This is Marriage; This is Love

One of the poems that I read from the wonderful old, old volume by A.L. Alexander in Poems That Touch the Heart created, with sparse but deeply-loaded words, the way I feel when Greg and I settle down in bed at night. Each of us with a book,inches apart, reading by lamplight until we get sleepy. He usually succumbs to slumber before I do, but always, always, kisses me goodnight before he drifts into dreamland, and says, "Sleep well, My Love."

I also love the phrase describing these quiet moments together as "The one true Sabbath of the heart" -- for a marriage should be just that, a living breathing Sabbath, a place of rest and renewal, fortifying each other, filling each other up again to face and give out to the world.

Anyway, enough of my interpretation; to the poem...

Together


You and I by this lamp with these
Few books shut out the world. Our knees
Touch almost in this little space.
But I am glad. I see your face.
The silences are long, but each
Hears the other without speech.
And in this simple scene there is
the essence of all subtleties,
The freedom from all fret and smart,
The one sure sabbath of the heart.
The world-- we cannot conquer it,
Nor change the minds of fools one whit.
Here, here alone do we create
Beauty and peace inviolate;
Here night by night and hour byhour
We build a high impregnable tower
Whence may shine, now and again,
A light to light the feet of men
When they see the rays thereof;
And this is marriage, this is love.

Ludwig Lewisohn