And thus with these words I began to moan,
Lamenting and mourning myself all alone:
O madness, O doting of those young folk!
O minds without wit, advice and discretion,
With whom their parents can bear no stroke
In their first matrimonial conjunction:
They know not what misery, grief and unquietness
Will hereafter ensue of their extreme foolishness;
Of all such labours they be clean ignorant,
Which, in the nourishing and keeping of children,
To their great charges it is convenient
Either of them henceforth to sustain:
Concerning expenses bestowed in a house,
They perceive as little as doth the mouse.
On the one side the wife will brawl and scold,
On the other side the infant will cry in the cradle:
Anon, when the child waxeth somewhat old,
For meat and drink he begins to babble:
Hereupon cometh it that at markets and fairs
A husband is forced to buy many wares.
Yet for all this hath my foolish son,
As wise [as] a woodcock,[344] without any wit,
Despising his father's mind and opinion,
Married a wife for him most unfit,
Supposing that mirth to be everlasting,
Which then at the first was greatly pleasing.
How they two will live, I cannot tell;
Whereto they may trust, they have nothing.
My mind giveth me, that they will come dwell
At length by their father for want of living;
But my son doubtless, for anything that I know,
Shall reap in such wise as he did sow;
True he shall find, that Hipponax did write,
Who said with a wife are two days of pleasure;
The first is the joy of the marriage-day and night,
The second to be at the wife's sepulture:
And this by experience he shall prove true,
That of his bridal great evils do ensue.
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