What's your favourite LOVE poem? I need one urgently for a wedding next week.

[spidermama]

My brother wants my dd to read something at his registry office wedding but she says she'll only do it if I read too.

So .... I'm looking for suggestions for a good but fairly short poem or piece of prose about love.

TIA. x

Rhubard [angry

get your oint dear, but (whispers) some people acually have happy marriages.

it's my anniversary today (and Dh's 35th) and we're actually happy.

point, obviously.

Was just wondering Spidermama whether your dd could read some bits (not all prob, as is v long) of the WH Auden 'Oh tell me the truth about love'. It's so great for a little girl to read (bits like 'is it usually sick on a swing' and 'When it comes will it come without warning, Just when I'm picking my nose' etc) and then you could read out one of the other, more complicated and lyrical ones in sort of response...? Might provide a contrast between sweet and amusing, and suitably deep and tear-provoking.

This is my favourite:

These Rings by Gael Turnbull

These rings that we exchange
renew themselves as the unwearied surf
that garlands but never binds
the coastline of an island
from which love ever sails
towards the horizon's circle
always further
beyong which we cannot reach
and all of these
are emblems of our taking of each other
no more constricted
than is the earth
by the enfolding of the sea

Dh and I had this one at our wedding mil read it and there wasn't a dry eye in the room

Now you will feel no rain,
For each of you will be shelter to the other.
Now you will feel no cold,
For each of you will be warmth to the other.

Now there is no more loneliness,
For each of you will be companion to the other.

Now you are two bodies,
But there is one life before you.

Go now to your dwelling place,
To enter into the days of your togetherness.
And may your days be good and long upon the earth.

~ Apache Wedding Prayer Blessing

We had that, too, NeverSayNever!
Made up for the World Cup theme tune Dh insisted on leaving the church too.....

omg juliab he didn't

Oh yes he did!
In fact, it was an Arsenal/West Ham wedding. Far too to tell you more.

Dh is a hammer and now totally intreiged says I should have walked in to 'I'm forever blowing bubbles'

Yeah - drew the line at that one!
Don't get me started on the comparisons between me and Harry Redknapp in groom's speech, though...

Wow, I had a lucky escape....poor you..pmsl

Nae bad 2happy. Yersel?

Great. They've all gone out. I should be doing housework but now I can catch up on this thread.

That's nice Peachyclair. Who wrote it?

rhubarb!

Orlando I will look up the wh Auden poem of which you speak.

LOVE that Gael Turnbull one purplemonkeyDW. I've never come across that before. Mmmmmm!

Neversaynever - that's a different edit of the Apache blessing. It's good. I prefer it. DD likes this one very much so it's a contender.

PMSL juliab that he had the world cup theme. I think that's really sweet actually.

among others we had how do I love thee by Elizabeth Barratt Browning...

Sonnet 43

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, -I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! - and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

Spidermama- um me whilst writing the post

sorry.

I wanted the Apache Reading but because it was a High Church RC the priest said no!
Personally love it.

He has married me with a ring, a ring of bright water
Whose ripples travel from the heart of the sea,
He has married me with a ring of light, the glitter
Broadcast on the swift river,
He has married me with the sun's circle
Too dazzling to see, traced in summer sky.

He has crowned me with the wreath of white cloud
That gathers on the snowy summit of the mountain,
Ringed me round with the world-circling wind,
Bound me to the whirlwind's centre.
He has married me with the orbit of the moon
And with the boundless circle of the stars,
With the orbits that measure years, months, days and nights,
Set the tides flowing, Command the winds to travel or be at rest.

At the ring's centre,
Spirit or angel troubling the still pool,
Causality not in nature,
Finger's touch that summons at a point, a moment
Stars and planets, life and light
Or gathers cloud about an apex of cold,
Transcendent touch of love summons my world to being.

How about this? It's from 'Ring of Bright water' but Gavin Maxwell took it from 'The Marriage of Psyche' by Kathleen Raine.

We had this at our wedding: We had a very good friend read it, who struggled with "the bridal wind is blowing" but we told him to behave himself :o (and he didn't snigger)

by: James Joyce (1882-1941)

Go seek her out all courteously,
And say I come,
Wind of spices whose song is ever
Epithalamium.
O, hurry over the dark lands
And run upon the sea
For seas and land shall not divide us
My love and me.

Now, wind, of your good courtesy
I pray you go,
And come into her little garden
And sing at her window;
Singing: The bridal wind is blowing
For Love is at his noon;
And soon will your true love be with you,
Soon, O soon.

My DS2 who was 7 at the time read the Winnie the Pooh piece that Juliab posted. He read beautifully and there wasn't a dry eye in the house when he finished!!

(but if you like the one I wrote below, tell her I wrote it just for her and I'll never refer to it agin- which I won't anyway, I never re-read my stuff- odd, me)

This was mine to DH at our wedding;

Siegfried Sassoon - Idyll

In the grey summer garden I shall find you
With day-break and the morning hills behind you.
There will be rain-wet roses; stir of wings;
And down the wood a thrush that wakes and sings.
Not from the past you’ll come, but from that deep
Where beauty murmurs to the soul asleep:
And I shall know the sense of life re-born
From dreams into the mystery of morn
Where gloom and brightness meet. And standing there
Till that calm song is done, at last we’ll share
The league-spread, quiring symphonies that are
Joy in the world, and peace, and dawn’s one star.

If you haven't already decided, good friends of ours (who are mad sailors, it should be added) had The Owl & The Pussycat. Seemed a bit random in advance but it was read beautifully and really worked. Still brings back fond memories when I hear it.

Wow peachyclair. Well done you.

That's a good idea hanH. I know it off by heart too.

I'm still undecided but have whittled it down to three now.

which ones SM