"The early days of wedded life / Are oft o'ercast by childish strife; / Then be it your peculiar care / To keep that season bright and fair; / For then's the time by gentle art / To fix your empire in his heart."
Advice to a Young Lady Lately Married
At least 8 entries in ECCO and ESTC (1752, 1757, 1787, 1788, 1789, 1794, 1796, 1799).<br>
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Reading Roger Lonsdale's <u>Eighteenth Century Women Poets</u> (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1989). Lonsdale writes, "'Advice to a Young Lady lately married', originally in the <u>Bath Journal</u> in 1752, was often reprinted in periodicals in the following decades and is also found in most commonplace-books of the period" (226).<br>
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See also <u>Poems Moral and Entertaining, Written Long Since by Miss Lewis, then of Holt, Now, and for Thirty Years Past, the Wife of Mr. Robert Clark, of Tetbury. (With a Few Others Addressed to Her.) Published at the Request of Her Husband, for the Benefit of the Infirmary at Glocester, the Hospital at Bath, and the Sunday Schools at Tetbury.</u> (Bath: Printed and sold by S. Hazard; sold also by G. G. J. and J. Robinson, Paternoster-Row, London; and by the booksellers of Bath, Bristol, Glocester, and Tetbury, 1789). &lt;<a href="http://find.galegroup.com/ecco/infomark.do?&source=gale&prodId=ECCO&userGroupName=viva_uva&tabID=T001&docId=CW110233628&type=multipage&contentSet=ECCOArticles&version=1.0&docLevel=FASCIMILE">Link to ECCO</a>&gt;<br>
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Searching in ECCO I find the poem in 
<u>The Muse in a Moral Humour</u> (London, 1757) &lt;<a href="http://find.galegroup.com/ecco/infomark.do?&source=gale&prodId=ECCO&userGroupName=viva_uva&tabID=T001&docId=CW3315433688&type=multipage&contentSet=ECCOArticles&version=1.0&docLevel=FASCIMILE">Link to ECCO</a>&gt;, 
in <u>Friendly Hints; Which, Being Rightly Observed, May Prove Very Conducive to the Mutual Happiness of Both Sexes in the Married State</u> (Northampton, 1787) &lt;<a href="http://find.galegroup.com/ecco/infomark.do?&source=gale&prodId=ECCO&userGroupName=viva_uva&tabID=T001&docId=CW3315424182&type=multipage&contentSet=ECCOArticles&version=1.0&docLevel=FASCIMILE">Link to ECCO</a>&gt;,
<u>The Weekly Entertainer</u> (Sherburne, January 21, 1788) &lt;<a href="http://find.galegroup.com/ecco/infomark.do?&source=gale&prodId=ECCO&userGroupName=viva_uva&tabID=T001&docId=CB3328760644&type=multipage&contentSet=ECCOArticles&version=1.0&docLevel=FASCIMILE">Link to ECCO</a>&gt;,  
it's adapted (or plagiarized) by Mrs. Pickering in <u>Poems by Mrs. Pickering</u> (Birmingham, 1794) [see printer's note, p. 51] &lt;<a href="http://find.galegroup.com/ecco/infomark.do?&source=gale&prodId=ECCO&userGroupName=viva_uva&tabID=T001&docId=CW3314202986&type=multipage&contentSet=ECCOArticles&version=1.0&docLevel=FASCIMILE">Link to ECCO</a>&gt;, 
it appears in <u>Interesting Anecdotes, Memoirs, Allegories, Essays, and Poetical Fragments</u> (1796) &lt;<a href="http://find.galegroup.com/ecco/infomark.do?&source=gale&prodId=ECCO&userGroupName=viva_uva&tabID=T001&docId=CW3316623425&type=multipage&contentSet=ECCOArticles&version=1.0&docLevel=FASCIMILE">Link to ECCO</a>&gt;, 
and in <u>Amatory Pieces</u> (Ludlow, 1799) &lt;<a href="http://find.galegroup.com/ecco/infomark.do?&source=gale&prodId=ECCO&userGroupName=viva_uva&tabID=T001&docId=CW3317325731&type=multipage&contentSet=ECCOArticles&version=1.0&docLevel=FASCIMILE">Link to ECCO</a>&gt;.