epithalamium

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Genre of poetry or song devised for a wedding, and specifically to be performed outside the married couple's room. First examples survive from Ancient Greece (for example, by the Roman poet Catullus), but the best examples are from the Renaissance, including the English poet Edmund Spenser's Epithalamion. Later poets, including the English John Dryden and Percy Bysshe Shelley, followed this example and, in the 20th Century, so did the English-born US poet W H Auden.

The arms show a Bible open at the Gospel of St John, a Trinitarian symbol. The white cross symbolizes faith. The arms appear on national and state flags. Effective date: 14 September 1863. >>