Lady - The Ladies Defence: (Chap. 5) lyrics

Mistrust your Vows, despise your little Arts, And keep a constant Guard upon their Hearts. Unhappy they, who by their Duty led, Are made the Partners of a hated Bed; And by their Fathers Avarice or Pride, To Empty Fops, or Nauseous Clowns are tied; Or else constrained to give up all their Charms Into an old ill-humored Husbands Arms, Who hugs his Bags, and never was inclined To be to ought besides his Money kind, On that he dotes, and to increase his Wealth, would sacrifice his conscience, Ease and Health, Give up his Children, and devote his Wife, And live a Stranger to the Joys of Life. Who's always positive in what is Ill, and still a slave to his imperious will averse to anything he thinks will please, still sick, and still in love with his Disease With Fears, with Discontent, with Envy curst, To all uneasy, and himself the worst; A spiteful Censor of the present Age, Or dully jesting, or deformed with Rage. These call for Pity, since it is their Fate; Their Friends, not they, their Miseries create: They are like Victims to the Alter led, Born for Destruction, and for Ruin bred Forced to sigh out each long revolving Year, And see their Lives all spent in Toil and Care. But such as may be from this Bondage free, Who've no Abridgers of their Liberty. No cruel Parents, no imposing Friends,To make 'em wretched for their private Ends, From me shall no Commiseration have, If they themselves to barbarous Men enslave; They'd better Wed among the Savage kind,And be too generous Lyons still confined; Or matched to Tigers, who would gentler prove Thank you, who talk of Piety and Love,