The Sot and His Wife
Inveterate sin is seldom cur’d.
A wife had long a sot endur’d,
Who all his time in taverns spent,
While his affairs in ruin went.
Once as insensible he lay,
She dress’d him in a corpse’s array,
And with the undertaker’s aid,
Into a burying vault convey’d.
The fumes dispersed, the man awakes;
All for reality he takes.
When by the glimmering of a lamp
He saw his mansion drear and damp,
Reflecting how his life had pass’d,
A forced repentance came at last.
The wife, with suited voice and dress,
Presented an infernal mess:
“Good Trap, pray take away your meat;
I have no appetite to eat,”
He cried, “but faith I’m devilish dry:
Can’t you a bowl of wine supply?”
The woman, seeing all was vain,
Restor’d him to his casks again:
Consol’d with certainty, that he
Ere long a real corpse must be.