This rich collection of writings on the nature of love and commitment has long delighted brides and grooms of every denomination. Culled from both sacred and secular texts, and suitable for either traditional or informal wedding ceremonies, these selections might be included in Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, interfaith, and non-denominational exchanges of vows. Among the passages appropriate for readings by parents, friends, or the bride and groom are selections from Plato and Sappho, Rilke and Auden, Ecclesiastes and Euripedes, Shakespeare and Donne, pascal and Montaigne, Emily Dickinson and Anne Morrow Lindbergh. There are love songs from the Aztecs and Eskimos, Hindu and African wedding prayers, a Buddhist marriage homily, a Shaker hymn, and Irish blessing, excerpts from Coptic Orthodox and Greek Orthodox marriage services, and passages from the Old and New Testaments, some familiar, some surprising. With myriad choices, Wedding Readings will help you add a special, personal touch to your marriage ceremony.

Table of Contents:
Wedding ReadingsAcknowledgments Wendell Berry, from "The Country of Marriage" Anne Morrow Lindbergh, from Bring Me a Unicorn From "Simple Gifts, " a Shaker hymn Introduction I. The Time Is Come Ancient Greek dedications to brides Preamble Revelation 3:8 (New English Bible) Isaiah 61:10-11 (New English Bible) Ecclesiastes 4:7-13 (New English Bible) Euripides George Herbert, from "Easter" Charles Dickens Robert Herrick, "Love Me Little, Love Me Long" Rainer Maria Rilke from Letters to a young Poet from First Poems Chippewa song Robert Louis Stevenson, from "A Night Among the Pines" James Joyce, poem XIII from Chamber Music E. M. Forster, from A Room with a View Joseph Cambell, from The Hero with a Thousand Faces Paul Valéry Anne Morrow Lindbergh from Bring Me a Unicorn Randall Jarrell, from "A Man Meets a Woman in the Street" Gabriela Mistral, God Wills It" Delmore Schwartz, "Will you perhaps consent to be" Alan Dugan, "Love Song: I and Thou" José Garcia Villa, from Have Come, Am Here Robert Creeley, "Kore" Madame LePrince De Beaumont, from Beauty and the Beast" Kenneth Rexroth, from One Hundred Poems from the Japanese II. In Search of Love Louise Bogan, from Journey Around My Room Preamble Plato, from the Symposium I Corinthians 13 (King James Version) I Corinthians 13:4-8a (New English Bible) Baruch Spinoza Emily Dickinson, from the The Complete Poems number 611 number 917 number 1155 William Shakespeare, Sonnets XVIII XXX XXXI CXVI CVI Herbert Spencer, from The Principles of Psychology Blaise Pascal, from "On the Passion of the Soul" Kenneth Rexroth, from One Hundred Poems from the Japanese John Keats, letters to Fanny Brawne Edward FitzGerald, from The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám Matthew Arnold, from "Dover Beach" Ralph Waldo Emerson from "Give All to Love" from the essay "Love" Emily Brontë, from Wuthering Heights Edgar Allan Poe, from "Annabel Lee" Marcel Proust, from The Past Recaptured Rainer Maria Rilke, from Letters to a Young Poet Ezra Pound from The Cantos "??PIA" James Baldwin Michael Ignatieff, from "Lodged in the Heart and Memory" Robert Creeley, "The Language" Wallace Stevens, from "Of Modern Poetry" III. The Processional Begins From a Moravian hymn Preamble Ruth 1:16-17 (King James Version) Isaiah 42:16 (New English Bible) Huda Shaarawi, from Harem Years: Memoirs of an Egyptian Feminist John Donne, from "Epithalamion Made at Lincoln's Inn" Robert Browning, from "Rabbi Ben Ezra" Juan Ramón Jiménez, "Oceans" Saint-Jean Perse, from "Drouth" Walt Whitman "Darest Thou Now O Soul" "Are You the New Person Drawn Toward Me?" from "Song of the Open Road" D. H. Lawrence "Change "Phoenix" "Bavarian Gentians" Gerard Manley Hopkins, "At the Wedding March" Anne Morrow Lindbergh, from Gift from the Sea Louise Glück, "Under Taurus" Antonio Machado, from "Rebirth" Peter Matthiessen, from the The Snow Leopard John Ashbery, from "The Skaters" Louise Bogan, "Henceforth, from the Mind" Antoine De Saint-Exupéry, from The Little Prince IV. Eternal Vows in Sacred Space Jalal Al-Din Rumi, Persion love poem Preamble Sir James George Frazer, from The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion Ernest Crawley, from The Mystic Rose: A Study of Primitive Marriage and of Primitive Thought in Its Bearing on Marriage From "Terumah," in the Zohar Marge Piercy, "The Chuppah" Hebrew "Seven Blessings" Philip and Hanna Goodman, "The Sabbath as Bride" From "Lekhah Dodi," Hebrew hymn to the Sabbath as a bride Psalms (King James Version) from Psalm 98 Psalm 100 from Psalm 104 Hebrew blessing for Sabbath end Judah Halevi, from a poem to the bridegroom Jeremiah 33:10-11 (King James Version) From "The Celebration and Blessing of a Marriage," in The Book of Common Prayer (Episcopal) Wedding prayer from the The Book of Common Prayer From the apocryphal Acts of Thomas Ephesians 4:25-32 (New English Bible) Matthew 19:4-6 (New English Bible) I John 4:7-12 (New English Bible) Colossians 3:12-17 (New English Bible) From the Greek Orthodox marriage service From the Coptic Orthodox marriage service From the Hindu marriage ritual of "Seven Steps" Hindu wedding prayer Buddhist marriage homily Jalal al-din Rumi, Persian love poem Robert Herrick, "To Julia" Geoffrey Chaucer Edmund Spenser, from "Epithalamion" Edgar Allen Poe, from "The Bells" Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnet XXII from Sonnets from the Portuguese Temple Gairdner, prayer before his marriage A. E. Housman, from "Epithalamium" Iris Murdoch, from The Book and the Brotherhood William Butler Yeats, from "A Prayer for My Daughter" Gertrude Stein, from "Patriarchal Poetry" V. The Miracle of the Body Devara Dasimayya, poem to Lord Siva (Ramanatha) Preamble Greek prayer to Priapus Sappho Emily Dickinson, from The Complete Poems number 249 Aztec love song The Song of Solomon (King James Version), set as a play From an ancient Sumerian sacred-wedding poem Vidyapati, Hindu love poem Hindu love poem "On Kissing," from The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana Michael De Montaigne, from The Autobiography William Blake from The Notebook from "Infant Joy" Amy Lowell, "A Decade" H.D., "Evadne" Dylan Thomas, "On the Marriage of a Virgin" E. E. Cummings poems from "Amores" "somewhere i have never travelled" Octavio Paz, from "Sunstone" Denise Levertov "The Ache of Marriage" "A Psalm Praising the Hair of Man's Body" "Song for a Dark Voice" Halina Po´swiatowska Kenneth Patchen, "There Is Nothing False in Thee" Anne Sexton, from "Us" Philip Larkin, "Wedding Wind" W. H. Auden, from "Lay Your Sleeping Head" Pablo Neruda Sharon Olds, "I Love It When" Wendell Berry, "The Mad Farmer's Love Song" Kenneth Rexroth, "The Old Song and Dance" VI. The Country of Marriage John Cheever, from "The Country Husband" Preamble Hecaton of Rhodes From the Wisdom of Ben Sira Jalal al-Din Rumi, Persian love poem Anonymous Sir Philip Sidney, "My True Love Hath My Heart" Sappho, poems Turkoman love song Afghan love song Li Tai Po, "Song on the River" Tu Fu, "On the River Tchou" Madame Kuan "Simple Gifts," a Shaker hymn Anonymous Anonymous John Donne from "The Anniversarie" "The Good-Morrow" Christine de Pisan, "In Praise of Marriage" George Herbert, "A Wreath" Anonymous Anonymous Anne Bradstreet, "To my Dear and loving Husband" Christopher Marlowe, "The Passionate Shepherd to his Love" Katherine Philips, from "To My Excellent Lucasia, on Our Friendship" Christina Rossetti, from "Monna Innominata: A Sonnet of Sonnets" Dante Gabriel Rossetti, from "The House of Life" Gustave Flaubert, from Madame Bovary Elizabeth Barrett Browning, from Sonnets from the Portuguese Sonnet XIV Sonnet XLIII George Eliot Robert Louis Stevenson, from Virginibus Puerisque William Butler Yeats, from "When You Are Old" Denis De Rougemont, from Love in the Western World Bertrand Russell, from Marriage and Morals Simone De Beauvoir, from The Second Sex Mark Van Doren "Marriage" "Slowly, Slowly Wisdom Gathers" W. H. Auden Betty Friedan, from The Feminine Mystique David Keller, from "Afternoon, in a Back Yard on Chestnut Street" Graham Greene, from The Heart of the Matter Ogden Nash, "Tin Wedding Whistle" John Berryman, from "Canto Amor" Sylvia Ashton-Warner, from Myself Renée Haenel Levine, letter to her daughter Louise Glück, "The Undertaking Theodore Roethke "I Knew a Woman" "Wish for a Young Wife" Louise Bogan "To Be Sung on the Water" from "After the Persian" Marianne Moore, from "Marriage" Archibald MacLeish, "Poem in Prose" Samuel Menashe "Whose Name I Know" "Many Named" "A-" Maxine Kumin, "Homecoming" Willaim Jay Smith, "Song for a Country Wedding" Phyllis Rose, from Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages Mary Stewart Hammond, "Slow Dancing in the Living Room: Thanksgiving Wendell Berry "Marriage" "A Homecoming" from "The Country of Marriage" VII. Morning in Eternal Space James Agee, from Let Us Now Praise Famous men Preamble Percy Bysshe Shelley, "Love's Philosophy" John Keats, from "Endymion" C. Day Lewis, from "Live You by Love" Denise Levertov, "The Depths" Louise Bogan, "Song for the Last Act" Hosea 2:14-15; 18-23 (New English Bible) Greek prayer to the god Ayion Hymn of the Great Plains Indians to the sun Tanganyikan fishermen's prayer African prayer to the new moon Chinese prayer of thanksgiving Japanese invocation to the spirits to protect the Palace Three Turko- Mongolian prayers Eskimo love song Navajo hymn to the Thunderbird Blackfoot prayer to the four directions Chinese prayer to the four directions Chinese blessings Henry David Thoreau from Walden from The Journal Cino Da Pistoia, "Sestina of the Lady Pietra degli Scrovigni" Thomas Hardy, "I Found Her Out There" Vincent Van Gogh, from a letter to his brother, Theo Chief Seattle of the Dwamish Tribe Grace Schulman, "Blessed Is the Light" Wendell Berry, "A Marriage, an Elegy" Irish blessing Stanley Kunitz, "Benediction" Amenophis IV (Ikhnaton), hymn to the sun Anne Dillard, from Holy the Firm African wedding benediction Edward Lear, from "The Owl and the Pussycat" Wintu tribe, "Dream Song" Suggested Readings for Various Members of the Wedding Party Index Credits