The Seamen's Wives' Vindication

Why does the poets abuse us, we that are seamen's poor wives ?
Have they not cause to excuse us, knowing our sorrowful lives ?
We are, alas ! broken-hearted, as we can very well prove,
When from our joys we are parted, those loyal husbands we love.

You that declare we are jolly do but abuse us, we find,
For we are most melancholly, always tormented in mind:
While that our husbands are sailing on the tempestuous seas
Here we are sighing, bewailing ; nothing affordeth us ease.

Here you have newly reported that we are girls of the game,
Who do delight to be courted. Are you not highly to blame,
Saying we often are merry, punch is the liquor we praise,
Though we are known to be weary of these our sorrowful days ?

How could you say there was many wives that did drink, rant, and sing,
When I-protest there's not any of us that practice this thing?
Are we not forced to borrow, being left here without chink ?
Tis in a cup of cold sorrow if we so often do drink.

Tho' we have little to nourish us while our husbands are there,
Merchants in London they flourish through their industrious care.
They are the stay of the nation, men of undaunted renown ;
Why should a false accusation run the poor seamen's wives down,

Saying we swallow'd our liquor with a great gossipping crew,
Making our tongues to run quicker then they had reason to do ?
Thus they would blast all our glory by the soft wits of their brains.
He that invented that story was but a fool for his pains.

We are so far from such pleasure, making of jolly punch-bowls,
That we lament out of measure, every woman condoles ;
When she in bed should lye sleeping, if the high winds they do roar,
There she in sorrow is weeping, fearing to see him no more.

They are to dangers exposed, as we may very well guess.
How can our eye-lids be closed in such a time of distress ?
You that are free from that [terror], having your husbands secure,
Little consider the horror that we do dayly endure.

Tho' there is joy in our meeting when they come safe from the main,
Yet 'tis a sorrowful greeting when we are parted again :
Landmen in a full fruition feeds on the fat of the land;
This is a happy condition, having all things at command.

Tho' we have not such a plenty, yet I can very well prove
That there is not one in twenty but who her husband doth love :
You that have caus'd those distractions, writing a story not true,
May be asham'd of your actions, and thus I bid you adieu.