As with the quotations you’ll find in the next chapter, these poems are my own personal favourites, and those which I would choose to read if I were giving a wedding speech. In the final chapter you’ll find a number of references which will lead you to further poetry selections, so if you don’t share my taste here, don’t worry!

With ‘classic’ poems written a century or more ago there should be no problems about copyright, as beyond a given number of years after the poet’s death I believe such works pass into the ‘public domain’ and are no longer subject to royalties when performed in a public place. Of course you could argue that a wedding is a private occasion and certainly no sensible legal system would pursue you for reading out a contemporary poem at your daughter’s, sister’s, or whoever’s wedding.

However, if you are in any doubt whatsoever about whether or not reading a poem could constitute an infringement of copyright, please consult your legal advisers. If you don’t have a legal adviser, I’ve included the name of a law firm I know in the Resources section of this book. If you live in the UK please consult them (or your own legal adviser) rather than take a chance. If you live in another country, please check on its copyright laws.

Please note that all the poems I have included in this chapter are in the public domain in the UK and so you can quote from them freely.

TIPS FOR READING/RECITING POETRY

Although you can memorise a poem if you want to and you’re good at committing things to memory, I think it’s perfectly acceptable to have it written on a piece of paper in front of you. The best option is not necessarily to memorise the whole poem, but to familiarise yourself with it sufficiently so you can just glance down occasionally to remind yourself of the words. That looks far better to the audience than if you’re reading every single syllable of it.

Make sure you understand the poem so that you emphasise the right words - although you can place emphasis on the words you feel are most important for the occasion, whether the poet intended you to or not. Speak slowly and clearly. Look up frequently from the piece of paper and maintain eye contact with your audience.

MY SELECTION OF POEMS

To My Sister - William Wordsworth

IT is the first mild day of March:

Each minute sweeter than before

The redbreast sings from the tall larch

That stands beside our door.

There is a blessing in the air,

Which seems a sense of joy to yield

To the bare trees, and mountains bare,

And grass in the green field.

My sister! (’tis a wish of mine)

Now that our morning meal is done,

Make haste, your morning task resign;

Come forth and feel the sun.

Edward will come with you; -and, pray,

Put on with speed your woodland dress;

And bring no book: for this one day

We’ll give to idleness.

No joyless forms shall regulate

Our living calendar:

We from to-day, my Friend, will date

The opening of the year.

Love, now a universal birth,

From heart to heart is stealing,

From earth to man, from man to earth:

-It is the hour of feeling.

One moment now may give us more

Than years of toiling reason:

Our minds shall drink at every pore

The spirit of the season.

Some silent laws our hearts will make,

Which they shall long obey:

We for the year to come may take

Our temper from to-day.

And from the blessed power that rolls

About, below, above,

We’ll frame the measure of our souls:

They shall be tuned to love.

Then come, my Sister! come, I pray,

With speed put on your woodland dress;

And bring no book: for this one day

We’ll give to idleness.

It Is A Beauteous Evening, Calm And Free William Wordsworth

It is a beauteous evening, calm and free,

The holy time is quiet as a Nun

Breathless with adoration; the broad sun

Is sinking down in its tranquillity;

The gentleness of heaven broods o’er the Sea:

Listen! the mighty Being is awake,

And doth with his eternal motion make

A sound like thunder-everlastingly.

Dear Child! dear Girl! that walkest with me here,

If thou appear untouched by solemn thought,

Thy nature is not therefore less divine:

Thou liest in Abraham’s bosom all the year;

And worship’st at the Temple’s inner shrine,

God being with thee when we know it not.

O Nightingale! Thou Surely Art! - William Wordsworth

0 nightingale! thou surely art

A creature of a ‘fiery heart’:-

These notes of thine-they pierce and pierce;

Tumultuous harmony and fierce!

Thou sing’st as if the God of wine

Had helped thee to a Valentine;

A song in mockery and despite

Of shades, and dews, and silent night;

And steady bliss, and all the loves

Now sleeping in these peaceful groves.

I heard a Stock-dove sing or say

His homely tale, this very day;

His voice was buried among trees,

Yet to be come at by the breeze:

He did not cease; but cooed-and cooed;

And somewhat pensively he wooed:

He sang of love, with quiet blending,

Slow to begin, and never ending;

Of serious faith, and inward glee;

That was the song-the song for me!

Addressed To My Daughter - William Wordsworth

Let us quit the leafy arbour,

And the torrent murmuring by;

For the sun is in his harbour,

Weary of the open sky.

Evening now unbinds the fetters

Fashioned by the glowing light;

All that breathe are thankful debtors

To the harbinger of night.

Yet by some grave thoughts attended

Eve renews her calm career:

For the day that now is ended,

Is the longest of the year.

Dora! sport, as now thou sportest,

On this platform, light and free;

Take thy bliss, while longest, shortest,

Are indifferent to thee!

Who would check the happy feeling

That inspires the linnet’s song?

Who would stop the swallow, wheeling

On her pinions swift and strong?

Yet at this impressive season,

Words which tenderness can speak

From the truths of homely reason,

Might exalt the loveliest cheek;

And, while shades to shades succeeding

Steal the landscape from the sight,

I would urge this moral pleading,

Last forerunner of ‘Good night!’

Summer ebbs; -each day that follows

Is a reflux from on high,

Tending to the darksome hollows

Where the frosts of winter lie.

He who governs the creation,

In his providence, assigned

Such a gradual declination

To the life of human kind.

Yet we mark it not; -fruits redden,

Fresh flowers blow, as flowers have blown,

And the heart is loth to deaden

Hopes that she so long hath known.

Be thou wiser, youthful Maiden!

And when thy decline shall come,

Let not flowers, or boughs fruit-laden,

Hide the knowledge of thy doom.

Now, even now, ere wrapped in slumber,

Fix thine eyes upon the sea

That absorbs time, space, and number;

Look thou to Eternity!

Follow thou the flowing river

On whose breast are thither borne

All deceived, and each deceiver,

Through the gates of night and morn;

Through the year’s successive portals;

Through the bounds which many a star

Marks, not mindless of frail mortals

When his light returns from far.

Thus when thou with Time hast travelled

Toward the mighty gulf of things,

And the mazy stream unravelled

With thy best imaginings;

Think, if thou on beauty leanest,

Think how pitiful that stay,

Did not virtue give the meanest

Charms superior to decay.

Duty, like a strict preceptor,

Sometimes frowns, or seems to frown;

Choose her thistle for thy sceptre,

While youth’s roses are thy crown.

Grasp it, -if thou shrink and tremble,

Fairest damsel of the green,

Thou wilt lack the only symbol

That proclaims a genuine queen;

And ensures those palms of honour

Which selected spirits wear,

Bending low before the Donor,

Lord of heaven’s unchanging year!

Sonnets From The Portuguese - Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Yet, love, mere love, is beautiful indeed

And worth of acceptation. Fire is bright,

Let temple burn, or flax; an equal light

Leaps in the flame from cedar-plank or weed:

And love is fire. And when I say at need

I love thee ... mark! ... I love thee-in thy sight

I stand transfigured, glorified aright,

With conscience of the new rays that proceed

Out of my face toward thine. There’s nothing low

In love, when love the lowest: meanest creatures

Who love God, God accepts while loving so.

And what I feel, across the inferior features

Of what I am, doth flash itself, and show

How that great work of Love enhances Nature’s.

Sonnets From The Portuguese - Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Indeed this very love which is my boast,

And which, when rising up from breast to brow,

Doth crown me with a ruby large enow

To draw men’s eyes and prove the inner cost, -

This love even, all my worth, to the uttermost,

I should not love withal, unless that thou

Hadst set me an example, shown me how,

When first thine earnest eyes with mine were crossed,

And love called love. And thus, I cannot speak

Of love even, as a good thing of my own:

Thy soul hath snatched up mine all faint and weak,

And placed it by thee on a golden throne, -

And that I love (O soul, we must be meek!)

Is by thee only, whom I love alone.

Sonnets From The Portuguese - Elizabeth Barrett Browning

If thou must love me, let it be for nought

Except for love’s sake only. Do not say

’I love her for her smile-her look-her way

Of speaking gently, -for a trick of thought

That falls in well with mine, and certes brought

A sense of pleasant ease on such a day’ -

For these things in themselves, Beloved, may

Be changed, or change for thee, -and love, so wrought,

May be unwrought so. Neither love me for

Thine own dear pity’s wiping my cheeks dry,-

A creature might forget to weep, who bore

Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!

