Epilogue

Ladies, your country's ornament and pride, Ye, whom the nuptial deity has tied In silken setters, will ye not impart For pity's sake some portion of your art To a mere novice, and prescribe some plan How you would have me live with my good man?

Tell me, if I should give each passing hour To love of pleasure or to love of power; If with the fatal thirst of desperate play I shou'd turn day to night and night to day; Had I the faculty to make a prize Of each pert animal that meets my eyes, Say are these objects worth my serious aim; Do they give happiness or health or fame? Are hecatombs of lovers hearts of force To deprecate the demons of divorce?

Speak, my advisers, shall I gain the plan Of that bold club, which gives the law to man, At their own weapons that proud sex defies And sets up a new female paradise? Lights for the ladies! Hark, the bar-bells sound! Show to the club-room—See the glass goes round— Hail, happy meeting of the good and fair, Soft relaxation from domestic care, Where virgin minds are early train'd to loo, And all Newmarket opens to the view.

In these gay scenes shall I affect to move, Or pass my hours in dull domestic love? Shall I to rural solitudes descend With Tyrrel my protector, guardian, friend, Or to the rich Pantheon's round repair, And blaze the brightest heathen-goddess there? Where shall I six? Determine ye who know, Shall I renounce my husband, or Soho? With eyes half-open'd and an aking head And ev'n the artificial roses dead, When to my toilette's morning task resign'd, What visitations then may seize my mind!

Save me, just Heaven, from such a painful life, And make me an unfashionable wife!