To throw away a widow's life, you again may be a wife;

When

Come on, I'll tell you my amours;

Who knows but they may influence your's?
Example draws where precept fails,
And sermons are less read than tales.
T. Sparrow, I take thee for my friend ;
As such will hear thee: I descend;
Hop on and talk; but, honest bird,
Take care that no immodest word
May venture to offend my ear.

S. Too saint-like Turtle, never fear.
By method things are best discuss'd,
Begin we then with wife the first:

A handsome, senseless, awkward fool,
Who would not yield, and could not rule;
Her actions did her charms disgrace,
And still her tongue talk'd of her face;
Count me the leaves on yonder tree,
So many different wills had she,
And, like the leaves, as chance inclined,
Those wills were changed with every
wind:
She courted the beau-monde to-night,
L'assemblée her supreme delight;
The next she sat immured, unseen,
And in full health enjoy'd the spleen;
She censured that, she alter'd this,
And with great care set all amiss;

She now could chide, now laugh, now cry,
Now sing, now pout, all God knows why:
Short was her reign, she cough'd and died:-
Proceed we to my second bride :
Well born she was, genteelly bred,
And buxom both at board and bed ;

Glad to oblige, and pleased to please,
And, as Tom Southern wisely says,
'No other fault had she in life,
But only that she was my wife'.'
O widow Turtle! every she,
(So Nature's pleasure does decree)
Appears a goddess till enjoy'd;

But birds, and men, and gods, are cloy'd.
Was Hercules one woman's man?

Or Jove for ever Leda's swan ?

Ah! Madam, cease to be mistaken,
Few married fowl peck Dunmow-bacon.
Variety alone gives joy;

The sweetest meats the soonest cloy.
What Sparrow-dame, what Dove alive,
Though Venus should the chariot drive,
But would accuse the harness' weight,
If always coupled to one mate;
And often wish the fetter broke?
"Tis freedom but to change the yoke.
T. Impious, to wish to wed again,
Ere death dissolved the former chain!

S. Spare your remark, and hear the rest, She brought me sons, but, Jove be bless'd, She died in childbed, on the nest.

Well, rest her bones, quoth I, she's
But must I therefore lie alone?
What, am I to her memory tied?
Must I not live, because she died?
And thus I logically said,

("Tis good to have a reasoning head)

Is this my wife? probatur, not;

gone;

For death dissolved the marriage-knot:

See the Wife's Excuse, a comedy.

She was, concedo, during life ;
But is a piece of clay a wife?
Again, if not wife, do ye see,
Why then no kin at all to me;
And he who general tears can shed
For folks that happen to be dead,
May e'en with equal justice mourn
For those who never yet were born.

T. Those points, indeed, you quaintly prove; But logic is no friend to love.

S. My children then were just pen-feather'd; Some little corn for them I gather'd, And sent them to my spouse's mother, So left that brood to get another; And as old Harry whilom said, Reflecting on Anne Boleyn dead, 'Cocksbones, I now again do stand The jolliest bachelor i' the' land.'

T. Ah me! my joys, my hopes, are fled;
My first, my only love, is dead;

With endless grief let me bemoan
Columbo's loss

As yet my fortune was but narrow ;
I woo'd my cousin, Philly Sparrow,
O'the' elder house of Chirping-End,
From whence the younger branch descend.
Well seated in a field of pease
She lived, extremely at her ease;
But when the honeymoon was pass'd,
The following nights were soon-o'ercast;
She kept her own, could plead the law,
And quarrel for a barley-straw :
Both, you may judge, became less kind,
As more we knew each other's mind.

She soon grew sullen; I, hard-hearted;
We scolded, hated, fought, and parted;
To London, blessed town! I went;
She boarded at a farm in Kent:
A magpie from the country fled,
And kindly told me--she was dead:
I pruned my feathers, cock'd my tail,
And set my heart again to sale.

My fourth, a mere coquette, or such
I thought her; nor avails it much,
If true or false: our troubles spring
More from the fancy than the thing.
Two staring horns, I often said,
But ill become a Sparrow's head;
But then to set that balance even,
Your cuckold Sparrow goes to heaven.
The thing you fear, suppose it done,
If you inquire, you make it known:
Whilst at the root your horns are sore,
The more you scratch they ache the more.
But turn the tables and reflect,

All may not be that you suspect:
By the mind's eye, the horns we mean
Are only in ideas seen;

'Tis from the inside of the head

Their branches shoot, their antlers spread; Fruitful suspicions often bear them;

You feel them from the time you fear them.
Cuckoo! Cuckoo! that echo'd word
Offends the ear of vulgar bird;

But those of finer taste have found
There's nothing in 't beside the sound.
Preferment always waits on horns,
And household peace the gift adorns :

This way or that let factions tend,
The spark is still the cuckold's friend :
This way or that let madam roam,
Well pleased and quiet she comes home.
Now weigh the pleasure with the pain,
The plus and minus, loss and gain;
And what La Fontaine laughing says,
Is serious truth in such a case:

Who slights the evil, finds it least ;
And who does nothing, does the best.'
I never strove to rule the roast,
She ne'er refused to pledge my toast:
In visits if we chanced to meet,
I seem'd obliging, she discreet:
We neither much caress'd nor strove,
But good dissembling pass'd for love.

T. Whate'er of light our eyes may know, "Tis only light itself can show: Whate'er of love our heart can feel, "Tis mutual love alone can tell.

S. My pretty, amorous, foolish bird,
A moment's patience.-In one word,
The three kind Sisters broke the chain;
She died, I mourn'd, and woo'd again.

T. Let me with juster grief deplore
My dear Columbo, now no more;
Let me with constant tears bewail-

S. Your sorrow does but spoil my tale.
My fifth she proved a jealous wife,
Lord shield us all from such a life!
"Twas doubt, complaint, reply, chit-chat,
"Twas this to-day, to-morrow that.
Sometimes, forsooth, upon the brook
I kept a miss; an honest rook