The day Saint Valentine,
When maids are brisk, and at the break of day
Start up and turn their pillows, curious all
To know what happy swain the fates provide
A mate for life. Then follows thick discharge
Of true-love knots and sonnets nicely penned.
* * * * *
St. Valentine is the lover’s saint. Not that lovers have more
superstition than other people, but their imaginings are more. As it is
fabled that Orpheus “played so well, he moved old Nick;” so it is true
that Love, “cruel tyrant,” moves the veriest brute. Its influence
renders the coarsest nature somewhat interesting. A being of this kind,
so possessed, is almost as agreeable as a parish cage with an owl
inside; you hear its melancholy tee-whit tee-who, and wonder how it got
_there_. Its place of settlement becomes a place of sentiment; nobody
can liberate the starveling, and it _will_ stay there. Its mural notes
seem so many calls for pity, which are much abated on the recollection,
that there are openings enough for its escape. The “tender passion” in
the two mile an hour Jehu of an eight-horse waggon, puzzles him
mightily. He “sighs and drives, sighs and drives, and drives and sighs
again,” till the approach of this festival enables him to buy “a
valentine,” with a “halter” and a “couple o’ hearts” transfixed by an
arrow in the form of a weathercock, inscribed
“I’ll be yours, if you’ll be mine,
I am your pleasing Valentine.”
This he gets his name written under by the shopkeeper, and will be quite
sure that it is his name, before he walks after his waggon, which he has
left to go on, because neither that nor his passion can brook delay.
After he is out of the town, he looks behind him, lest anybody should
see, and for a mile or two on the road, ponders on the “two hearts made
one,” as a most singular device, and with admired devotion. He then puts
it in the trusty pocket under his frock, which holds the waggon bill,
and flogs his horses to quicken their pace towards the inn, where “she,”
who is “his heart’s delight,” has been lately promoted to the rank of
under kitchen-maid, _vice_ her who resigned, on being called “to the
happy estate of matrimony” by a neighbouring carter. He gives her the
mysterious paper in the yard, she receives it with a “what be this?” and
with a smack on the lips, and a smack from the whip on the gown. The
gods have made him poetical, and, from his recollection of a play he saw
at the statute-fair, he tells her that “love, like a worm in the mud,
has played upon his Lammas cheek” ever since last Lammas-tide, and she
knows it has, and that she’s his valentine. With such persons and with
nature, this is the season of breaking the ice.
St. Valentine, be it repeated, is the saint of all true lovers of every
degree, and hence the letters missive to the fair, from wooers on his
festival, bear his name. Brand thinks “one of the most elegant
jeu-d’esprits on this occasion,” is one wherein an admirer reminds his
mistress of the choice attributed by the legend to the choristers of the
air on this day, and inquires of her--
Shall only you and I forbear
To meet and make a happy pair?
Shall we alone delay to live?
This day an age of bliss may give.
But, ah! when I the proffer make,
Still coyly you refuse to take;
My heart I dedicate in vain,
The too mean present you disdain.
Yet since the solemn time allows
To choose the object of our vows;
Boldly I dare profess my flame,
Proud to be yours by any name.
A better might have been selected from the “Magazine of Magazines,” the
“Gentleman’s,” wherein Mr. Urban has sometimes introduced the admirers
of ladies to the admirers of antiquities--under which class ladies never
come. Thence, ever and anon, as from some high barbican or watchtower
old, “songs of loves and maids forsaken,” have aroused the contemplation
from “facts, fancies, and recollections” regarding other times, to
lovers “sighing like furnace” in our own. Through Sylvanus, nearly a
century ago, there was poured this
_Invocation of St. Valentine._
Haste, friendly _Saint_! to my relief,
My heart is stol’n, help! stop the thief!
My rifled breast I search’d with care,
And found Eliza lurking there.
Away she started from my view,
Yet may be caught, if thou pursue;
Nor need I to describe her strive--
The fairest, dearest maid alive!
Seize her--yet treat the nymph divine
With gentle usage, _Valentine_!
Then, tell her, she, for what was done,
Must bring _my_ heart, and give _her own_.
So pleasant, so descriptive an illustration of the present custom,
requires a companion equally amiable: