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Ceremony Readings · 25 readings

Love Poems for Weddings

Romantic love poems for wedding ceremonies, from Donne and Keats to Christina Rossetti, Yeats and Tagore — printed in full, with read-aloud times.

Not every beautiful love poem suits a wedding. Some are about longing for someone out of reach, some about love lost, and a few of the most quoted are addressed to a mistress rather than a spouse. The poems here have been chosen because they say something true about love that is returned and meant to last — which is what a wedding is.

They range from the sixteenth century to the 1920s, from Edmund Spenser writing to the woman he was about to marry to Rabindranath Tagore’s own English translations. For modern poets still under copyright — Neruda, cummings, Angelou — see modern wedding readings.

A Birthday

Christina Rossetti · 50 s“My heart is like a singing bird … Because my love is come to me.”

A Decade

Amy Lowell · 20 s“When you came, you were like red wine and honey … Now you are like morning bread.”

A Red, Red Rose

Robert Burns · 50 s“O my Luve’s like a red, red rose” — Burns’s promise to love till the seas run dry.

And You, Helen

Edward Thomas · 1 min 05 s“I would give you back yourself” — Edward Thomas’s list of gifts for his wife.

Believe Me, If All Those Endearing Young Charms

Thomas Moore · 1 min 00 sThomas Moore’s promise: if your youth and beauty fade, I will love you still.

Bright Star

John Keats · 45 s“Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art” — John Keats’s last love sonnet.

Hands Cling to Hands

Rabindranath Tagore · 1 min 35 s“This love between you and me is simple as a song” — Tagore’s own English, 1913.

He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven

W. B. Yeats · 30 s“Tread softly because you tread on my dreams” — eight lines from Yeats.

I Would Live in Your Love

Sara Teasdale · 25 s“I would live in your love as the sea-grasses live in the sea.”

Invitation to Love

Paul Laurence Dunbar · 1 min 00 s“Come when the nights are bright with stars” — Paul Laurence Dunbar welcomes love in every season.

John Anderson, My Jo

Robert Burns · 40 sRobert Burns on a long marriage: climbing the hill together, and going down hand in hand.

My Wife

Robert Louis Stevenson · 25 s“Teacher, tender, comrade, wife” — Robert Louis Stevenson’s portrait of Fanny.

Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal

Alfred, Lord Tennyson · 55 sTennyson’s night-garden song: “So fold thyself, my dearest … and be lost in me.”

One Day I Wrote Her Name upon the Strand

Edmund Spenser · 55 sSpenser writes his beloved’s name in the sand; the tide washes it away; the poem keeps it.

She Was a Phantom of Delight

William Wordsworth · 1 min 20 sWordsworth’s wife, seen three ways: a vision, a woman, and a companion for life.

Song of Solomon 2:10–13

King James Version · 40 s“For, lo, the winter is past” — the Song of Solomon’s invitation to rise up and come away.

Sonnet 130

William Shakespeare · 55 s“My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun” — Shakespeare’s loving send-up of love poems.

Sonnet 29

William Shakespeare · 55 s“When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes” — the thought of you makes me richer than kings.

Summum Bonum

Robert Browning · 35 sOne bee, one gem, one pearl — and, above them all, the kiss of one girl.

That I Did Always Love

Emily Dickinson · 20 s“That till I loved / I did not love enough” — Emily Dickinson’s short proof of love.

The Good-Morrow

John Donne · 1 min 20 s“I wonder by my troth, what thou, and I / Did, till we lov’d?”

To Celia (Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes)

Ben Jonson · 45 s“Drink to me only with thine eyes” — Ben Jonson’s song of 1616.

To My Dear and Loving Husband

Anne Bradstreet · 50 s“If ever two were one, then surely we” — a Puritan wife’s love poem, first printed 1678.

When Our Two Souls Stand Up Erect and Strong

Elizabeth Barrett Browning · 50 sElizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnet 22: why reach for heaven, when we can stay on earth and love?

When You Are Old

W. B. Yeats · 45 s“One man loved the pilgrim soul in you” — Yeats imagines his beloved grown old.

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