List of Vine-and-Elm passages
This list compiled with the aid of Peter Demetz’s paper, The Elm and Vine: Notes Toward the History of a Marriage Topos (1958), and the footnotes to the Dartmouth online version of Paradise Lost. Will add more if I find any…
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*Milton, Paradise Lost [5.209-223]: “So pray’d they innocent, and to thir thoughts/ Firm peace recoverd soon and wonted calm./ On to thir mornings rural work they haste/ Among sweet dewes and flours; where any row/ Of Fruit-trees overwoodie reachd too far/ Thir pamperd boughes, and needed hands to check/ Fruitless imbraces: or they led the Vine/ To wed her Elm; she spous’d about him twines/ Her marriageable arms, and with her brings/ Her dowr th’ adopted Clusters, to adorn/ His barren leaves. Them thus imploid beheld/ With pittie Heav’ns high King, and to him call’d/ Raphael, the sociable Spirit, that deign’d/ To travel with Tobias, and secur’d/ His marriage with the seaventimes-wedded Maid.”
[Also at [4.299-311] Eve’s hair is compared to the vine and there is mention of Adam’s “Hyacinthine locks”, a term twice used to describe Odysseus’ hair in The Odyssey (see here)]
*Shakespeare, Comedy of Errors, [2.2.173-179]. “Thou art an elm, my husband, I a vine,/ Whose weakness, married to thy strong state,/ Makes me with thy strength to communicate./ If aught possess thee from me, it is dross,/ Usurping ivy, bier, or idle moss,/ Who, all for want of pruning, with intrusion/ Infect thy sap and live on thy confusion.”
[Also see Midsummer night's Dream, [4.1.39-44] for ‘Ivy and Elm.’ “Sleep thou, and I will wind thee in my arms./ Fairies, be gone, and be all ways away./ So doth the woodbine the sweet honeysuckle/ gently entwist; the female ivy so/ Enrings the barky fingers of the elm./ Oh, how I love thee! How I dote on thee!”]
*Horace, Odes [2.15.4-5] “Few roods of ground the piles we raise/ Will leave to plough; ponds wider spread/ Than Lucrine lake will meet the gaze/ On every side; the plane unwed/ Will top the elm; the violet-bed,/ The myrtle, each delicious sweet,/ On olive-grounds their scent will shed,/ Where once were fruit-trees yielding meat;/ Thick bays will screen the midday range/ Of fiercest suns. Not such the rule/ Of Romulus, and Cato sage,/ And all the bearded, good old school.”
*Virgil, Georgics, [2.360-370] “Now while yet/ The leaves are in their first fresh infant growth,/ Forbear their frailty, and while yet the bough/ Shoots joyfully toward heaven, with loosened rein/ Launched on the void, assail it not as yet/ With keen-edged sickle, but let the leaves alone/ Be culled with clip of fingers here and there./ But when they clasp the elms with sturdy trunks/ Erect, then strip the leaves off, prune the boughs;/ Sooner they shrink from steel, but then put forth/ The arm of power, and stem the branchy tide.”
*Catullus, songs, 62, [49-58]: “As the vine we see, grown in the open field,/ never lifting its head, never bearing sweet grapes,/ its delicate stem bending downwards with the weight,/ so that in a moment its tallest shoot will touch its roots:/ no countryman, no farm-hand will cherish it:/ but if the same plant is fastened tight, wedded to an elm,/ many countrymen and farm-hands will cherish it./ So a virgin who stays untouched, and uncultivated, ages:/ while taken in equal marriage, while the time is ripe,/ she’s loved more by the man, less hateful to her parents.” [Dementz says this is the first occurence in literature of the elm-and-vine as symbolizing marriage.]
*John Barth, The Sotweed Factor. “Oak and vine” : here.
