...though, now I come to think about it, fairy tales aren't generally the happiest or safest places to live. Step-relations, for instance, are notoriously unreliable.
But still, away with doom and nay-sayers, this is a day to celebrate the happiness of two young people, and here to help is a wedding poem by James Joyce. As a bonus it's much shorter than Ulysses and much easier to understand.
The poem is addressed to the wind, and it's a rather simple thing: but then so, at its best, is love.
Go Seek Her Out
Go seek her out all courteously,
And say I come,
Wind of spices whose song is ever
Epithalamium.
O, hurry over the dark lands
And run upon the sea
For seas and lands shall not divide us
My love and me.
Now, wind, of your courtesy
I pray you go,
And come into her little garden
And sing at her window;
Singing: The bridal wind is blowing
For Love is at his noon;
And soon will your true love be with you
Soon, O soon.
Word To Use Today: courtesy. This word was originally to do with having courtly manners. It comes from the Old French, from the Latin cohors, which meant cohort.
Epithalamium is the spelling of this word used in all the various on-line versions of this poem, from which I have copied the text. It's quite often spelled epithalamion. It means a wedding-poem either way.
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