Wives By The Dozen by Matthew Prior • Simple Poetry

An Epitaph

Interr'd beneath this marble stone,
Lie saunt'ring Jack and idle Joan.
While rolling threescore years and one
Did round this globe their courses run;
If human things went ill or well;
If changing empires rose or fell;
The morning passed, the evening came,
And found this couple still the same.
They walk'd and eat, good folks: what then?
Why then they walk'd and eat again:
They soundly slept the night away:
They did just nothing all the day:
And having buried children four,
Would not take pains to try for more.
Nor sister either had, nor brother:
They seemed just tallied for each other.
Their moral and economy
Most perfectly they made agree:
Each virtue kept its proper bound,
Nor tresspass'd on the other's ground.
Nor fame, nor censure they r...

Matthew Prior

Chaste Florimel

No,I'll endure ten thousand deaths
Ere any further I'll comply:
Oh! Sir, no man on earth that breathes
Had ever yet his hand so high.

Oh! take your sword and pierce my heart,
Undaunted see me meet the wound
Oh! will you act a Tarquin's part?
A second Lucrece you have found.

Thus to the pressing Corydon
Poor Florimel, unhappy maid,
Fearing by love to be undone,
In broken dying accents said;

Delia who held the conscious door,
Inspired by truth and brandy, smiled,
Knowing that sixteen months before
Our Lucrece had her second child.

And hark ye, Madam, cried the bawd,
None of your flights, your high-rope dodging;
Be civil here, or march abroad;
Oblige the 'squire, or quit the lodging.

Oh! have I, Florimel went on,<...

Matthew Prior

Nell and John

When Nell, given o'er by the doctor, was dying,
And John at the chimney stood decently crying,
'Tis in vain said the woman to make such ado,
For to our long home we must all of us go.

True, Nell, replied John; but what yet is the worst
For us that remain, the best always go first;
Remember, dear wife, that I said so last year,
When you lost your white heifer, and I my brown mare.

Matthew Prior

The Young Widow.

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A husband's death brings always sighs;
The widow sobs, sheds tears - then dries.
Of Time the sadness borrows wings;
And Time returning pleasure brings.
Between the widow of a year
And of a day, the difference
Is so immense,
That very few who see her
Would think the laughing dame
And weeping one the same.
The one puts on repulsive action,
The other shows a strong attraction.
The one gives up to sighs, or true or false;
The same sad note is heard, whoever calls.
Her grief is inconsolable,
They say. Not so our fable,
Or, rather, not so says the truth.

To other worlds a husband went
And left his wife in prime of youth.
Above his dying couch she bent,
And cried, 'My love, O wait for me!
My soul would gladly g...

Jean de La Fontaine

Satires Of Circumstances In Fifteen Glimpses - XIV Over The Coffin

They stand confronting, the coffin between,
His wife of old, and his wife of late,
And the dead man whose they both had been
Seems listening aloof, as to things past date.
"I have called," says the first. "Do you marvel or not?"
"In truth," says the second, "I do somewhat."

"Well, there was a word to be said by me! . . .
I divorced that man because of you -
It seemed I must do it, boundenly;
But now I am older, and tell you true,
For life is little, and dead lies he;
I would I had let alone you two!
And both of us, scorning parochial ways,
Had lived like the wives in the patriarchs' days."

Thomas Hardy

Epitaph - On Himself

Nobles and Heralds, by your leave!
Here lie the bones of Matthew Prior;
A son of Adam and Eve:
Let Bourbon or Nassau go higher.

Matthew Prior

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