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
