Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, WORKS AND DAYS: MARRIAGE, by HESIOD


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

WORKS AND DAYS: MARRIAGE, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Bring not a wife to your home too soon or too late
Last Line: Strong you may be, but unripe you'll shrivel away.
Subject(s): Marriage; Weddings; Husbands; Wives


BRING not a wife to your home too soon or too late.
Wait till you're thirty, but don't thereafter wait;
thirty's the age. And give her, as rightly you should,
four ripening years, her first of womanhood.
Choose out a virgin, and then you will be obeyed,
teaching her thrift. Make sure with a neighbouring maid,
but watch if people grin when you name her for wife.
She's best of all prizes, or worst of all horrors in life --
a sly greedy-guts, a woman who'll drag you down
and need no fire at all to be roasting you brown;
strong you may be, but unripe you'll shrivel away.





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