Making Love

The phrase once meant not maritals
but merely pitching woo,
a chap made love with words, not swords,
an open heart and not a fly.

And so imagine my surprise
when as a ewe I read
Jane Austen’s Emma, in which she said
the vicar made to Emma “violent love”,
as their carriage rattled home.

Blimey, I thought,
sixteen and unwise in love and art,
and I thought Clacton girls were tarts…