Romantic Selections of WEDDING READINGS

Put your hand on my heart, say that you love me as
The woods upon the hill cleave to the hills’ contours.
I will uphold you, trunk and shoot and flowering sheaf,
And I will hold you, roots and fruit and fallen leaf.

My true love hath my heart, and I have his.
By just exchange, one for the other given.
I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss,
There never was a better bargain driven.
His heart in me keeps me and him in one.
My heart in him his thoughts and senses guides;
He loves my heart, for once it was his own,
I cherish his, because in me it bides.
His heart his wound received from my sight,
My heart was wounded with his wounded heart;
For as from me on him his hurt did light,
So still methought in me his hurt did smart.
Both equal hurt, in this change sought our bliss:
My true love hath my heart and I have his.

Such love I cannot analyse;
It does not rest in lips or eyes,
Neither in kisses nor caress.
Partly, I know, it’s gentleness

And understanding in one word
Or in brief letters. It’s preserved
By trust and by respect and awe.
These are the words I’m feeling for.

Two people, yes, two lasting friends.
The giving comes, the taking ends
There is no measure for such things.
For this all Nature slows and sings.

I said perhaps Patagonia, and pictured
a peninsula, wide enough
for a couple of ladderback chairs
to wobble on at high tide.

I thought of us in breathless cold, facing
a horizon round as a coin, looped
in a cat’s cradle strung by gulls
from sea to sun.

I planned to wait till the waves had bored
themselves to sleep, till the last clinging barnacles,
growing worried in the hush, had paddled off in tiny coracles,
till those restless birds, your actor’s hands,
had dropped slack into your lap,
until you’d turned, at last, to me.

When I spoke of Patagonia, I meant
skies all empty aching blue.
I meant years. I meant all of them with you.

I will make you brooches, and toys for your delight.
Of bird-song at morning and star-shine at night
I will make a palace fit for you and me
Of green days in forests and blue days at sea.

I will make my kitchen, and you shall keep your room,
Where white flows the river and bright blows the broom,
And you shall wash your linen and keep your body white
In rainfall at morning and dewfall at night.

And this shall be for music when no one else is near,
The fine song for singing, the rate song to hear!
That only I remember, that only you admire,
Of the broad road that stretches and the roadside fire.