But love me for love’s sake, that evermore

Thou may’st love on, through love’s eternity.

Sonnets From The Portuguese - Elizabeth Barrett Browning

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.

I love thee to the level of everyday’s

Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.

I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;

I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.

I love thee with the passion put to use

In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.

I love thee with a love I seemed to lose

With my lost saints, -I love thee with the breath,

Smiles, tears, of all my life! -and, if God choose,

I shall but love thee better after death.

Proof - Emily Dickinson

That I did always love,

I bring thee proof:

That till I loved

I did not love enough.

That I shall love alway,

I offer thee

That love is life,

And life hath immortality.

This, dost thou doubt, sweet?

Then have I

Nothing to show

But Calvary.

To a Friend - Amy Lowell

I ask but one thing of you, only one,

That always you will be my dream of you;

That never shall I wake to find untrue

All this I have believed and rested on,

Forever vanished, like a vision gone

Out into the night. Alas, how few

There are who strike in us a chord we knew

Existed, but so seldom heard its tone

We tremble at the half-forgotten sound.

The world is full of rude awakenings

And heaven-born castles shattered to the ground,

Yet still our human longing vainly clings

To a belief in beauty through all wrongs.

O stay your hand, and leave my heart its songs!

Happiness - Amy Lowell

Happiness, to some, elation;

Is, to others, mere stagnation.

Days of passive somnolence,

At its wildest, indolence.

Hours of empty quietness,

No delight, and no distress.

Happiness to me is wine,

Effervescent, superfine.

Full of tang and fiery pleasure,

Far too hot to leave me leisure

For a single thought beyond it.

Drunk! Forgetful! This the bond: it

Means to give one’s soul to gain

Life’s quintessence. Even pain

Pricks to livelier living, then

Wakes the nerves to laugh again,

Rapture’s self is three parts sorrow.

Although we must die to-morrow,

Losing every thought but this;

Torn, triumphant, drowned in bliss.

Happiness: We rarely feel it.

I would buy it, beg it, steal it,

Pay in coins of dripping blood

For this one transcendent good.

Love Me - Sara Teasdale

Brown-thrush singing all day long

In the leaves above me,

Take my love this little song,

’Love me, love me, love me!’

When he harkens what you say,

Bid him, lest he miss me,

Leave his work or leave his play,

And kiss me, kiss me, kiss me!

I Would Live In Your Love - Sara Teasdale

I would live in your love as the sea-grasses live in the sea,

Borne up by each wave as it passes, drawn down by each wave that

recedes;

I would empty my soul of the dreams that have gathered in me,

I would beat with your heart as it beats, I would follow your soul as

it leads.

To My Dear and Loving Husband - Anne Bradstreet

If ever two were one, then surely we.

If ever man were lov’d by wife, then thee;

If ever wife was happy in a man,

Compare with me ye women if you can.

I prize thy love more then whole Mines of gold,

Or all the riches that the East doth hold.

My love is such that Rivers cannot quench,

Nor ought but love from thee, give recompence.

Thy love is such I can no way repay,

The heavens reward thee manifold I pray.

Then while we live, in love let’s so persever,

That when we live no more, we may live ever.

A Red, Red Rose - Robert Burns

O my luve’s like a red, red rose.

That’s newly sprung in June;

O my luve’s like a melodie

That’s sweetly play’d in tune.

As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,

So deep in luve am I;

And I will love thee still, my Dear,

Till a’the seas gang dry.

Till a’ the seas gang dry, my Dear,

And the rocks melt wi’ the sun:

I will luve thee still, my Dear,

While the sands o’ life shall run.

And fare thee weel my only Luve!

And fare thee weel a while!

And I will come again, my Luve,

Tho’ it were ten thousand mile!

Sonnet 18 - William Shakespeare

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance, or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;

Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:

So long as man can breath, or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Sonnet 116 William Shakespeare

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

admit impediments. Love is not love

which alters when it alteration finds,

or bends with the remover to remove:

Oh, no! It is an ever-fixed mark.

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

it is the star to every wandering bark,

whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.

Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

within his bending sickle’s compass come;

love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

but bears it out even to the edge of doom.

If this be error and upon me proved,

I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

I Ching

When two people are at one

in their inmost hearts,

they shatter even the strength of iron or bronze.

And when two people understand each other

in their inmost hearts,

their words are sweet and strong,

like the fragrance of orchids.

Fidelity -D H Lawrence

Man and woman are like the earth, that brings forth flowers

in summer, and love, but underneath is rock.

Older than flowers, older than ferns, older than foraminiferae,

older than plasm altogether is the soul underneath.

And when, throughout all the wild chaos of love

slowly a gem forms, in the ancient, once-more-molten rocks

of two human hearts, two ancient rocks,

a man’s heart and a woman’s,

that is the crystal of peace, the slow hard jewel of trust,

the sapphire of fidelity.

The gem of mutual peace emerging from the wild chaos of love.

Corinthians 13:4-8 - The Bible

Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.

Marriage - Mary Weston Fordham

The die is cast, come weal, come woe,

Two lives are joined together,

For better or for worse, the link

Which naught but death can sever.

The die is cast, come grief, come joy.

Come richer, or come poorer,

If love but binds the mystic tie,

Blest is the bridal hour.

My True Love Hath My Heart - Sir Philip Sidney

My true-love hath my heart, and I have his,

By just exchange one for another given:

I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss,

There never was a better bargain driven:

My true-love hath my heart, and I have his,

My heart in me keeps him and me in one,

My heart in him his thoughts and senses guide:

He loves my heart, for once it was his own,

I cherish his because in me it bides:

My true-love hath my heart, and I have his.

To Be One With Each Other - George Eliot

What greater thing is there for two human souls

than to feel that they are joined together to strengthen

each other in all labor, to minister to each other in all sorrow,

to share with each other in all gladness,

to be one with each other in the

silent unspoken memories?

Two Lovers - George Eliot

Two lovers by a moss-grown spring:

They leaned soft cheeks together there,

Mingled the dark and sunny hair,

And heard the wooing thrushes sing.

O budding time!

O love’s blest prime!

Two wedded from the portal stept:

The bells made happy carolings,

The air was soft as fanning wings,

White petals on the pathway slept.

O pure-eyed bride!

O tender pride!

Two faces o’er a cradle bent:

Two hands above the head were locked:

These pressed each other while they rocked,

Those watched a life that love had sent.

O solemn hour!

O hidden power!

Two parents by the evening fire:

The red light fell about their knees

On heads that rose by slow degrees

Like buds upon the lily spire.

O patient life!

O tender strife!

The two still sat together there,

The red light shone about their knees;

But all the heads by slow degrees

Had gone and left that lonely pair.

O voyage fast!

O vanished past!

The red light shone upon the floor

And made the space between them wide;

They drew their chairs up side by side,

Their pale cheeks joined, and said, ‘Once more!’

O memories!

O past that is!

Hindu Marriage Poem - Author unknown

You have become mine forever.

Yes, we have become partners.

I have become yours.

Hereafter, I cannot live without you.

Do not live without me.

Let us share the joys.

We are word and meaning, unite.

You are thought and I am sound.

May the nights be honey-sweet for us.

May the mornings be honey-sweet for us.

May the plants be honey-sweet for us.

May the earth be honey-sweet for us.

From This Day Forward - Author unknown

From this day forward,

You shall not walk alone.

My heart will be your shelter,

And my arms will be your home.

This Day I Married My Best Friend - Author unknown

This day I married my best friend

... the one I laugh with as we share life’s wondrous zest,

as we find new enjoyments and experience all that’s best.

... the one I live for because the world seems brighter

as our happy times are better and our burdens feel much lighter.

... the one I love with every fibre of my soul.

We used to feel vaguely incomplete, now together we are whole.

Apache Blessing Author unknown

May the sun bring you new energy by day, May the moon softly restore you by night, May the rain wash away your worries And the breeze blow new strength into your being, And all the days of your life may you walk Gently through the world and know its beauty.

Eskimo Love Song - Author unknown

You are my husband

My feet shall run because of you

My feet shall dance because of you

My heart shall beat because of you

My eyes see because of you

My mind thinks because of you

And I shall love because of you.