'Tis pity wine, which Nature meant
To man in kindness to present,
And gave him kindly, to caress
And cherish his frail happiness,
Of equal virtue to renew
His weary'd mind and body too,
Should (like the cyder-tree in Eden,
Which only grew to be forbidden)
No sooner come to be enjoy'd,
But th' owner's fatally destroy'd;
And that which she for good design'd
Becomes the ruin of mankind,
That for a little vain excess
Runs out of all its happiness,
And makes the friend of Truth and Love
Their greatest adversary prove;
T'abuse a blessing she bestow'd
So truly' essential to his good,
To countervail his pensive cares,
And slavish drudg'ry of affairs;
To teach him judgment, wit, and sense,
And, more than all these, confidence;
pass his times of recreation
In choice and noble conversation,
Catch truth and reason unawares,
As men do health in wholesome airs
(While fools their conversants possess, As unawares, with sottishness);
To gain access a private way
To man's best sense, by its own key,
Which painful judges strive in vain
By any other course t' obtain ;
To pull off all disguise, and view
Things as they 're natural and true;
Discover fools and knaves, allow'd
For wise and honest in the crowd;
With innocent and virtuous sport
Make short days long, and long nights short,
And mirth the only antidote
Against diseases ere they 're got;
To save health harmless from th' access
Both of the med'cine and disease;
Or make it help itself, secure
Against the desperat'st fit, the cure.
All these sublime prerogatives
Of happiness to human lives,
He vainly throws away, and slights
For madness, noise, and bloody fights;
When nothing can decide, but swords
And pots, the right or wrong of words,
Like princes' titles; and he 's outed
The justice of his cause, that 's routed.
No sooner has a charge been sounded With 'Son of a whore,' and 'Damn'd confounded,' And the bold signal giv'n, the lie,
But instantly the bottles fly,
Where cups and glasses are small shot,
And cannon-ball a pewter pot:
That blood, that's hardly in the vein,
Is now remanded back again;
Though sprung from wine of the same piece,
And near a-kin within degrees,
Strives to commit assassinations
On its own natural relations;
And those twin-spirits, so kind-hearted,
That from their friends so lately parted,
No sooner several ways are gone,
But by themselves are set upon,
Surpris'd like brother against brother,
And put to th' sword by one another:
So much more fierce are civil wars,
Than those between mere foreigners;
And man himself, with wine possest,
More savage than the wildest beast.
For serpents, when they meet to water,
Lay by their poison and their nature;
And fiercest creatures, that repair,
In thirsty deserts, to their rare
And distant rivers' banks to drink,
In love and close alliance link,
And from their mixture of strange seeds
Produce new never-heard-of breeds,
To whom the fiercer unicorn
Begins a large health with his horn;
As cuckolds put their antidotes,
When they drink coffee, into th' pots:
While man, with raging drink inflam'd,
Is far more savage and untam'd;
Supplies his loss of wit and sense
With barb'rousness and insolence
Believes himself, the less he 's able,
The more heroic and formidable;
Lays by his reason in his bowls,
As Turks are said to do their souls,
Until it has so often been
Shut out of its lodging, and let in,
At length it never can attain
To find the right way back again;
Drinks all his time away, and prunes
The end of 's life, as Vignerons
Cut short the branches of a vine,
To make it bear more plenty o' wine;
And that which Nature did intend
T'enlarge his life, perverts t' its end.
So Noah, when he anchor'd safe on
The mountain's top, his lofty haven,
And all the passengers he bore
Were on the new world set ashore,
He made it next his chief design
To plant and propagate a vine,
Which since has overwhelm'd and drown'd
Far greater numbers, on dry ground,
Of wretched mankind, one by one,
Than all the flood before had done.
SURE marriages were never so well fitted,
As when to matrimony' men were committed,
Like thieves by justices, and to a wife
Bound, like to good behaviour, during life:
For then 'twas but a civil contract made
Between two partners that set up a trade;
And if both fail'd, there was no conscience
Nor faith invaded in the strictest sense;
No canon of the church, nor vow, was broke
When men did free their gall'd necks from the yoke:
But when they tir'd, like other horned beasts,
Might have it taken off, and take their rests,
Without b'ing bound in duty to shew cause,
Or reckon with divine or human laws.
For since, what use of matrimony' has been
But to make gallantry a greater sin?
As if there were no appetite nor gust,
Below adultery, in modish lust;
Or no debauchery were exquisite,
Until it has attain'd its perfect height.
For men do now take wives to nobler ends,
Not to bear children, but to bear them friends;
Whom nothing can oblige at such a rate
As these endearing offices of late.
For men are now grown wise, and understand
How to improve their crimes, as well as land;
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