A Celebratory Occasion
This weekend, tomorrow to be precise, your blogmaster has an occasion to celebrate. The nature of that occasion, I shall hint at with my posts. Well, hint is probably too subtle a word, I shall, then, bludgeon you with "until it be morrow." Your first clue--this charming excerpt from Edmund Spenser.
from "Epithalamion" Edmund Spenser WAKE now my loue, awake; for it is time, The Rosy Morne long since left Tithones bed, All ready to her siluer coche to clyme, And Phoebus gins to shew his glorious hed. Hark how the cheerefull birds do chaunt theyr laies And carroll of loues praise. The merry Larke hir mattins sings aloft, The thrush replyes, the Mauis descant playes, The Ouzell shrills, the Ruddock warbles soft, So goodly all agree with sweet consent, To this dayes meriment. Ah my deere loue why doe ye sleepe thus long, When meeter were that ye should now awake, T'awayt the comming of your ioyous make, And hearken to the birds louelearned song, The deawy leaues among. For they of ioy and pleasance to you sing. That all the woods them answer & theyr eccho ring.My loue is now awake out of her dreame[s],
and her fayre eyes like stars that dimmed were
With darksome cloud, now shew theyr goodly beams
More bright then Hesperus his head doth rere.
Come now ye damzels, daughters of delight,
Helpe quickly her to dight,
But first come ye fayre houres which were begot
In Ioues sweet paradice, of Day and Night,
Which doe the seasons of the yeare allot,
And al that euer in this world is fayre
Doe make and still repayre.
And ye three handmayds of the Cyprian Queene,
The which doe still adorne her beauties pride,
Helpe to addorne my beautifullest bride
And as ye her array, still throw betweene
Some graces to be seene,
And as ye vse to Venus, to her sing,
The whiles the woods shal answer & your eccho ring.
Now, in addition to giving a hint of the occasion, this poem should teach two things--the value of the apostrophe for showing possessives, and our great debt to Samuel Johnson and Noah Webster--noted lexicographers and orthographers.
