[Page 328]

ADVICE to a Lady in Autumn.

1 ASSES milk, half a pint, take at seven, or before;
2 Then sleep for an hour or two, and no more.
3 At nine stretch your arms, and oh! think when alone,
4 There's no pleasure in bed. MARY, bring me my gown:
5 Slip on that ere you rise; let your caution be such;
6 Keep all cold from your breast, there's already too much;
7 Your pinners set right, your twitcher ty'd on,
8 Your prayers at an end, and your breakfast quite done;
9 Retire to some author, improving and gay,
10 And with sense like your own, set your mind for the day,
11 At twelve you may walk, for at this time o' the year,
12 The sun like your wit, is as mild, as 'tis clear:
13 But mark in the meadows the ruin of Time;
14 Take the hint, and let life be improv'd in its prime.
15 Return not in haste, nor of dressing take heed;
16 For beauty, like yours, no assistance can need.
17 With an appetite, thus, down to dinner you sit,
18 Where the chief of the feast is the flow of your wit:
19 Let this be indulg'd, and let laughter go round;
20 As it pleases your mind, to your health 'twill redound.
21 After dinner two glasses at least, I approve;
22 Name the first to the king, and the last to your love:
[Page 329]
23 Thus cheerful with wisdom, with innocence gay,
24 And calm with your joys gently glide thro' the day.
25 The dews of the evening most carefully shun;
26 Those tears of the sky for the loss of the sun.
27 Then in chat, or at play, with a dance, or a song,
28 Let the night, like the day, pass with pleasure along.
29 All cares, but of love, banish far from your mind;
30 And those you may end, when you please to be kind.

Text

  • TEI/XML [chunk] (XML - 89K / ZIP - 9.0K) / ECPA schema (RNC - 357K / ZIP - 73K)
  • Plain text [excluding paratexts] (TXT - 1.5K / ZIP - 1.0K)

Facsimile (Source Edition)

(Page images digitized by the Eighteenth-Century Poetry Archive from a copy in the archive's library.)

Images

PDF

All Images (PDF - 1.6M)

About this text

Title (in Source Edition): ADVICE to a Lady in Autumn.
Themes: advice; moral precepts; clothing; entertainments; pastimes; women; female character
Genres: advice
References: DMI 19574

Text view / Document view

Source edition

Dodsley, Robert, 1703-1764. A Collection of Poems in Six Volumes. By Several Hands. Vol. I. London: printed by J. Hughs, for R. and J. Dodsley, 1763 [1st ed. 1758], pp. 328-329. 6v.: music; 8⁰. (ESTC T131163; OTA K104099.001) (Page images digitized by the Eighteenth-Century Poetry Archive from a copy in the archive's library.)

Editorial principles

The text has been typographically modernized, but without any silent modernization of spelling, capitalization, or punctuation. The source of the text is given and all editorial interventions have been recorded in textual notes. Based on the electronic text originally produced by the TCP project, this ECPA text has been edited to conform to the recommendations found in Level 5 of the Best Practices for TEI in Libraries version 4.0.0.