The bridegroom’s mother then attended the bridal pair to the _thalamus_ or bridal chamber, where the richly-decked, flower-strewn marriage couch was prepared. When all the guests had gone away the bridegroom locked the door, and while the bride unveiled herself to him for the first time, the youths and maidens outside sang another song--either a few verses of the Hymenaeus or an Epithalamium, accompanied with praises of the married pair, and also doubtless by some jesting personal allusions. The Epithalamium of Helen, in Theocritus, begins thus:-- “Slumberest so soon, sweet bridegroom? Art thou over-fond of sleep? Or hast thou leaden-weighted limbs? Or hadst thou drunk too deep When thou didst fling thee to thy lair? Betimes thou shouldst have sped, If sleep were all thy purpose, Unto thy bachelor’s bed, And left her in her mother’s arms To nestle and to play, A girl among her girlish mates, Till deep into the day:-- For not alone for this night, Nor for the next alone, But through the days and through the years Thou hast her for thine own.” And it ends thus:-- “Sleep on, and love and longing Breathe in each other’s breast; But fail not, when the morn returns, To rouse you from your rest: With dawn shall we be stirring, When, lifting high his fair And feathered neck, the earliest bird To clarion to the dawn is heard. O God of brides and bridals, Sing ‘Happy, happy pair!’”[C] Very often the young men, before setting out homewards, amused themselves by knocking and banging at the door of the bridal chamber, though a friend of the bridegroom’s kept watch there, ostensibly to prevent the maidens from going in to their married comrade. The last lines of the above-quoted epithalamium show that the chorus sometimes returned early next morning to greet the pair on their awakening.