Quoth he, These reasons are but strains
Of wanton, over-heated brains
Which ralliers, in their wit, or drink,
Do rather wheedle with than think 760
Man was not man in paradise,
Until he was created twice,
And had his better half, his bride,
Carv’d from the original, his side,
T’ amend his natural defects, 765
And perfect his recruited sex;
Inlarge his breed at once, and lessen
The pains and labour of increasing,
By changing them for other cares,
As by his dry’d-up paps appears. 770
His body, that stupendous frame,
Of all the world the anagram
Is of two equal parts compact,
In shape and symmetry exact,
Of which the left and female side 775
Is to the manly right a bride;
Both join’d together with such art,
That nothing else but death can part. 
Those heav’nly attracts of yours, your eyes,
And face, that all the world surprize, 780
That dazzle all that look upon ye,
And scorch all other ladies tawny,
Those ravishing and charming graces
Are all made up of two half faces,
That in a mathematick line, 785
Like those in other heavens, join,
Of which if either grew alone,
T’ would fright as much to look upon: 
And so would that sweet bud your lip,
Without the other’s fellowship. 790
Our noblest senses act by pairs;
Two eyes to see; to hear, two ears;
Th’ intelligencers of the mind,
To wait upon the soul design’d,
But those that serve the body alone, 795
Are single, and confin’d to one. 
The world is but two parts, that meet
And close at th’ equinoctial fit;
And so are all the works of nature,
Stamp’d with her signature on matter, 800
Which all her creatures, to a leaf,
Or smallest blade of grass receive;
All which sufficiently declare,
How entirely marriage is her care,
The only method that she uses 805
In all the wonders she produces: 
And those that take their rules from her,
Can never be deceiv’d, nor err. 
For what secures the civil life,
But pawns of children, and a wife? 810
That lie like hostages at stake,
To pay for all men undertake;
To whom it is as necessary
As to be born and breathe, to marry;
So universal all mankind, 815
In nothing else, is of one mind. 
For in what stupid age, or nation,
Was marriage ever out of fashion? 
Unless among the Amazons,
Or cloister’d friars, and vestal nuns; 820
Or Stoicks, who to bar the freaks
And loose excesses of the sex,
Prepost’rously wou’d have all women
Turn’d up to all the world in common.