Inspiration for wedding vows

By Monica Lorraine, 23/02/11 Before the wedding

Having trouble writing your vows? These poems should help inspire you to write genuine, straight-from-the-heart vows. As Plato said, "At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet".

Here I give you works of love from only the best: Shelly, Keats, Browning and Cummings.

Percy Shelly - Love's Philosophy

The fountains mingle with the river,

And the rivers with the ocean;

The winds of heaven mix forever

With a sweet emotion;

Nothing in the world is single;

All things by a law divine

In another's being mingle

Why not I with thine?

See, the mountains kiss high heaven,

And the waves clasp one another;

No sister flower could be forgiven

If it disdained its brother;

And the sunlight clasps the earth,

And the moonbeams kiss the sea;

What are all these kissings worth,

If thou kiss not me?

John Keats - Bright Star

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art

Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night

And watching, with eternal lids apart,

Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,

The moving waters at their priestlike task

Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,

Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask

Of snow upon the mountains and the moors

No yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,

Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,

To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,

Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,

Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,

And so live ever- or else swoon to death.

Elizabeth Browning - How Do I Love Thee

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 a 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.

Edward Cummings - I Carry Your Heart With Me

I carry your heart with me (I carry it in my heart)

I am never without it (anywhere I go you go, my dear;

And whatever is done by only me is your doing, my darling)

I fear no fate (For you are my fate, my sweet)

I want no world (For beautiful you are my world, my true)

And it's you are whatever a moon has always meant

And whatever a sun will always sing is you.

Here is the deepest secret nobody knows.

(Here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

And the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

And this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

I carry your heart (I carry it in my heart)

I will finish with my favourite quote, by Elbert Hubbard.

Love grows by giving. The love we give away is the only love we keep. The only way to retain love is to give it away.

Inspiration for wedding vows

Other articles that may be of interest to you