For Strephon could remember well,
That once he heard a school-boy tell,
How Semele of mortal race
By thunder died in Jove's embrace.
And what if daring Strephon dies
By lightning shot from Chloe's eyes?
While these reflections fill'd his head, The bride was put in form to bed: He follow'd, stript, and in he crept, But awfully his distance kept.
Now ponder well, ye parents dear;
Forbid
your daughters guzzling beer;
And make them every afternoon
Forbear their tea, or drink it soon;
That, ere to bed they venture up,
They may discharge it every sup:
If not, they must in evil plight
Be often forc'd to rise at ght.
Keep them to wholesome food confin'd,
Nor let them taste what causes wind:
Elle est si vive, et si jolie
Que, dût-il en perdre la vie,
Il ne s'en repentirait pas.
Moins amoureuse que coquette,
Sémélé, dans un doux moment,
Mourut, dit-on, sur sa couchette
Du tonnerre de son amant.
Plus tendre que cette fillette,
L'heureux Mondor peut bien mourir
Des éclairs que feront jaillir
Les yeux charmans de sa Rosette.
Par ce monologue savant,
Devenu plus entreprenant,
Notre époux vole à sa conquête,
Et puis, se glissant dans le lit,
Il garde une distance honnête,
Et sur le bord il se tapit.
Or yoici, mères de familles,
Une bien grande vérité:
Lorsque vous mariez vos filles
Le soir défendez-leur le thé ;
Ce n'est le tout que de le prendre,
Quand on l'a pris il faut le rendre.
Contre ce terrible devoir
C'est vainement qu'on se soulève,
Fille qui prend du thé le soir
La nuit bien souvent se relève.
'Tis this the sage of Samos means,
Forbidding his disciples beans.
Since husbands get behind the scene,
The wife should study to be clean;
Nor give the smallest room to guess
The time when wants of nature press;
But after marriage practise more
Decorum than she did before;
And make him fancy what she will.
In bed we left the married pair
"Tis time to shew how things went there.
Strephon, who had been often told
That fortune still assists the bold,
Resolv'd to make the first attack;
But Chloe drove him fiercely back.
How could a nymph so chaste as Chloe,
With constitution cold and snowy,
Permit a brutish man to touch her?
Ev'n lambs by instinct fly the butcher.
Resistance on the wedding-night
Is what our maidens claim by right :
And Chloe, 'tis by all agreed,
Was maid in thought, and word, and deed.
Et certes, c'est un vilain tour
Pour une beauté virginale
Qui, de la couche nuptiale,
Par une imprudence fatale,
Fait souvent envoler l'amour.
Hélas! ce qui, dans un ménage,
D'un tendre époux fait un volage,
Jeunes épouses, le voilà;
Et puisqu'il faut en venir là,
Par une adresse prévoyante
Choisissez si bien vos momens,
Que vous laissiez à vos amans
L'illusion qui les enchante.
Mondor, devenu plus pressant,
Mondor, que l'amour aiguillonne,
Par degrés veut tout doucement
Attaquer l'aimable personne;
Il veut..... Rosette alors s'étonne,
Pleure, résiste, ne veut pas;
Un homme, ô ciel, entre ses bras!
Car Rosette, la chose est telle,
D'honnêtes gens me l'ont redit,
D'âme, de corps, de cœur, d'esprit,
Rosette en tout était pucelle.
Yet some assign a different reason;
That Strephon chose no proper season.
Say, fair-ones, must I make a pause,
Or freely tell the secret cause?
Twelve cups of tea, with grief I speak,
Had now constrain'd the nymph to leak.
This point must needs be settled first:
The pride must either void or burst.
Then see the dire effects of pease;
Think what can give the colic ease.
The nymph, oppress'd before, behind,
As ships are toss'd by waves and wind
Steals out her hand, by nature led,
And brings a vessel into bed;
Fair utensil, as smooth and white
As Chloe's skin, almost as bright.
Strephon, who heard the fuming rill As from a mossy cliff distil,
Cry'd out, ye Gods! what sound is this?
Can Chloe, heavenly Chloe-?
But when he smelt a noisome steam;
Which oft attends that luke-warm stream
Salerno both together joins,
|