An Epithalamion for Lawyers

Your learn’d identities untie

And in the nuptial bed (love’s altar) lie

            A pleasing sacrifice; now dispossess

Yourselves of chains and robes which were put on

To adorn the day, not you; for you, alone,

            Like virtue and truth, are best in nakedness;

            This bed is only to the single state

A grave, but to a better one, a cradle;

Till now you were but able

            To be what now you are; so that you might

No longer say, I may be, but, I am,

            Tonight put on perfection and a lover’s name.

--John Donne