Live within your Means - Sligo Poets

Sligo Times 9 November 1912

LIVE WITHIN YOUR MEANS.

What barrier next, I wonder,
   Will Pride or Fashion raise
To keep young hearts asunder?
   Why, really, now-a-days,
The question upon marriage,
   Of high or low degree,
Is not on the affections,
   But based on L.S.D.!

Three hundred pounds a year too,
   (Why bless the girls and boys!)
They now must have, or near to,
   Or forego wedlock’s joys;
Well, if this whim gains prev’lance,
   The end will be, I guess,
That half the girls must end their days
   In single blessedness.

Three hun—! why, I remember
   When half that sum would do
To marry on, and reckon’d
   A pretty income too;
And many a noble fellow,
   And many a trusting wife,
With scarce a third have ventured
   Upon the seas of life,—

And bravely through its changes
   Their little bark have steer’d,
Each arm in turn sustaining,
   As darkening clouds appear’d;
While some who’ve launch’d in splendour,
   With every store replete,
Ere half the voyage was over,
   Could scarcely make ends meet.

’Tis not the gold or silver
   Alone that brings delight—
The secret lies in learning
   To husband is aright;
With little, some are happier
   Than many kings or queens:—
First, truly love then marry,
   And live within your means.
                                 —T.L.

This is another poem where it is impossible to decide if it is by a local author or copied from another publication. There are no clues to the place of country of origin apart from the L.S.D. reference which suggests an origin in the British Isles.

The message is eternal though and suggests that extravagant weddings are not just an end of the 20th/start of the 21st century phenomenon.


The first stanza has each line rhyming but this falters in the second stanza and disappears afterwards. The remaining stanzas have end rhymes for lines 2 & 4 and 6 & 8. The rhymes are well managed and there is little if any awkwardness in phrasing to accomodate them.