Love poem for a wedding: recommendations?

[operalover21]

I've been asked by my best friend to read a love poem at his wedding to his longtime partner in June. I was thinking of all the conventional choices and none seem appropriate or they are at least too well known.

 

Can someone make a recommendation or two of a poem -- that would be understood by all -- short in length, but profound in feeling -- that would make a nice choice.

 

They are 29 and 35 respectively, one American, one French, very sophisticated New Yorkers if that helps.

 

Thanks in advance!

[Lookin]

Perhaps a little something original?

 

A wedding with no bridal dress!

I could not ask for more.

I wish you both the very best,

Et, oui, toujours l'amour!

 

http://images.zaazu.com/img/french-french-paris-france-smiley-emoticon-000584-large.gif

[Guest Spanky]

Hello Gentlemen. Been lurking for a while and I decided it was time to jump into the fun...I've got two suggestions if I can be so presumptuous. First is from ee cummings: I carry your heart with me (I carry it in my heart). It's one of his more well-known (and more comprehensible) poems. But it's read at a lot of weddings and sophisticated new york hipsters may want something more unique.

 

The second is longer, not a poem, but I read it at the wedding of my best friends from high school. The Velveteen Rabbit was her favorite book growing up and she picked out the following passage (sorry for the length of this)

 

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day..."Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

 

"Real isn't how you are made" said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with but REALLY loves you, then you become REAL."

 

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

 

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are real you don't mind being hurt."

 

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked "or bit by bit?"

 

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are real, most of your hair has been rubbed off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints, and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

 

Now I'll be the first to admit that talking about skin horses and "things that buzz inside you with a stick-out handle" may raise some eyebrows at a gay wedding, but still, I think it's a great passage.

 

I copied this from google books but it does not have the whole book online.

 

Anyway, whatever you choose have a blast.

[+ sf westcoaster]

On more than one occasion I have used song lyrics - one that seems to work is from Guys and Dolls "More than this I can not wsh you" -- you can change a word or two to make it fit the couple.

[MiamiLooker]

Is either one from Nantucket?

[Guest greatness]

hmm

 

I think whatever that comes out of your heart will be good enough. It doesn't have to be fancy. Your best friend asked you to read a poem because he trusts you and I believe he will accept your poem that comes out of your heart. I would try to include the wedding site and people at the

wedding. If the bride likes a specific flower then you can include that in your

poem, it will touch her heart. You must be a very special person to your friend. What an honor to read a poem at the wedding! Please post your poem if you want after the wedding. You must be so special to your friend. What a lucky guy are you!

 

I've been asked by my best friend to read a love poem at his wedding to his longtime partner in June. I was thinking of all the conventional choices and none seem appropriate or they are at least too well known.

 

Can someone make a recommendation or two of a poem -- that would be understood by all -- short in length, but profound in feeling -- that would make a nice choice.

 

They are 29 and 35 respectively, one American, one French, very sophisticated New Yorkers if that helps.

 

Thanks in advance!

[+ Charlie]

The poem that immediately comes to my mind, for a sophisticated NY gay couple, is the opening verse of a work by W.H. Auden, which was addressed to his lover, Chester Kallman.

 

Lay your sleeping head, my love,

Human on my faithless arm;

Time and fevers burn away

Individual beauty from

Thoughtful children, and the grave

Proves the child ephemeral:

But in my arms till break of day

Let the living creature lie,

Mortal, guilty, but to me

The entirely beautiful.

 

The whole poem is too long and complicated for a recitation at a wedding.

[MsGuy]

"Song of the Open Road" by Walt Whitman

Allons! the road is before us!

It is safe--I have tried it--my own feet have tried it well--be not detain'd!

Let the paper remain on the desk unwritten, and the book on the

shelf unopen'd!

Let the tools remain in the workshop! let the money remain unearn'd!

Let the school stand! mind not the cry of the teacher!

Let the preacher preach in his pulpit! let the lawyer plead in the

court, and the judge expound the law.

 

Camerado, I give you my hand!

I give you my love more precious than money,

I give you myself before preaching or law;

Will you give me yourself? will you come travel with me?

Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?

----

Who better than Whitman for a gay wedding?

[Guest Wetnwildbear]

But you must wear sequins. . .

 

I've been asked by my best friend to read a love poem at his wedding to his longtime partner in June. I was thinking of all the conventional choices and none seem appropriate or they are at least too well known.

 

Can someone make a recommendation or two of a poem -- that would be understood by all -- short in length, but profound in feeling -- that would make a nice choice.

 

They are 29 and 35 respectively, one American, one French, very sophisticated New Yorkers if that helps.

 

Thanks in advance!

 

Aint no mountain high enough

Aint no river wide enough

Aint no valley low enough

To keep me from you!

 

<Diana Ross and the Supremes>

[Rick Munroe]

I've been asked by my best friend to read a love poem at his wedding to his longtime partner in June.

 

Where are they getting married, since NY has no marriage equality?

[+ purplekow]

The poem that immediately comes to my mind, for a sophisticated NY gay couple, is the opening verse of a work by W.H. Auden, which was addressed to his lover, Chester Kallman.

 

Lay your sleeping head, my love,

Human on my faithless arm;

Time and fevers burn away

Individual beauty from

Thoughtful children, and the grave

Proves the child ephemeral:

But in my arms till break of day

Let the living creature lie,

Mortal, guilty, but to me

The entirely beautiful.

 

The whole poem is too long and complicated for a recitation at a wedding.

 

Infidelity pestilence, death and the transient nature of love, sounds like a wedding to me. Just how sophisticated is this couple?

[+ nycman]

Is either one from Nantucket?

 

Ok here I started to giggle....

 

Infidelity pestilence, death and the transient nature of love, sounds like a wedding to me. Just how sophisticated is this couple?

 

...now I'm wetting my pants...lol

 

Damn you fuckers are funny!

[Guest TBinCHI]

There is always the writing of Kahlil Gibran in The Prophet. There is a beautiful writing about marriage.

[operalover21]

On more than one occasion I have used song lyrics - one that seems to work is from Guys and Dolls "More than this I can not wsh you" -- you can change a word or two to make it fit the couple.

 

That's a really interesting choice and since one of the two was involved in musical theater as a kid it might really be appreciated. Thanks for the suggestion.

[operalover21]

Where are they getting married, since NY has no marriage equality?

 

Not sure what the relevance of that is to this thread whatsoever unless it is to inject some mean-spiritedness into what was a simple request for some lovely poetry for me to read at a wedding?

 

Thanks to those of you who were serious in your responses.

[gp0560]

Too short, but ...

 

This is way too short for what you need, but, as an addition to a poem about current love, it brings up the assurance of the future of their love:

 

"Grow old along with me, the best is yet to be, the last of life for which the first was made."

 

--Robert Browning.

 

There are a few subsequent words that could be used, but they might be too religious (specifically, too Christian) for your friends.

[justaguy]

I don't know how sappy you want to get, but this is "The Rose Growing Into the House" by Gibbons Ruark:

 

Lately I think of my love for you and the rose

Growing into the house, springing up from under the eaves

And spiraling upward to pierce the chink in the corner

Where the walls come together to keep out everything,

Weather, mongrel dogs, and the rose coming on like a thief.

But I mean to let it grow forever if it wants to,

For lately I think of my love for you and the rose invading the

darkness,

And I long never to learn the difference.

[+ Charlie]

Don't forget the poetry of Browning's wife Elizabeth Barrett:

 

"How do I love thee? Let me count the ways...""

[gp0560]

I don't know how sappy you want to get, but this is "The Rose Growing Into the House" by Gibbons Ruark.

 

Never read this one before, but I agree it's worth consideration. Sappy? Oh, maybe, but for this occasion ... ?

[Rick Munroe]

Not sure what the relevance of that is to this thread whatsoever unless it is to inject some mean-spiritedness into what was a simple request for some lovely poetry for me to read at a wedding?

 

LOL Yes, it was very irrelevant to ask a legitimate question about same-sex marriage in a thread about...same-sex marriage.

[operalover21]

LOL Yes, it was very irrelevant to ask a legitimate question about same-sex marriage in a thread about...same-sex marriage.

 

I didn't really think you would get it.