Poems of the Week: Valentines

This week includes St. Valentines Day, so there is really no choice as to the subject for our poems.

Valentine the historical figure is somewhat blurred. There appear to have been two (or three) early Christian martyrs with this name. Probably the best documented is one who, with St. Marius, assisted early Christians under persecution by Claudius II. He was arrested, and since he would not renounce his faith, he was condemned to be beaten with clubs, and then beheaded. This happened on February 14th, in about 270 A.D., which was also the last of the two years Claudius II was Caesar. Pope Julius I (333-356) is said to have built a church in his memory, at what is now the Porta del Popolo. There was also a Pope called Valentine, but he was only Pope for about 40 days; he died in 827.

There was a Roman love festival on February 15th, called Lupercalia. In the manner of the early Church, Pope Gelasius, in 496 A.D. changed the date to the 14th, and called it Saint Valentine's Day; Valentine became the patron saint of lovers. It was believed that the martyr was also a physician, and he used to be invoked against blindness and epilepsy.

In the feast of Lupercalia, there was a practice of putting the girls' names in a box, and letting the boys draw them out: the couple so selected were supposed to stay together for a year. In the 14th Century, this practice was revived for St. Valentine's day, although the pairing only lasted for the day. Needless to say, the Church was not happy about this, and St. Francis de Sales (patron saint of editors, journalists, and writers: invoked against deafness) (I'm not going to touch that one!) in 1593 or thereabouts tried to persuade everyone to put Saint's names into the box. This was not a success!

It is believed that the cards put into the box were the precursors of today's Valentine cards. An alternative view was that the messages exchanged between these randomly selected couples were the Valentines. Both French and English literatures of the fourteenth and fifteenth Centuries contain allusions to the practice, and John Gower (1330-1408)'s 34th and 35th Ballades (written in French) are often quoted as the earliest examples. Specially printed card for Valentine's were just becoming common by the 1780's. They were a big hit in Germany where they were called Freundschaftkarten, or "friendship cards." (This last item from Michael Allen Gates.)

The origin of the selection of this mid-February date, both by the Romans and their successors, was based on a belief that the springtime mating of birds took place on Valentine's Day. Thus in Chaucer's Parliament of Foules we read:

For this was sent on Seynt Valentyne's day 
Whan every foul cometh ther to choose his mate. 

Here are another couple of quotes which (in my view) make a much stronger point if one understands this underlying theme:

Shakespeare, in Midsummer Night's Dream; Act IV, Scene I. Theseus, with his entourage, comes across Lysander, Demetrius, Helena, and Hermia, lying asleep.

                           THESEUS.
Go, bid the huntsmen wake them with their horns.
       (Horns, and they wake. Shout within, and they all start up.)
Good morrow friends. - Saint Valentine is past:
Begin these wood-birds but to couple now?
			     
                          LYSANDER
Pardon, my lord. 

Hail, Bishop Valentine, whose day this is,
     All the Aire is thy Diocis
     And all the chirping Choristers
And other birds are thy Parishioners,
     Thou marryest every yeare
The Lirique Larke, and the grave whispering Dove,
The Sparrow that neglects his life for love,
The household Bird, with the red stomacher,
     Thou mak'st the black bird speed as soone,
As doth the Goldfinch, or the Halcyon;
The husband cocke lookes out, and straight is sped,
And meets his wife, which brings her feather-bed.
This day more cheerfully than ever shine,
This day, which might enflame thy self, Old Valentine.

So anyway, my choices of poems to celebrate this auspicious week ought to be easy. But I want to avoid the obvious, because the underlying meaning of this day is not the trivial. I like the slightly unusual:

My funny Valentine, sweet comic Valentine,
You make me smile with my heart.
Your looks are laughable, unphotographable,
But you're my favorite work of art.

Anyway, my concession to the conventional is one of Shakespeare's sonnets, number 116, Let me not to the marriage of two minds. For my second, I went to William Butler Yeats (1865-1939). Yeats wrote of love, and of women; but his later poems are too complex in their visions to be appropriate. So I have chosen a poem from Crossways (1889), The Indian to His Love, because I think the use of language and image is as good as you get. Last, one from Alfred, Lord Tennyson. I have been doing Tennyson less than justice in my writings for The Mediadrome, but his skill as a poet is remarkable. I have chosen a very well known sonnet, Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal. I hope you like the language and the imagery.

Let me not to the marriage of two minds

The Indian to His Love

Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal