Page:Pleasures of matrimony (3).pdf/11

 by dancing, to the great pleasure of the spectators, and the night begun, the bride is stolen away from the company, and put to bed; and after her, the bridegroom, now ready to consummate the highest joys of matrimony: but though the bridegroom now thinks each minute an age till he reaps the longed for fruit of all his amorous expectation, he is still obliged to wait with patience; for up comes the sack posset, which the women think will make the bridegroom kind and lusty too; nor can the bride and bridegroom get void of this unnecessary ceremony, until some good compassionate lady throw on purpose, the stocking into the posset, when she pretended to throw it at the bride. This caused the sack posset to be taken away; which being done, it only remained now to kiss the women round, and so depart whilst the bride’s mother locked fast the door, and took away the key, that none might interrupt them. They now, being both left a lone, the bridegroom, without any doubt, improves his time: and therefore let this suffice, that they now revel in those joys they not long before durst hardly think of; and for the bridegroom, as Carew expresses it,

Now his enfranchis’d hand on every side, May o’er her naked polish’d ivory glide;