In that one act may every grace
And every blessing have their place,
And give to future hours of bliss
The charm of life derived from this:
And when e’en love no more supplies,
When weary nature sinks to rest,
May brighter, steadier light arise
And make the parting moment blest!
In a collection of poems printed in Dublin (1801) we find some touching lines to ‘S. D., with a ring:’—
Emblem of happiness, not bought nor sold,
Accept this modest ring of virgin gold.
Love in the small but perfect circle trace,
And duty in its soft yet strict embrace.
Plain, precious, pure, as best becomes the wife;
Yet firm to bear the frequent rubs of life.
Connubial love disdains a fragile toy,
Which rust can tarnish, or a touch destroy,
Nor much admires what courts the gen’ral gaze,
The dazzling diamond’s meretricious blaze,
That hides with glare the anguish of a heart,
By nature hard, tho’ polish’d bright by art.
More to thy taste the ornament that shows
Domestic bliss, and, without glaring, glows;
Whose gentle pressure serves to keep the mind
To all correct, to one discreetly kind;
Of simple elegance th’ unconscious charm,
The only amulet to keep from harm,
To guard at once and consecrate the shrine;
Take this dear pledge—it makes and keeps thee mine.
The most painful ordeal for ‘Patient’ Grisild (in Chaucer’s ‘Clerk’s Tale’) is the surrender of what she most valued to her imperious lord, the Marquis, the wedding-ring with which she had espoused him. This, in her sore affliction, she returns to him:—
Here again your clothing I restore,
And eke your wedding-ring for evermore.
The celebrated Sanscrit drama, which Kalidasa wrote upon the beautiful Sakuntala, turns upon Dushyanta’s recognition of his wife by means of a ring which he had given to her.
The tender and affectionate faith derived from the wedding-ring is illustrated in the legend of Guy, Earl of Warwick. The doughty knight, when in a moment of temptation he is about to marry the beautiful Loret, daughter of the Emperor Ernis, is recalled to his duty at the sight of the wedding-ring, and remembers his fair Félice, who is far distant, pining at his absence:—
The wedding-ring was forth brought;
Guy, then, on fair Félice thought,
He had her nigh forgotten clean.
‘Alas,’ he said, ‘Félice, the sheen!’
And thought in his heart anon—
‘’Gainst thee now have I misdone!’
Guy said, ‘penance I crave,
None other maid my love shall have.’
We see also the tenderness that a wedding-ring can inspire in the instance of Louis IX. of France, who in his youth was married to Marguerite of Provence, the victim of a cruel jealousy on the part of Blanche of Castile, the King’s mother. The young Prince, who loved his wife dearly, constantly wore a ring ornamented with a garland of lilies and daisies, in allusion to his spouse and himself. A magnificent sapphire bore the image of a crucifix, and the inscription ‘hors cet annel pourrions nous trouver amour.’
In the German ballad of ‘The Noble Moringer,’ translated by Sir Walter Scott, the hero, after some years’ absence on a pilgrimage, returns disguised as a palmer to his castle, on the eve of his wife’s nuptials with another knight. The lady