Marrige

“ When she has thus obtained a wife for her husband, she carries her home, puts her to bed with her husband, where, having left her, she feasts with the bride's relations. There the children of the first marriage are produced, and the men of the bride's family put each their hands upon these children's heads, and afterwards take the oath in the usual manner, to live and die with them as their own offspring. ”

“ Then the whole world beside
Were not too wide
To hold my wealth of love—
Were I thy bride!
Upon thy breast
My loving head would rest,
As on her nest
The tender turtle-dove—
Were I thy bride!
This heart of mine
Would be one heart with thine,
And in that shrine
Our happiness would dwell—
Were I thy bride!
[Pg 375]
And all day long
Our lives should be a song:
No grief, no wrong
Should make my heart rebel—
Were I thy bride! ”

“ An excellent mood for a wife, no doubt—or for a husband—excellent, and, it may be, inevitable. But for a lover yet unmated, a bride still to be, a girl in her first love? Should she not leave reverend seniors to prate to her—quite vainly—of difficulties and dangers, while her fancy is roaming far afield in dreamy lands of golden joy? To endeavour, by an affectionate study of and consideration for your partner, to avoid unhappiness and to give comfort—such is wont to be the text of the officiating minister's little homily at a wedding. ”

“ Her hue is blue and red: the fiend who clingeth close is driven off. Well thrive the kinsmen of this bride the husband is bound fast in bonds. 29. Give thou the woollen robe away: deal treasure to the Brahman priests. This female fiend hath got her feet, and as a wife attends her lord. 30. Unlovely is his body when it glistens with this wicked fiend, What time the husband wraps about his limbs the garment of his wife. 31. Consumptions, from her people, which follow the bride's resplendent train,- These let the Holy Gods again bear to the place from which they came. ”

“ The sole object of this ceremony has been to relieve the bride of the reproach of prolonged and unseasonable maidenhood. Whether you will ever see one another in this life I cannot say. If it should happen that you meet, you would not be able to recognise one another as husband and wife. ”

“ Of these, one is a little fellow of six or eight years old, brother to the bride,--and the other a girl of the same age, or something younger, whom he calls 'his wife.' The real bride and bridegroom are not more devoted than they: he all love and attention, and she all blushes and fondness, toying with a little bouquet which he gave her this morning, and placing the scattered rose-leaves in her bosom with nature's own coquettishness. ”

“ There's no talking to a young woman now about marriage, but she is all in a blaze about hearts, and darts, and—and—But hark ye, child, I'll suffer no daughter of mine to play the fool with her heart, indeed! She shall marry for the purpose for which matrimony was ordained amongst people of birth—that is, for the aggrandisement of her family, the extending of their political influence—for becoming, in short, the depository of their mutual interest. ”

“ And let the young men and the bride-maids share
Your garters; and their joints
Encircle with the bridegroom's points.
By the bride's eyes, and by the teeming life
Of her green hopes, we charge ye that no strife
(Farther than gentleness tends) gets place
Among ye, striving for her lace:
O do not fall
Foul in these noble pastimes, lest ye call
Discord in, and so divide
The youthful bridegroom and the fragrant bride:
Which love forfend; but spoken
Be't to your praise, no peace was broken. ”

“ Bridegroom and bride! We in sincerity Wish you prosperity, Bridegroom and bride! SONG—TESSA. TESS. When a merry maiden marries, Sorrow goes and pleasure tarries; Every sound becomes a song, All is right, and nothing's wrong! From to-day and ever after Let our tears be tears of laughter. Every sigh that finds a vent Be a sigh of sweet content! When you marry, merry maiden, Then the air with love is laden; Every flower is a rose, Every goose becomes a swan, Every kind of trouble goes Where the last year's snows have gone! ”

“ Yes, that old bride-look—for religion may be so presented to the child's heart as to appear for ever the bride elect of the soul, from whose queenly love promotion may be expected, whose sweet embraces bring a dower of honour, whose beautiful fingers twine a chaplet of grace for the head and set a crown of glory on the brow. ”

