Domestic happiness, thou only bliss Of Paradise that has survived the fall! Though few now taste thee unimpaired and pure, Or, tasting, long enjoy thee, too infirm Or too incautious to preserve thy sweets Unmixed with drops of bitter, which neglect Or temper sheds into thy crystal cup. Thou art the nurse of virtue. In thine arms She smiles, appearing, as in truth she is, Heaven-born, and destined to the skies again. Thou art not known where Pleasure is adored, That reeling goddess with the zoneless waist And wandering eyes, still leaning on the arm Of Novelty, her fickle frail support; For thou art meek and constant, hating change, And finding in the calm of truth-tried love Joys that her stormy raptures never yield. Forsaking thee, what shipwreck have we made Of honour, dignity, and fair renown, Till prostitution elbows us aside In all our crowded streets, and senates seem Convened for purposes of empire less, Than to release the adult’ress from her bond. The adult’ress! what a theme for angry verse, What provocation to the indignant heart That feels for injured love! but I disdain The nauseous task to paint her as she is, Cruel, abandoned, glorying in her shame. No; let her pass, and charioted along In guilty splendour shake the public ways; The frequency of crimes has washed them white, And verse of mine shall never brand the wretch Whom matrons now of character unsmirched And chaste themselves, are not ashamed to own. Virtue and vice had boundaries in old time Not to be passed; and she that had renounced Her sex’s honour, was renounced herself By all that prized it; not for prudery’s sake, But dignity’s, resentful of the wrong. ’Twas hard, perhaps, on here and there a waif Desirous to return, and not received; But was a wholesome rigour in the main, And taught the unblemished to preserve with care That purity, whose loss was loss of all. Men, too, were nice in honour in those days, And judged offenders well. Then he that sharped, And pocketed a prize by fraud obtained, Was marked and shunned as odious. He that sold His country, or was slack when she required His every nerve in action and at stretch, Paid with the blood that he had basely spared The price of his default. But now,—yes, now, We are become so candid and so fair, So liberal in construction, and so rich In Christian charity (good-natured age!) That they are safe, sinners of either sex, Transgress what laws they may. Well dressed, well bred, Well equipaged, is ticket good enough To pass us readily through every door. Hypocrisy, detest her as we may (And no man’s hatred ever wronged her yet), May claim this merit still—that she admits The worth of what she mimics with such care, And thus gives virtue indirect applause; But she has burnt her mask, not needed here,