Hudibras - Samuel Butler (story reading txt) 📗

cross and pile for better or worse;
A mode that is held honourable,
As well as French, and fashionable;
For when it falls out for the best,
Where both are incommoded least,
In soul and body two unite,
To make up one hermaphrodite,
Still amorous, and fond, and billing,
Like Philip and Mary on a shilling.
Th’ have more punctilios and capriches
Between the petticoat and breeches,
More petulant extravagances,
Than poets make ’em in romances,
Though when their heroes ’spouse the dames,
We hear no more of charms and flames:
For then their late attracts decline,
And turn as eager as prick’d wine;
And all their catterwauling tricks,
In earnest to as jealous piques:
Which the ancients wisely signify’d
By th’ yellow mantuas of the bride;
For jealousy is but a kind
Of clap and grincam of the mind,
The natural effects of love,
As other flames and aches do prove;
But all the mischief is the doubt
On whose account they first broke out.
For though Chineses go to bed,148
And lie in, in their ladies’ stead,
And, for the pains they took before,
Are nurs’d and pamper’d to do more;
Our green-men do it worse, when th’ hap
To fail in labour of a clap:
Both lay the child to one another;
But who’s the father, who the mother,
’Tis hard to say in multitudes,
Or who imported the French goods.
But health and sickness b’ing all one,
Which both engag’d before to own,
And are not with their bodies bound
To worship only when they’re sound,
Both give and take their equal shares
Of all they suffer by false wares;
A fate no lover can divert
With all his caution, wit, and art;
For ’tis in vain to think to guess
At women by appearances,
That paint and patch their imperfections
Of intellectual complexions,
And daub their tempers o’er with washes
As artificial as their faces;
Wear under vizard-masks their talents
And mother-wits before their gallants,
Until they’re hamper’d in the noose,
Too fast to dream of breaking loose;
When all the flaws they strove to hide
Are made unready with the bride,
That with her wedding-clothes undresses
Her complaisance and gentilesses,
Tries all her arts to take upon her
The government from th’ easy owner;
Until the wretch is glad to waive
His lawful right, and turn her slave;
Find all his having and his holding,
Reduc’d t’ eternal noise and scolding;
The conjugal petard that tears
Down all portcullises of ears,
And make the volley of one tongue
For all their leathern shields too strong;
When only arm’d with noise and nails,
The female silk-worms ride the males,
Transform ’em into rams and goats,
Like Sirens, with their charming notes;149
Sweet as a screech-owl’s serenade,
Or those enchanting murmurs made
By th’ husband mandrake and the wife,150
Both bury’d (like themselves) alive.

Quoth he, These reasons are but strains
Of wanton, overheated brains,
Which ralliers, in their wit, or drink,
Do rather wheedle with than think
Man was not man in paradise,
Until he was created twice,
And had his better half, his bride,
Carv’d from the original, his side,
T’ amend his natural defects,
And perfect his recruiting sex;
Enlarge his breed at once, and lessen
The pains and labour of increasing,
By changing them for other cares,
As by his dry’d up paps appears.
His body, that stupendous frame,
Of all the world the anagram,
Is of two equal parts compact,
In shape and symmetry exact,
Of which the left and female side
Is to the manly right a bride;
Both join’d together with such art,
That nothing else but death can part.
Those heav’nly attracts of yours, your eyes,
And face, that all the world surprise,
That dazzle all that look upon ye,
And scorch all other ladies tawny,
Those ravishing and charming graces
Are all made up of two half faces,
That in a mathematic line,
Like those in other heavens, join,
Of which if either grew alone,
’Twould fright as much to look upon:
And so would that sweet bud your lip,
Without the other’s fellowship.
Our noblest senses act by pairs;
Two eyes to see; to hear, two ears;
Th’ intelligencers of the mind,
To wait upon the soul design’d;
But those that serve the body alone,
Are single, and confin’d to one.
The world is but two parts, that meet
And close at th’ equinoctial fit;151
And so are all the works of Nature,
Stamp’d with her signature on matter;
Which all her creatures, to a leaf,
Or smallest blade of grass, receive;
All which sufficiently declare
How entirely marriage is her care⁠—
The only method that she uses
In all the wonders she produces:
And those that take their rules from her
Can never be deceiv’d nor err.
For what secures the civil life,
But pawns of children, and a wife?
That lie like hostages at stake,
To pay for all men undertake;
To whom it is as necessary
As to be born and breathe, and marry;
So universal, all mankind
In nothing else is of one mind.
For in what stupid age, or nation,
Was marriage ever out of fashion?
Unless among the Amazons,152
Or cloister’d friars, and vestal nuns;
Or Stoick, who, to bar the freaks
And loose excesses of the sex,
Prepost’rously would have all women
Turn’d up to all the world in common.
Though men would find such mortal feuds,
In sharing of their public goods,
’Twould put them to more charge of lives,
Than they’re supply’d with now by wives;
Until they graze, and wear their clothes,
As beasts do, of their native growths:
For simple wearing of their horns
Will not suffice to serve their turns.
For what can we pretend to inherit,
Unless the marriage-deed will bear it?
Could claim no right to lands or rents,
But for our parents’ settlements;
Had been but younger sons o’ th’ earth,
Debarr’d it all, but for our birth.
What honours, or estates of peers,
Could be preserv’d but by their heirs?
And what security maintains
Their right and title, but the bans?
What crowns could be hereditary,
If greatest monarchs did not marry,
And with their consorts consummate
Their weightiest interests of state?
For all the amours of princes are
But guarantees of peace or war.
Or what but marriage has a charm
The rage of empires to disarm,
Make blood and desolation cease,
And fire and sword unite in peace,
When all their fierce contest for forage
Conclude in articles of marriage?
Nor does the genial bed provide
Less for the int’rests of the bride;
Who else had not the least pretence
T’ as much as due benevolence;
Could no more title take upon her
To virtue, quality, and honour,
Than ladies-errant unconfin’d,
And feme-coverts t’ all mankind.
All women would be of one piece,
The virtuous matron and the miss;
The nymphs of chaste Diana’s train,153
The same with those in Lewkner’s Lane,154
But for