I
The Wedding Day
A Poem by Gage Miles
Ferdinand and Miranda, joined in communion,
Their effusive love, this happy union.
The fountain gushed its jaunty springs,
While the singing birds unfurled their wings.
Lip to lip, our couple met,
As the avian choir sang in sweet quartet.
Ceres’ hand struck the sacred bough,
“Nuptial vines,” she said, “Grow and grow!”
Husband and wife, together in hand,
Inspired the growth of the jewel of the land,
The overwhelming splendor as it sprung from the earth,
Drew the eye and suspended the mirth.
Miranda’s pure gown, slipped down to her feet,
Her naked bosom, sweet love did secrete.
Her fair consort also, kingly robe descended,
As the branches of the tree slowly extended.
Crisp, enticing apples, with blushes of red,
Did form along the branches, right over their head.
One may have fallen, in the hand of our maiden,
But it was dropped at the sight, for it was heavy and laden.
Blissfully eager the original couple departed,
Out into the garden, a new life had started.
The fallen apple at the altar did lay,
Blackened flesh, as it withered away.
Analysis: The primary inspiration for this poem comes from Act 4 Scene 1, lines 110 though 117 in The Tempest, Ceres’ marriage blessing over Ferdinand and Miranda. However, I chose to extrapolate this into a symbolic wedding that I envisioned for the couple. I was particularly struck by the Edenic imagery the goddess of agriculture employs in her blessing, and several connections to Milton’s Paradise Lost at once began to fall into place. I chose to expand upon an angle of analysis I briefly pursued in my Tempest Paper, which related Ferdinand and Miranda’s marriage to that of the original couple, “a surrogate,” even, situated in an alternate universe where Eve would have never expressed a desire to eat the forbidden fruit. Thus, my poem attempts to make an implicit argument for how Ferdinand and Miranda’s marriage is similar, yet diverges at key points, from the relationship of the original couple.
To establish the connection and parallels between the two scenes/settings, Ceres’ blessing and Milton’s Eden, I alluded to key details from both sources. “Ceres’ hand struck the sacred bough, / ‘Nuptial vines,’ she said, ‘Grow and grow!’” is a direct reference to the lines “Vines with clustering bunches growing / Plants with goodly burden bowing;” from her speech in The Tempest (4.1.112-13). Likewise, the lines “The fountain gushed its jaunty springs,” are a reference to the sacred, life-giving fountain in Milton’s Eden: “Rose a fresh fountain and with many a rill / Watered the garden” (4.229-30). These allusions establish several points of intersection between the world of The Tempest and a Miltonian Eden, effectively importing the symbolic imagery of the latter into a description of the former. The two worlds fuse as Ferdinand and Miranda themselves transform into an image of the original couple (even referred to as such) by the end of the poem: naked, blissful, and unafraid. Before I continue, I must acknowledge that for the sake of establishing a clearer, more decisive parallel, I did sacrifice some of the other meritable facets of Miranda’s character: most notably, her acknowledgement of her deprivation of knowledge and a desire to receive it (the story of her journey to the island with Prospero). This does, in part, mirror Eve’s own thirst for knowledge, but in the end, Miranda does not pursue it. While Miranda may be a curious, inquisitive girl, this is not the path she ultimately chooses; her love for Ferdinand suppresses these inclinations. This is the crux of the argument: whether each woman ultimately decides to breach or maintain their contracts of marriage.
The “jewel of the land” introduced in the fifth stanza and described throughout the remainder of the poem represents the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and its appearance in the poem alludes to how the unity, constantly enforced, of Adam and Eve to shield Eve from temptation is ultimately what offends her and leads to her temptation. As the tree looms over the heads of Ferdinand and Miranda, so does the question: will Miranda be subject to the same fate as Eve? It would seem not. Her dropping of the forbidden apple, “laden” with evil, demonstrates the complete marital deference of her bosom to her “fair consort,” Ferdinand. Unlike Eve, who is unwilling to subject herself and accept permanent servility to Adam, Miranda freely places herself in this position, and relishes in it, out of her love for Ferdinand: “I am your wife, if you will marry me / If not, I’ll die your maid. To be your fellow / You may deny me, but I’ll be your servant / Whether you will or no” (3.1.83-86). The apple cannot entice her, for she wholeheartedly embraces the servitude of marriage, above all else. Miranda expresses no discomfort in her sexuality or the natural gender hierarchies she is subjected to, and thus the apple's power over her is rendered fruitless (pun intended), causing it to "wither... away." Eve, on the contrary, does not embrace the ontological hierarchy: her feelings of inferiority ultimately cause her to sever her connection from Adam and fall into Satan’s snare. To drive home this distinction, the poem’s ending scene attempts to mirror that of Milton in Paradise Lost, with one crucial departure. Instead of leaving Eden at the conclusion of Paradise Lost, the couple, hand-in-hand, is entering into the garden for the first time, for Miranda, our Eve, rejected the temptation of the fruit and demonstrated that her love would forever be absolute. A truly pure, enduring love that supersedes all other convictions merits a transcendence into the divine, to Eden. At the same point where Adam and Eve fall, Miranda and Ferdinand rise. As a whole, the poem attempts to capture the Shakespearean imagination of an original couple without Eve giving into temptation. For our Renaissance playwright, Miranda is an Eve that chooses love over knowledge, earning her way into a paradisal eternity.
(Of course, however, there are treacheries that lie in any human relation…
The serpent can slither through even the smallest crack in the rock of solidarity...)