Page:The Remains of Hesiod the Ascraean, including the Shield of Hercules - Elton (1815).djvu/164

The golden mean of conduct should confine
Our every aim; be moderation thine.
Take to thy house a woman for thy bride
When in the ripeness of thy manhood's pride:
Thrice ten thy sum of years; the nuptial prime;
Nor fall far short, nor far exceed the time.
Four years the ripening virgin should consume,
And wed the fifth of her expanded bloom.^[1]
A virgin choose: and mould her manners chaste:
Chief be some neighbouring maid by thee embraced:
Look circumspect and long: lest thou be found
The merry mock of all the dwellers round.
No better lot has Providence assign'd
Than a fair woman with a virtuous mind:
Nor can a worse befall, then when thy fate
Allots a worthless, feast-contriving mate:
She, with no torch of mere material flame,
Shall burn to tinder thy care-wasted frame:
Shall send a fire thy vigorous bones within,^[2]
And age unripe in bloom of years begin.

1. And wed the fifth of her expanded bloom.] She begins to bloom in her twelfth year. Let her wed in the fifth year of her puberty; that is, in her sixteenth. Guietus.
   Robinson, not considering the difference of climate, supposes that the fourteenth year is the first of her puberty, and that she is directed to wed in her nineteenth.
2. Shall send a fire thy vigorous bones within.] A virtuous wowo-