Twentieth-Century Wedding Poems: Yeats, Tagore and Thomas
Yeats’s embroidered heavens, Tagore’s henna and jasmine, Edward Thomas’s gifts for Helen and the mysterious Roy Croft: seven readings from the turn of the modern age.
The poems on this page, most of them written within a few years of 1900, share an unusual humility: less interest in grand declarations, more in what one person can actually give another. Yeats, who cannot offer the embroidered cloths of heaven, offers his dreams instead and asks that they be walked on gently. Edward Thomas, writing to his wife in 1916, lists everything he would give her, then admits he would give himself if he could find where it lay hidden. The tone of this page is tender rather than triumphant, and that is its appeal.
Strictly, both Yeats poems are from the 1890s, on the threshold of the century, and the last three pieces come from anthologies and attributions rather than books their authors signed. We say so below, because what you print in the program should be accurate.
Choosing among them
The short and musical choice. He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven is eight lines and about thirty seconds, and one of the most requested wedding poems in Britain and Ireland. Its last line, “Tread softly because you tread on my dreams,” lingers after the reader sits down.
The direct choice. Roy Croft’s Love opens with a sentence that says what many vows take a page to reach. It has been one of the most requested readings on this site since 1999 and suits a close friend who can read warmly without performing.
For an older couple or a vow renewal. When You Are Old was first published in 1892, loosely after a sonnet by Ronsard, and written for Maud Gonne, who never returned Yeats’s love. At a wedding its middle stanza turns hopeful: someone will love “the pilgrim soul in you” as you change. Give it to a reader who has been married for decades. And You, Helen is for the same mood, quieter and deeply moving; Thomas was killed at Arras months before it was published.
For a South Asian or fusion wedding. Hands Cling to Hands comes from The Gardener (1913), which Tagore translated from his own Bengali the year he won the Nobel Prize in Literature. If you were hoping for “Unending Love,” note that it is a modern translation still in copyright and not in Tagore’s own English books.
For a young couple, or a short slot. I Love You for What You Are looks forward rather than back. The Most Wonderful of All Things in Life takes about thirty-five seconds. Credit both as attributed, to Carl Sandburg and Sir Hugh Walpole respectively; we have not been able to confirm their exact sources.
Reading these aloud
Croft’s poem repeats “I love you” again and again. Do not hit each one the same way; let the stress fall on what follows, so the list keeps moving. Tagore’s refrain, “This love between you and me is simple as a song,” returns several times; let it get a little softer each time rather than louder. Yeats is written for the ear, so trust the rhythm and slow down for the final line of each poem.
Pairings
When You Are Old with Burns’s John Anderson, My Jo. Two poems that look straight at old age, a natural pair for a vow renewal or two grandparents reading in turn.
Hands Cling to Hands with the Hindu Marriage Poem. Tagore’s lyric beside words drawn from Vedic wedding hymns, read by members of both families.
Love with No Woman Was Ever Nearer to Her Mate. Croft on who you become with someone; Jane Eyre, ten years married, on what that looks like day to day.
He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
W. B. Yeats
Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
When You Are Old
W. B. Yeats
When you are old and gray and full of sleep
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true;
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead,
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
Hands Cling to Hands
Rabindranath Tagore
Hands cling to hands and eyes linger on eyes: thus begins the record of our hearts.
It is the moonlit night of March; the sweet smell of henna is in the air; my flute lies on the earth neglected and your garland of flowers is unfinished.
This love between you and me is simple as a song.
Your veil of the saffron colour makes my eyes drunk.
The jasmine wreath that you wove me thrills to my heart like praise.
It is a game of giving and withholding, revealing and screening again; some smiles and some little shyness, and some sweet useless struggles.
This love between you and me is simple as a song.
No mystery beyond the present; no striving for the impossible; no shadow behind the charm; no groping in the depth of the dark.
This love between you and me is simple as a song.
We do not stray out of all words into the ever silent; we do not raise our hands to the void for things beyond hope.
It is enough what we give and we get.
We have not crushed the joy to the utmost to wring from it the wine of pain.
This love between you and me is simple as a song.
And You, Helen
Edward Thomas
And you, Helen, what should I give you?
So many things I would give you
Had I an infinite great store
Offered me and I stood before
To choose. I would give you youth,
All kinds of loveliness and truth,
A clear eye as good as mine,
Lands, waters, flowers, wine,
As many children as your heart
Might wish for, a far better art
Than mine can be, all you have lost
Upon the travelling waters tossed,
Or given to me. If I could choose
Freely in that great treasure-house
Anything from any shelf,
I would give you back yourself,
And power to discriminate
What you want and want it not too late,
Many fair days free from care
And heart to enjoy both foul and fair,
And myself, too, if I could find
Where it lay hidden and it proved kind.
Love
Roy Croft
I love you,
Not only for what you are,
But for what I am
When I am with you.
I love you,
Not only for what
You have made of yourself,
But for what
You are making of me.
I love you
For the part of me
That you bring out;
I love you
For putting your hand
Into my heaped-up heart
And passing over
All the foolish, weak things
That you can’t help
Dimly seeing there,
And for drawing out
Into the light
All the beautiful belongings
That no one else had looked
Quite far enough to find.
I love you because you
Are helping me to make
Of the lumber of my life
Not a tavern
But a temple;
Out of the works
Of my every day
Not a reproach
But a song.
I love you
Because you have done
More than any creed
Could have done
To make me good,
And more than any fate
To make me happy.
You have done it
Without a touch,
Without a word,
Without a sign.
You have done it
By being yourself.
I Love You for What You Are
Attributed to Carl Sandburg
I love you for what you are, but I love you yet more for what you are going to be. I love you not so much for your realities as for your ideals. I pray for your desires that they may be great, rather than for your satisfactions, which may be so hazardously little. A satisfied flower is one whose petals are about to fall. The most beautiful rose is one hardly more than a bud wherein the pangs and ecstasies of desire are working for a larger and finer growth. Not always shall you be what you are now. You are going forward toward something great. I am on the way with you and therefore I love you.
The Most Wonderful of All Things in Life
Sir Hugh Walpole
The most wonderful of all things in life is the discovery of another human being with whom one’s relationship has a growing depth, beauty and joy as the years increase. This inner progressiveness of love between two human beings is a most marvelous thing; it cannot be found by looking for it or by passionately wishing for it. It is a sort of divine accident, and the most wonderful of all things in life.
