To your wise conduct I resign my life: Choose you for me, for well you understand The future good and ill, on either hand: But if an humble husband may request, Provide, and order all things for the best; Your's be the care to profit, and to please, And let your subject-servant take his ease.-- Then thus in peace, quoth she, concludes the strife, Since I am turned the husband, you the wife: The matrimonial victory is mine, Which, having fairly gained, I will resign; Forgive, if I have said or done amiss, And seal the bargain with a friendly kiss. I promised you but one content to share, But now I will become both good and fair. No nuptial quarrel shall disturb your ease; The business of my life shall be to please: And for my beauty, that, as time shall try; But draw the curtain first, and cast your eye.-- He looked, and saw a creature heavenly fair, In bloom of youth, and of a charming air. With joy he turned, and seized her ivory arm; And, like Pygmalion, found the statue warm. Small arguments there needed to prevail, A storm of kisses poured as thick as hail. Thus long in mutual bliss they lay embraced, And their first love continued to the last; One sunshine was their life, no cloud between, Nor ever was a kinder couple seen. And so may all our lives like their's be led; Heaven send the maids young husbands fresh in bed! May widows wed as often as they can, And ever for the better change their man. And some devouring plague pursue their lives, Who will not well be governed by their wives. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 204: Derrick, _glance_.] [Footnote 205: The disappearance of the Fairies, which Chaucer ascribes to the exercitation of the friars, a latter bard, in the same vein of irony, imputes to the Reformation: By which we note the fairies, Were of the old profession; Their songs were Ave Marie's; Their dances were procession. But now, alas! they all are dead, Or gone beyond the seas; Or farther for religion fled, Or else they take their ease. See "The Fairies Farewell," a lively little song, by the witty Bishop Corbet.] [Footnote 206: Our author, to whom, now so far advanced in life, the recollection of some of his plays could not be altogether pleasant, is willing to seek an excuse for their licence in the debauchery of Charles and of his court. The attack of Collier had been too just to admit of its being denied; and our author, like other people, was content to make excuses where defence was impossible.] [Footnote 207: Or Ganore, or Vanore, or Guenever, the wife of Arthur in romance.] [Footnote 208: Ovid, indeed, tells the story in the Metamor. lib. xi. But how will the fair reader excuse Chaucer for converting the talkative male domestic of Midas into that king's wife?] [Footnote 209: The sound which the bittern produces by suction among the roots of water plants, is provincially called _bumping_.] [Footnote 210: