Poems and readings for weddings and civil partnerships

I Corinthians 13:1-13, If I speak in the tongues of men -- I John 4:7-19, Dear friends, let us love one another -- Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, For everything there is a season -- Ecclesiastes 4:9-12, Matthew 5:1-10, The Beatitudes -- Two are better than one -- Genesis 1:26-28, Male and female, he created them -- Proverbs 31:10-12, 25-31, A good wife is more precious than jewels -- Psalm 67, May God be gracious and bless us -- Psalm 95:1-7, Let us sing to the Lord -- Psalm 100, Make a joyful noise to the Lord -- Psalm 121, he will keep your going out and your coming in -- Psalm 128, May you see your children's children -- Song of Solomon 2:10-13, My lover spoke and said to me -- Diane Ackerman: Love -- Maya Angelou: Come and be my baby -- Anonymous: A walled garden; Apache blessing; Chinese poem; from A Native American wedding ceremony; From this day forward; Hawaiian love song; I knew that I had been touched by love; An Irish blessing; The key to love; These I can promise; True love; The promises of marriage; Women, look, listen, and take heed!; Sir Edwin Arnold: Somewhere -- Margaret Atwood: Habitation; W. H. Auden: Lullaby; O tell me the truth about love; Pay Ayes: Yes, I'll marry you my dear -- Elizabeth Barrett Browning: If thou must love me; from Sonnets from the Portuguese; with Robert Browning, from Love letters -- Robert Browning: Life in a love -- Jody Beck: Have you ever -- Ludwig van Beethoven: Love letters -- Robert Benjamin: My lady love -- Napoleon Bonaparte: from A love letter to Josephine -- Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A wedding sermon from a prison cell -- Anne Bradstreet: To my dear and loving husband -- Christopher Brennan: Because she would ask me why I loved her -- Robert Bridges: My delight and thy delight -- Buddha: from Sermon at Rajagaha -- Robert Burns: Love is like a red, red rose -- Lord Byron: So, we'll go no more a-roving; When we two parted -- Alice Cary: Forgive me but I needs must press -- Catullus: Garland your hair with marjoram -- John Clare: Love lives; First love -- Samuel Taylor Coleridge: The presence of love -- Hartley Coleridge: Friendship -- John Cooper Clark: I wanna be yours -- Wendy Cope: After the lunch -- E. E. Cummings: I carry your heart with me; I love you much (most beautiful darling) -- Stephen Curtis Chapman: I will be here -- Madeleine L'Engle, from The irrational season -- Dante, from The divine comedy -- C. Day Lewis: Song -- Louis De Bernieres: from Captain Corelli's mandolin -- Emily Dickinson: Hope is the thing with feathers; Wild nights -- John Donne: The good-morrow; The anniversary -- Max Ehrman: Desiderata -- George Eliot: To be one with each other; from Two lovers -- T. S. Eliot: A dedication to my wife -- James Dillet Freeman: Blessing for a marriage -- Robert Frost: from The master speed --

Kahlil Gibran: On children, from The prophet; on friendship, from The prophet; on love, from The prophet; on marriage, from The prophet

Thomas Hardy, from Far from the madding crowd

Lorenz Hart: My funny valentine

Ernest Hemingway: from A farewell to arms

George Herbert: Love III

Hindu marriage poem: The seven steps

Gerard Manley Hopkins: At the wedding march

Ted Hughes: Lovesong

Victor Hugo, from Les miserables

I ching, from Yi Jung. I ching. The classic of changes

Ben Johnson: Song to Celia

John Keats: Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art

Kuan Tao-Sheng: Married love

Par Lagerkvist: let my shadow disappear into yours

Philip Larkin: Wedding-wind

D. H. Lawrence, from Fidelity

Edward Lear: The owl and the pussy cat

Winifred Mackworth Praed: The newly-wedded

Christopher Marlowe: The passionate shepherd to his love

Andrew Marvell: To his coy mistress

Thomas Moore: Believe me, if all those endearing young charms

William Morris: from Love is enough

Toni Morrison: from Jazz

Anne Morrow Lindbergh: from A gift from the sea

Ogden Nash: Reprise; Tin wedding whistle

Pablo Neruda: We have lost even; Love sonnets IX, XLV, & XVII; Love; Morning love sonnet XXVII

Mari Nichols: Why marriage?

Edmund O'Neill: Marriage joins two people in the circle of its love

John Boyle O'Reilly: A white rose

Alice Oswald: Wedding

Boris Pasternak: from A wedding

William Penn: Never marry but for love

Wilferd Arlan Peterson: The art of a good marriage

Plato: from The symposium

Rainer Maria Rilke: from Letters to a young poet; Love song

Walter Rinder: What is love?

Matthew Rohrer: Credo; Epithalamium

Christina Rossetti: A birthday

Jalalud'din Rumi: Reading

St. Francis of Assisi: Prayer

Carl Sandburg: Untitled; under the harvest moon

Sappho: Two fragments

William Shakespeare: O mistress of mine; from Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet; Sonnets 18 and 116

Percy Bysshe Shelley: The Indian serenade; Love's philosophy

Sir Philip Sidney: My true love hath my heart and I have his

Robert Louis Stevenson: Wedding prayer

Rabindranath Tagore: My polar star; My song; Unending love

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin: Love

Alfred Lord Tennyson: Songs from the princess

Thomas à Kempis, from Imitatio Christi

Mark Twain: A marriage

Margaret Walker: Love song for Alex

Sir Hugh Walpole: The most wonderful of all things in life

Walt Whitman: from Song of the open road

Mary Wollstonecraft: from A love letter

William Wordsworth: Perfect woman

W. B. Yeats: He wishes for cloths of heaven; The love tells of the rose in his heart; When you are old

Short quotations on love and marriage

Index of first lines.