!
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