To A Friend, On His Wedding-Day Poem by Joanna Baillie

'GIVE me, to bless domestic life,
With social ease, secure from strife,
(Cries every fellow of a college)
A wife, not overstock'd with knowledge.'
This, ev'ry fool who loves to quote,
What, parrot-like, he learns by rote,
And ev'ry coxcomb, whose pretence
To wisdom, marks his want of sense,
And all good housewives skill'd in darning,
Who rail with much contempt at larning;
And all who place their greatest good in
The composition of a pudding,
Repeat, with such triumphant air,
Such deep sagacity, you'd swear
That knowledge, among womankind,
Was deadliest poison to the mind;
A crime, which, (venial if conceal'd,
Like theft at Sparta,) when reveal'd
The guilty stamps with such disgrace,
No culprit dares to show her face.

But tell me, you, who dared despise
Such vulgar maxims, who, from eyes
Which well might grace the loveliest fair,
Turn'd not because bright sense beam'd there;
Tell me, through all these thirteen years,
Through varying scenes of hopes and fears,
Could ignorance more faithful prove?
Could folly's self more warmly love?
Then long may this auspicious morn,
At each still happier year's return,
Tell, what thy sweet experience shows,
That head and heart are friends, not foes.