Marriage poems
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London
© William Blake
I wander thro' each charter'd street.
Near where the charter'd Thames does flow
A mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.
Sonnet Suggested By Homer, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe, Paul Vakzy, James Joyce, Et Al.
© Delmore Schwartz
Let me not, ever, to the marriage in Cana
Of Galilee admit the slightest sentiment
Of doubt about the astonishing and sustaining manna
Of chance and choice to throw a shadow's element
Modern Love XVII: At Dinner She Is Hostess
© George Meredith
At dinner, she is hostess, I am host.
Went the feast ever cheerfuller? She keeps
The Topic over intellectual deeps
In buoyancy afloat. They see no ghost.
An Epitaph upon Husband and Wife
© Richard Crashaw
TO these whom death again did wed
This grave 's the second marriage-bed.
For though the hand of Fate could force
'Twixt soul and body a divorce,
Ode On The Insurrection In Candia
© Algernon Charles Swinburne
Had I words of fire,
Whose words are weak as snow;
Were my heart a lyre
Whence all its love might flow
In the mighty modulations of desire,
In the notes wherewith man's passion worships woe;
The Complaint of Lisa
© Algernon Charles Swinburne
Song, speak for me who am dumb as are the dead;
From my sad bed of tears I send forth thee,
To fly all day from sun's birth to sun's death
Down the sun's way after the flying sun,
For love of her that gave thee wings and breath
Ere day be done, to seek the sunflower.
Tiresias
© Algernon Charles Swinburne
It is an hour before the hour of dawn.
Set in mine hand my staff and leave me here
Outside the hollow house that blind men fear,
More blind than I who live on life withdrawn
And feel on eyes that see not but foresee
The shadow of death which clothes Antigone.
Lepracaun or Fairy Shoemaker, The
© William Allingham
Little Cowboy, what have you heard,
Up on the lonely rath's green mound?
Only the plaintive yellow bird
Sighing in sultry fields around,
Tin Wedding Whistle
© Ogden Nash
Though you know it anyhow
Listen to me, darling, now,
Proving what I need not prove
How I know I love you, love.
The Cuckoo
© Ogden Nash
Cuckoos lead Bohemian lives,
They fail as husbands and as wives,
Therefore they cynically disparage
Everybody else's marriage.
Song To Be Sung by the Father of Infant Female Children
© Ogden Nash
My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky;
Contrariwise, my blood runs cold
When little boys go by.
I Do, I Will, I Have
© Ogden Nash
How wise I am to have instructed the butler
to instruct the first footman to instruct the second
footman to instruct the doorman to order my carriage;
I am about to volunteer a definition of marriage.
Little Fugue
© Sylvia Plath
The yew's black fingers wag:
Cold clouds go over.
So the deaf and dumb
Signal the blind, and are ignored.
A Word to Husbands
© Ogden Nash
To keep your marriage brimming
With love in the loving cup,
Whenever youre wrong, admit it;
Whenever youre right, shut up.
A Maypole
© Jonathan Swift
Deprived of root, and branch and rind,
Yet flowers I bear of every kind:
And such is my prolific power,
They bloom in less than half an hour;
Phillis, Or, the Progress of Love
© Jonathan Swift
Desponding Phillis was endu'd
With ev'ry Talent of a Prude,
She trembled when a Man drew near;
Salute her, and she turn'd her Ear:
Spenser's Ireland
© Marianne Clarke Moore
has not altered;--
a place as kind as it is green,
the greenest place I've never seen.
Every name is a tune.
Marriage
© Marianne Clarke Moore
This institution,
perhaps one should say enterprise
out of respect for which
one says one need not change one's mind
Young Munro the Sailor
© William Topaz McGonagall
'Twas on a sunny morning in the month of May,
I met a pretty damsel on the banks o' the Tay;
I said, My charming fair one, come tell to me I pray,
Why do you walk alone on the banks o' the Tay.
