suitable wedding poem- terminal illness

[PanannyPanoo]

Has any one got any ideas on something suitable to be read at a wedding when one of the couple has a critical illness

What a beautiful thread:

m.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/i-walked-out-one-evening

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:

O, 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 prov’d,

I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.

This is one of my favourite love poems. The Clive James is wonderful.

One Hundred Love Sonnets: XVII
BY PABLO NERUDA

I don’t love you as if you were a rose of salt, topaz,

or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:

I love you as one loves certain obscure things,

secretly, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom but carries

the light of those flowers, hidden, within itself,

and thanks to your love the tight aroma that arose

from the earth lives dimly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,

I love you directly without problems or pride:
I love you like this because I don’t know any other way to love,
except in this form in which I am not nor are you,

so close that your hand upon my chest is mine,

so close that your eyes close with my dreams.

Sonnet 130 is about everlasting love that "looks on tempests never shaken", is "an ever-fixéd mark". Love "alters not when it alteration" finds. I think that would work really well.

I had the ee cumming's poem read at my husband's funeral but love driveme's 'Biro' one. It's very joyful and wedding-y. Thank you to all posters - its made me laugh and cry.

Hmph. it's

I agree the ee cummings poem is brilliant

Such lovely poems

I wrote a long reply a while ago but it doesn't seem to have posted. I think I may have to put some of these in a little book for them to read and refer to over the rest of their forever. Thank you.

They'll treasure it, pananny.

SONNET 116 (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:
O 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.

Peaface, great minds

We marrid when my husband had been given a 30% chance of survival and we were faciing a second stem cell transplant. We had shakespeare as above and khalil gibran. However had i know this e e cummings one i would have had it. My mum wants it for her funeral so perhaps has elemwnts suitable for the situation. Best wishes to the couple.

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being to timelessness as it’s to time

being to timelessness as it’s to time,
love did no more begin than love will end;
where nothing is to breathe to stroll to swim
love is the air the ocean and the land

(do lovers suffer? all divinities
proudly descending put on deathful flesh:
are lovers glad? only their smallest joy’s
a universe emerging from a wish)

love is the voice under all silences,
the hope which has no opposite in fear;
the strength so strong mere force is feebleness:
the truth more first than sun more last than star

—do lovers love? why then to heaven with hell.
Whatever sages say and fools, all’s well

I had this poem as a reading at my wedding, it is still one of my all time favourite poems.

The Confirmation
Yes, yours, my love, is the right human face.
I in my mind had waited for this long,
Seeing the false and searching for the true,
Then found you as a traveller finds a place
Of welcome suddenly amid the wrong
Valleys and rocks and twisting roads. But you,
What shall I call you? A fountain in a waste,
A well of water in a country dry,
Or anything that’s honest and good, an eye
That makes the whole world seem bright. Your open heart,
Simple with giving, gives the primal deed,
The first good world, the blossom, the blowing seed,
The hearth, the steadfast land, the wandering sea.
Not beautiful or rare in every part.
But like yourself, as they were meant to be.

Sorry, that's The Confirmation by Edwin Muir.

I saw this thread yesterday when there was only one post, but I coudn't think of any poems. Came back after thinking about it all night and I had a couple of suggestions, but none as good as the ones given here, except for the Cummings which has already been done.

Some of these are really moving, and I also love Drive's biro one.

All the best to the couple.

What about 'Love Is Enough' by William Morris?

William Morris (1834-1896)

Love is enough: though the world be a-waning,
And the woods have no voice but the voice of complaining,
Though the skies be too dark for dim eyes to discover
The gold-cups and daisies fair blooming thereunder,
Though the hills be held shadows, and the sea a dark wonder,
And this day draw a veil over all deeds passed over,
Yet their hands shall not tremble, their feet shall not falter:
The void shall not weary, the fear shall not alter
These lips and these eyes of the loved and the lover.

I love the EE Cummings one.
Or this one by Roger McGough? It's about the fact that no matter how bad and final things are, there is always joy and hope in the small things and the way you share them together.

I vow to honour the commitment made this day
Which, unlike the flowers and the cake,
Will not wither or decay. A promise, not to obey
But to respond joyfully, to forgive and to console,
For once incomplete, we now are whole.

I vow to bear in mind that if, at times
Things seem to go from bad to worse,
They also go from bad to better.
The lost purse is handed in, the letter
Contains wonderful news. Trains run on time,
Hurricanes run out of breath, floods subside,
And toast lands jam-side up.

And with this ring, my final vow:
To recall, whatever the future may bring,
The love I feel for you now.

I think both the Clive James and Roger McGough ones are great.

thank you all so much. I am writing some of these in an album so I can add photos on Monday eve. and hopefully it will be printed in time for them to spend time together looking through it. Any other poems or sayings about love would be brilliant.

I found this one for our wedding:

Masons, when they start upon a building,
Are careful to test out the scaffolding;

Make sure that planks won’t slip at busy points,
Secure all ladders, tighten bolted joints.

And yet all this comes down when the job’s done
Showing off walls of sure and solid stone.

So if, my dear, there sometimes seem to be
Old bridges breaking between you and me

Never fear. We may let the scaffolds fall
Confident that we have built our wall.

Seamus Heaney - Scaffolding

Love the Clive James poem ❤️ have just read this and no other thoughts at moment but will add if so.
I also think Shakespeare's 'let me not to the marriage of true minds' is appropriate.

Thank you for the thread and have a wonderful wedding with your friends op.

I seem to have something in my eye, these are all lovely (I would go for the biro one)

"At best, love is simply the slipping of a hand in another's, of knowing you are where you belong at last, and of exchanging through the eyes that all-consuming regard which ignores everybody else on earth." Laurie Lee

One of my favourite bible verses from 1 Corinthians 13
Love is patient,
Love is kind.
Love does not envy,
is not boastful,
is not conceited,
does not act improperly,
is not selfish,
is not provoked,
and does not keep a record of wrongs.
Love finds no joy in unrighteousness but rejoices in the truth.
It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends.

Now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.