Thursday
We’re currently traveling so I missed writing about Julia’s and my 48th wedding anniversary, which was Tuesday. I turn to Milton’s celebration of “wedded love” in Book IV because it captures well my own view of marriage.
The scene occurs in Book IV, before the fall. After Adam and Eve have offered up spontaneous prayers of thanksgiving to God (“adoration pure/Which God likes best”), they venture into their “blissful bower,” which is also described as a “shady lodge.” Because they are naked, they don’t have to worry about taking off their “troublesome disguises” but get immediately to business. Milton gets a little cagey at this point, essentially saying that they did not not make love (“nor Eve the rites/ Mysterious of connubial love refused”). Then, rather than provide us with any more detail, he attacks people who attack sex.
Apparently, Milton entered fraught territory by having Adam and Eve engage in sex before before the fall. For Milton, however, this made sense. After all, Adam and Eve, guided by the Puritan work ethic, need children to help them trim the garden.
Sex within marriage is sanctified by the sacred commitment between two people. Marriage is “founded in reason, loyal, just, and pure” and is befitting of “holiest place.” Designed to be a “perpetual fountain of domestic sweets,” marriage provides a bed that (according to saints and Biblical patriarchs) is “undefiled and chaste.” Shifting to a classical allusion (Cupid), Milton writes,
Here Love his golden shafts employs, here lights
His constant lamp, and waves his purple wings,
Reigns here and revels…
In contrast to wedded love is “adulterous lust,” such asis found “among the bestial herds to range.” Such sex can be found in brothels (“loveless, joyless, unendeared,/ Casual fruition”). One sees it in secret assignations, wild parties, and guys singing outside your window. Or as Milton puts it,
…in court amours,
Mixed dance, or wanton mask, or midnight ball,
Or serenate, which the starved lover sings
To his proud fair, best quitted with disdain.
Having distracted the reader long enough so that our prying eyes can’t see their lovemaking, Milton at this point returns to find them asleep in each other’s arms and covered with rose petals. “Sleep on, blest pair,” he says, “it doesn’t get better than this.” Or to quote Milton’s actual words, “O yet happiest if ye seek/ No happier state, and know to know no more.” Here’s the passage in its entirety:
This said unanimous, and other Rites
Observing none, but adoration pure
Which God likes best, into their inmost bower
Handed they went; and eased the putting off
These troublesome disguises which we wear,
Straight side by side were laid, nor turned I ween
Adam from his fair spouse, nor Eve the rites
Mysterious of connubial love refused;
Whatever hypocrites austerely talk
Of purity and place and innocence,
Defaming as impure what God declares
Pure, and commands to some, leaves free to all.
Our Maker bids increase; who bids abstain
But our destroyer, foe to God and Man?
Hail, wedded Love! mysterious law true source
Of human offspring, sole propriety
In Paradise of all things common else
By thee adulterous lust was driven from men
Among the bestial herds to range; by thee,
Founded in reason, loyal, just, and pure,
Relations dear, and all the charities
Of father, son, and brother first were known.
Far be it, that I should write thee sin or blame,
Or think thee unbefitting holiest place,
Perpetual fountain of domestic sweets!
Whose bed is undefiled and chaste pronounced,
Present or past, as saints and patriarchs used.
Here Love his golden shafts employs, here lights
His constant lamp, and waves his purple wings,
Reigns here and revels; not in the bought smile
Of harlots, loveless, joyless, unendeared,
Casual fruition; nor in court amours,
Mixed dance, or wanton mask, or midnight ball,
Or serenate, which the starved lover sings
To his proud fair, best quitted with disdain.
These lulled by nightingales embracing slept,
And on their naked limbs the flowery roof
Showered Roses, which the Morn repaired. Sleep on,
Blest pair; and O yet happiest if ye seek
No happier state, and know to know no more.
I don’t go so far as to condemn all sex that happens outside of marriage. I’m not a 17th century Puritan. But I agree something special happens when physical intimacy is linked with spiritual connection. I’m willing to add, as other instances of spiritual connection, committed partnership and even just two people evincing genuine respect for each other.
I think something precious is lost, however, if our sexual relations are no more than that experienced by “bestial herds.”
Love has been lighting his lamp and waving his purple wings over me and Julia for 48 years. Hail wedded love indeed.