“ The wedding being over, and the bridegroom having enjoyed his charming bride, grew exceedingly fond of her, even to dottage, which sickened and palled her love toward him, and he perceiving it, strove to wind himself the more into her affections ”

“ Make your self merry amongst the rest of the Wedding guests, so far as is becoming you: who knows, but that some brave Gentlemans man, Coachman, or neighbors servant, may fall in love with you; for many times out of one Wedding comes another, and then you might come to be a woman of good fashion. Udsbud Mally! then you would know, as well as your Mistress, what delights are to be had in the first Wedding night. Then you would also know how to discourse of the first Pleasure of marriage, and with the Bride expect the second.
THE SECOND PLEASURE.
The Woman goes to buy houshold-stuf. ”

“ He said, "O woman! what hast thou, with thy wondrous beauty, to do with a poor sick husband? Go, be divorced from thy husband, and marry me. I have great possessions, and I will treat thee as a queen." ”

“ For you may never be another’s bride.
That line I learn’d not in the old sad song. Mother.
I pray thee, pretty one, now hold thy tongue,
Play with the bride-maids, and be glad, my boy,
For thou shalt be a second father’s joy. Child. ”

“ Straight as a dart, but with that look on her face, she came towards us. 'Did I hear aright?' were the words that came from her lips. 'Have you married me, a woman beneath your station as I now perceive, because you were commanded to do so? Have you not loved me? given me that which alone makes marriage a sacrament or even a possibility? ”

“ Till the bride and the groom were a-bed.
And what they did there must be counsel to me,
Because they lay long the next day,
And I had haste home, but I got a good piece
Of the bride-cake, and so came away. ”

“ And in dead silence the glasses were filled. The bride and bridegroom, two children, sat with intent, shining faces at the head of the table, abstracted.
"There's no marriage in heaven," went on Tom Brangwen; "but on earth there is marriage." ”

“ Well, this model of mine is married, of course,
For how could a bachelor be one?
So I gauge him by marital morals and force;
As a husband, he merits a crown for a cross,
For he acts as a beau instead of a boss—
I’d go to the moon to see one. ”

“ Then the widow said to the man's daughter, "Do you hear, tell your father I wish to marry him, and you shall every morning wash in milk and drink wine, but my daughter shall wash in water and drink water." So the girl went home and told her father what the woman had said, and he replied, "What shall I do? Marriage is a comfort, but it is also a torment." ”

“ Gradually the curious, timid, admiring bride is merged in the wife, with ambition budding in her heart, and exacting pride pleading for recognition and wifely dignities, and in this transformation the power of the woman asserted itself. ”

“ Bridegroom, the person whom you now take by the hand, you receive to be your married wife: you promise to love her, to honor her, to support her, and in all things to treat her as you are now, or shall hereafter be convinced is by the laws of Christ made your duty,—a tender husband, with unspotted fidelity till death shall separate you. ”

“ You desire to marry, if I comprehend you right. And to marry, as becomes you, you should bring to your husband not debts, but a dowry. Be it so. I will restore the portion that I saved from the spendthrift clutch of the Genoese—the moment that it is mine to bestow—the moment that I am husband to my kinsman's heiress. ”

“ How many glorious married couples in heaven—Adam and Eve, Abraham and Sarah, Lapidoth and Deborah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Rachel, Zacharias and Elizabeth, Joseph and Mary, and many whom we have known as good as the most of them!
As once you stood in the village or city church or in your father's house, perhaps under a wedding-bell of flowers, to-day stand up, husband and wife, beneath the cross of a pardoning Redeemer, while I proclaim the banns of an eternal marriage. Join your right hands. ”

“ Who longtime had courted, but nothing of wedding,
At length this fair maiden was pleased to say,
Come tell to me plain. what do you mean?
For of wooing I'm weary,
Resolved to marry,
Or else from your company I will refrain.
I needs must confess I love you dearly,
And you are the choice of the whole world beside,
The one that I marry I'll tell you plainly,
That I will forsake your sweet company quite:
For when a man's wed, his joys are all fled,
He is bound from all liberty,
Tied down to slavery,
So I will be free and bid you good night. ”

