Wedding Poem Inspiration
Ten Beautiful Love Poems
Are you looking for some inspiration for your ceremony? Poems with their wonderfully compressed language, are made for conveying heightened emotion at a ceremony and with the compactness of their form they hit the right note like the catchiest of music lyrics! A quality writer will always say in a few words, what you may struggle to say in a whole speech. I used the following beautiful lines at Fiona and Richard’s wedding from the prolific American author, John Steinbeck, who in a letter to his son, offers some advice on love:
“Love is an outpouring of everything good in you - of kindness and consideration and respect - not only the social respect of manners but the greater respect which is recognition of another person as unique and valuable. Glory in it for one thing and be very glad and grateful for it. The object of love is the best and most beautiful. Try to live up to it. If it is right, it happens -- The main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good ever gets away.”
Poem 1: Love in the Age of Google, Brian Bilston
is love an abstract noun
is love a verb
is love actually on Netflix
is love a word
love is a temporary madness
love is a hurricane
love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs
love is a losing game
can love last forever
can love break your heart
can love2shop vouchers be used online
can lovebites scar
love can build a bridge
love can set you free
love can hurt ed sheeran
love cannot heal me
does love cure depression
does love have an age
does lovejoy marry charlotte
does love always fade
love does not need an explanation
love does not exist
love doesn’t need a slogan
love is all there is
Brian Bilston says, “This poem was…was constructed entirely from auto-completed searches about love on Google.” I love the last line, the love we put into the world and receive is all that really matters in the end.
Poem 2: Love is, Adrian Henri
Love is feeling cold in the back of vans
Love is a fan club with only two fans
Love is walking holding paint-stained hands
Love is
Love is fish and chips on winter nights
Love is blankets full of strange delights
Love is when you don’t put out the light
Love is
Love is the presents in Christmas shops
Love is when you’re feeling Top of the Pops
Love is what happens when the music stops
Love is
Love is white panties lying all forlorn
Love is pink nightdresses still slightly warm
Love is when you have to leave at dawn
Love is
Love is you and love is me
Love is prison and love is free
Love’s what’s there when you are away from me
Love is…
I love this poem because the love is gritty and real, and yet full of contradictions. It needs to be given freely but then locks us all into acts of service and devotion in keeping up our best intentions!
Poem 3: Vow, Roger McGough
I vow to honour the commitment made this day
Which, unlike the flowers and the cake,
Will not wither or decay. A promise, not to obey
But to respond joyfully, to forgive and to console,
For once incomplete, we now are whole.
I vow to bear in mind that if, at times
Things seem to go from bad to worse,
They also go from bad to better.
The lost purse is handed in, the letter
Contains wonderful news. Trains run on time,
Hurricanes run out of breath, floods subside,
And toast lands jam-side up.
And with this ring, my final vow:
To recall, whatever the future may bring,
The love I feel for you now.
I love the glass half-full mentality of this poem, and how the poet surrenders to living out the love in each moment. It encapsulates also the challenge in marital life to grow together and separately, and to be both free and committed.
Poem 4: I wanna be yours, John Cooper Clarke
I wanna be your vacuum cleaner
Breathing in your dust
I wanna be your Ford Cortina
I will never rust
If you like your coffee hot
Let me be your coffee pot
You call the shots
I wanna be yours
I wanna be your raincoat
For those frequent rainy days
I wanna be your dreamboat
When you want to sail away
Let me be your teddy bear
Take me with you anywhere
I don’t care
I wanna be yoursI wanna be your electric meter
I will not run out
I wanna be the electric heater
You’ll get cold without
I wanna be your setting lotion
Hold your hair in deep devotion
Deep as the deep Atlantic ocean
That’s how deep is my devotion
I love this poem because it makes me laugh out loud at the absurdity of love and how it makes fools of us all. It is also a compassionate poem and speaks of a committed love.
Poem 5: Scaffolding, Seamus Heaney
Masons, when they start upon a building,
Are careful to test out the scaffolding;
Make sure that planks won’t slip at busy points,
Secure all ladders, tighten bolted joints.
And yet all this comes down when the job’s done
Showing off walls of sure and solid stone.
So if, my dear, there sometimes seem to be
Old bridges breaking between you and me
Never fear. We may let the scaffolds fall
Confident that we have built our wall.
I love the skilful quality in this poem, and how it frames love as something that requires our attention, dedication and time. The surety of the structure of the wall is a wonderful metaphor for building a solid foundation of love.
Poem 6: A Red, Red, Rose Robert Burns
O my Luve’s like a red, red rose,
That’s newly sprung in June;
O my Luve’s like the melodie
That’s sweetly play’d in tune.
As fair are thou, my bonie lass,
So deep in luve am I;
And I will luve thee still, my Dear,
Till a’ the seas gang dry.
Till a’ the seas gang dry, my Dear,
And the rocks melt wi’ the sun:
I will luve thee still, my dear,
While the sands o’ life shall run.
And fare thee weel, my only Luve!
And fare thee weel, a while!
And I will come again, my Luve,
Tho’ it were ten thousand mile!
My favourite flower the rose! I can stare at their beauty for hours, admiring the contrast between the stem and the thorns and the long-lasting and hardy beauty of the petals which even when they fall, manage to gracefully arrange themselves.
This poem is like a ballad, rousing and sure, that love will win the day, and outlast and blast away any old cynics!
Poem 7: Sonnet 29, William Shakespeare
When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate.
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
This was the first Shakespeare that I committed to heart, and it has stayed with me for the last 40 years! It speaks of the ‘sweet love,’ having your back, in the journey of life with its inevitable ups and downs. The love inspires and aspires the narrator to rise up, lift themself higher, and I believe unconditional love does just that.
Poem 8: Nuptials by John Agard
River, be their teacher,
that together they may turn
their future highs and lows
into one hopeful flow
Two opposite shores
feeding from a single source.
Mountain, be their milestone,
that hand in hand they rise above
familiarity's worn tracks
into horizons of their own
Two separate footpaths
dreaming of a common peak.
Birdsong, be their mantra,
that down the frail aisles of their days,
their twilight hearts twitter morning
and their dreams prove branch enough.
John Agard, based in Lewes, a wonderful poem that talks of familiarity, fragility, vulnerability, and strength in love. It also recognises the appreciation of the other as both independent and different, and yet the doubling of the power in combination together.
Poem 9: Touched by an Angel, Maya Angelou
We, unaccustomed to courage
exiles from delight
live coiled in shells of loneliness
until love leaves its high holy temple
and comes into our sight
to liberate us into life.
Love arrives
and in its train come ecstasies
old memories of pleasure
ancient histories of pain.
Yet if we are bold,
love strikes away the chains of fear
from our souls.
We are weaned from our timidity
In the flush of love’s light
we dare be brave
And suddenly we see
that love costs all we are
and will ever be.
Yet it is only love
which sets us free.
I love Angelou for her ability to be so diverse and human in her responses, and in many ways the spiritual journey of love reflects the growth of a person as they spiritually mature through life. This poem resonates for me on impetuous decisions made, only to see through time how those mistakes once learnt, helped me move further.
Poem 10: Gifts, James Thomson
Give a man a horse he can ride,
Give a man a boat he can sail;
And his rank and wealth, his strength and health,
On sea nor shore shall fail.
Give a man a pipe he can smoke,
Give a man a book he can read:
And his home is bright with a calm delight,
Though the room be poor indeed.
Give a man a girl he can love,
As I, O my love, love thee;
And his heart is great with the pulse of Fate,
At home, on land, on sea.
I love the expansiveness and gratitude for the love received this poem embraces. How love can leapfrog counties, countries, land, and sea!