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Ceremony Readings · 46 readings

Wedding Poems

Love poems and wedding poems for the ceremony, from Shakespeare and Spenser to Yeats and Sara Teasdale — all in the public domain, all printed in full.

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.

Bridal Song

John Ford · 30 sA Jacobean wedding song: comforts lasting, loves increasing.

Bright Star

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

Camerado, I Give You My Hand

Walt Whitman · 55 s“Will you give me yourself? will you come travel with me?” — the close of Whitman’s road song.

From Song of the Open Road

Walt Whitman · 1 min 15 sWalt Whitman’s road, adapted for a wedding: you shall not anchor there.

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.

Hindu Marriage Poem

35 s“May the nights be honey-sweet for us” — words drawn from Vedic wedding hymns.

Hope is the thing with feathers

Emily Dickinson · 30 sEmily Dickinson’s hope, perched in the soul and singing without words.

How Do I Love Thee?

Elizabeth Barrett Browning · 1 min 00 sElizabeth Barrett Browning counts the ways — Sonnet 43 from Sonnets from the Portuguese.

I Would Live in Your Love

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

If Thou Must Love Me

Elizabeth Barrett Browning · 55 sLove me for love’s sake only — Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnet 14.

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.

Love

Roy Croft · 1 min 25 s“I love you, not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you.”

Love Lives

John Clare · 45 sJohn Clare’s love that lives beyond the tomb, in sleep and in spring.

Love's Philosophy

Percy Bysshe Shelley · 40 sShelley: fountains mingle with rivers, so why not I with thine?

Marriage

Mary Weston Fordham · 25 s“The die is cast, come weal, come woe” — Mary Weston Fordham, 1897.

My True Love Hath My Heart

Sir Philip Sidney · 40 s“My true love hath my heart and I have his” — Sir Philip Sidney’s perfect exchange.

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 Walks in Beauty

Lord Byron · 55 sByron’s portrait of a beauty that is inward as well as outward.

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.

Sonnet 116

William Shakespeare · 50 sLove that does not alter when it alteration finds — the most-read poem at weddings in English.

Sonnet 130

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

Sonnet 18

William Shakespeare · 20 s“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” — Shakespeare’s promise that love outlasts time.

Sonnet 29

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

Sudden Light

Dante Gabriel Rossetti · 45 sDante Gabriel Rossetti’s poem of déjà vu: I have been here before.

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?”

The Passionate Shepherd to His Love

Christopher Marlowe · 1 min 10 s“Come live with me and be my love” — Marlowe’s pastoral invitation.

Time Is

Henry van Dyke · 20 s“Time is too slow for those who wait … But for those who love, time is not.”

To Althea, from Prison

Richard Lovelace · 20 s“Stone walls do not a prison make” — Richard Lovelace on the freedom love gives.

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.

True Love

Author unknown · 30 sRhyming quatrains on a love that neither rules nor binds.

Two Doves

Author unknown · 35 sTwo doves, two hearts, a single soul — a short rhyming poem.

What Is the Beginning? Love.

Christina Rossetti · 30 sChristina Rossetti’s question-and-answer poem: love at the beginning, the course and the goal.

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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