“ The bride comes in, heavily veiled, in the company of her father or some old and revered relation, who clasps the hands of husband and wife and joins them together, making a short and appropriate speech of congratulation and good wishes for a happy conjugal existence. ”

“ The young bride, in her ignorance and innocence, had not an idea but that this was the usual mode of procedure with husband and wife, and thoroughly enjoyed the long journey and the varied scenery through which she was being whirled. Its newness and the strong contrast to her Southern home made it all the more delightful. ”

“ Give the elder son’s wife a year or two, cousin, for sometimes when seven years are passed barren, a woman will come to her true nature and bear a harvest of good children, for I have seen it so, and as for the lad’s saying he will not wed, why then he has a love somewhere, and we must find out who she is, and if she is fit for him to wed or not. ”

“ If a tale reaches her ears of a wife who has failed of her duty, or if the public newspapers record a divorce, then she awakens her husband to a sense of his superior happiness, and her own irreproachable virtue. ”

“ And the dawn having come on, the King arrived, and having supplied the table, brought it in before the bridegroom and the bride. And he found them sitting opposite each other, and he found the face of the bride uncovered, and the bridegroom was quite cheerful. And the mother came in and said to the bride, "Wherefore dost thou sit thus, child, and art not ashamed, but actest as if thou hadst for a long time lived with thine own husband?" And her father said, "It is because of thy great love to thy husband that thou art uncovered?" ”

“ I will bring this lady to the altar—or, rather, to that table, and you will marry her, after which you can settle matters just exactly as you please; live with her as your wife, or make your bow and walk away, which, I care nothing so long as you are married. ”

“ "Ah, me," she sighed. "If marriage were as simple as love!" ”

“ What can you be able to do, that would be more grateful to them, than if they should see you divorc'd from your Husband; a Widow, nay, to live, a Widow bewitcht, worse than a Widow? For Widows may marry again. ”

“ Ha, ha, the first thought of a young girl—‘shall I ever be married?’ Yes, yes, pretty one. I can promise you a husband for certain! Girls like you—so lovely and naïve—are very sure to marry, for the men will not give them any peace. ”

“ And I was proceeding, amidst vociferous cachinnation, to enumerate some of my most lively sallies, when the bride's father did take me by the arm, and drawing me aside, inform me that the young couple were just about to start for their wedding journey, and that I was urgently required to see them depart. ”

“ If he dips the left hand by chance into clean water, his future wife will come to the bar of matrimony a maid; if into the empty dish, he will have no marriage at all; if into the foul, he will marry a widow. ”

“ There was once an unmarried man whom some of his friends desired to marry to a maid, some to a widow, and others again to a woman who was divorced from her husband. For his part he knew not which to choose, for all the three were good and handsome. He went therefore to a certain old man, to ask his advice as to whether it would be best to marry the maid, the widow, or the divorced woman. ”

“ Ay, marry her, Sir!—I know very well that a warm speech or two from such a dangerous young spark, as you are, will go much farther towards persuading a silly girl to do what she has more than a month's mind to do, than twenty grave lectures from fathers or mothers, or uncles or aunts, to prevent her.—But you wou'd not, sure, be such a base fellow, such a treacherous young rogue, as to seduce my daughter's affections, and destroy the peace of my family in that manner.—I must insist on it, that you give me your word not to marry her without my consent. ”

“ Now, therefore, since to wed is good, and life
To the unwedded woman seems a load
Which few may bear, and none desire, I prithee,
This jewelled chalice taking, mingle wine
As well thou knowest, and the honeyed draught
Give to some noble youth of those thou seest
Along the well-ranged tables, knowing well
That him to whom thou givest, thou shalt wed.
I fetter not thy choice, girl. I grow old;
I have no son to share the weight of rule,
And fain would see thy children ere I die."
Then, with a kiss upon her blushing cheek,
He gave the maid the cup. ”

“ But marriage is not, after all, the ultimatum of earthly bliss, Miss Brandt! Many married couples would tell you it is just the reverse. And with a fortune at your command, you have many pleasures and interests quite apart from that very over-rated institution of matrimony. ”