A wife's charms are
different from a girl's and inspire a different kind of love. The
husband loves
Those virtues which, before untried,
The wife has added to the bride,
as Samuel Bishop rhymes it. In their predilection for maidens, poets,
like novelists, have until recently ignored the wife too much. But
Cowper sang:
What is there in the vale of life
Half so delightful as a wife,
When friendship, love and peace combine
To stamp the marriage bond divine?
The stream of pure and genuine love
Derives its current from above;
And earth a second Eden shows,
Where'er the healing water flows.
Some of the specifically romantic ingredients of love, on the other
hand--adoration, hyperbole, the mixed moods of hope and despair--do
not normally enter into conjugal affection. No one would fail to see
the absurdity of a husband's exclaiming
O that I were a glove upon that hand
That I might touch that cheek.
He _may_ touch that cheek, and kiss it too--and that makes a
tremendous difference in the tone and tension of his feelings. Unlike
the lover, the husband does not think, feel, and speak in perpetual
hyperboles. He does not use expressions like "beautiful tyrant, fiend
angelical," or speak of
The cruel madness of love
The honey of poisonous flowers.
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