10 Best Famous Marrying Poems

Here is a collection of the top 10 all-time best famous Marrying poems. This is a select list of the best famous Marrying poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Marrying poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of marrying poems.

• All Famous Marrying Poems

 I didn't make you know how glad I was 
To have you come and camp here on our land. 
I promised myself to get down some day 
And see the way you lived, but I don't know! 
With a houseful of hungry men to feed 
I guess you'd find.... It seems to me 
I can't express my feelings any more 
Than I can raise my voice or want to lift 
My hand (oh, I can lift it when I have to). 
Did ever you feel so? I hope you never. 
It's got so I don't even know for sure 
Whether I am glad, sorry, or anything. 
There's nothing but a voice-like left inside 
That seems to tell me how I ought to feel, 
And would feel if I wasn't all gone wrong. 
You take the lake. I look and look at it. 
I see it's a fair, pretty sheet of water. 
I stand and make myself repeat out loud 
The advantages it has, so long and narrow, 
Like a deep piece of some old running river 
Cut short off at both ends. It lies five miles 
Straight away through the mountain notch 
From the sink window where I wash the plates, 
And all our storms come up toward the house, 
Drawing the slow waves whiter and whiter and whiter. 
It took my mind off doughnuts and soda biscuit 
To step outdoors and take the water dazzle 
A sunny morning, or take the rising wind 
About my face and body and through my wrapper, 
When a storm threatened from the Dragon's Den, 
And a cold chill shivered across the lake. 
I see it's a fair, pretty sheet of water, 
Our Willoughby! How did you hear of it? 
I expect, though, everyone's heard of it. 
In a book about ferns? Listen to that! 
You let things more like feathers regulate 
Your going and coming. And you like it here? 
I can see how you might. But I don't know! 
It would be different if more people came, 
For then there would be business. As it is, 
The cottages Len built, sometimes we rent them, 
Sometimes we don't. We've a good piece of shore 
That ought to be worth something, and may yet. 
But I don't count on it as much as Len. 
He looks on the bright side of everything, 
Including me. He thinks I'll be all right 
With doctoring. But it's not medicine-- 
Lowe is the only doctor's dared to say so-- 
It's rest I want--there, I have said it out-- 
From cooking meals for hungry hired men 
And washing dishes after them--from doing 
Things over and over that just won't stay done. 
By good rights I ought not to have so much 
Put on me, but there seems no other way. 
Len says one steady pull more ought to do it. 
He says the best way out is always through. 
And I agree to that, or in so far 
As that I can see no way out but through-- 
Leastways for me--and then they'll be convinced. 
It's not that Len don't want the best for me. 
It was his plan our moving over in 
Beside the lake from where that day I showed you 
We used to live--ten miles from anywhere. 
We didn't change without some sacrifice, 
But Len went at it to make up the loss. 
His work's a man's, of course, from sun to sun, 
But he works when he works as hard as I do-- 
Though there's small profit in comparisons. 
(Women and men will make them all the same.) 
But work ain't all. Len undertakes too much. 
He's into everything in town. This year 
It's highways, and he's got too many men 
Around him to look after that make waste. 
They take advantage of him shamefully, 
And proud, too, of themselves for doing so. 
We have four here to board, great good-for-nothings, 
Sprawling about the kitchen with their talk 
While I fry their bacon. Much they care! 
No more put out in what they do or say 
Than if I wasn't in the room at all. 
Coming and going all the time, they are: 
I don't learn what their names are, let alone 
Their characters, or whether they are safe 
To have inside the house with doors unlocked. 
I'm not afraid of them, though, if they're not 
Afraid of me. There's two can play at that. 
I have my fancies: it runs in the family. 
My father's brother wasn't right. They kept him 
Locked up for years back there at the old farm. 
I've been away once--yes, I've been away. 
The State Asylum. I was prejudiced; 
I wouldn't have sent anyone of mine there; 
You know the old idea--the only asylum 
Was the poorhouse, and those who could afford, 
Rather than send their folks to such a place, 
Kept them at home; and it does seem more human. 
But it's not so: the place is the asylum. 
There they have every means proper to do with, 
And you aren't darkening other people's lives-- 
Worse than no good to them, and they no good 
To you in your condition; you can't know 
Affection or the want of it in that state. 
I've heard too much of the old-fashioned way. 
My father's brother, he went mad quite young. 
Some thought he had been bitten by a dog, 
Because his violence took on the form 
Of carrying his pillow in his teeth; 
But it's more likely he was crossed in love, 
Or so the story goes. It was some girl. 
Anyway all he talked about was love. 
They soon saw he would do someone a mischief 
If he wa'n't kept strict watch of, and it ended 
In father's building him a sort of cage, 
Or room within a room, of hickory poles, 
Like stanchions in the barn, from floor to ceiling,-- 
A narrow passage all the way around. 
Anything they put in for furniture 
He'd tear to pieces, even a bed to lie on. 
So they made the place comfortable with straw, 
Like a beast's stall, to ease their consciences. 
Of course they had to feed him without dishes. 
They tried to keep him clothed, but he paraded 
With his clothes on his arm--all of his clothes. 
Cruel--it sounds. I 'spose they did the best 
They knew. And just when he was at the height, 
Father and mother married, and mother came, 
A bride, to help take care of such a creature, 
And accommodate her young life to his. 
That was what marrying father meant to her. 
She had to lie and hear love things made dreadful 
By his shouts in the night. He'd shout and shout 
Until the strength was shouted out of him, 
And his voice died down slowly from exhaustion. 
He'd pull his bars apart like bow and bow-string, 
And let them go and make them twang until 
His hands had worn them smooth as any ox-bow. 
And then he'd crow as if he thought that child's play-- 
The only fun he had. I've heard them say, though, 
They found a way to put a stop to it. 
He was before my time--I never saw him; 
But the pen stayed exactly as it was 
There in the upper chamber in the ell, 
A sort of catch-all full of attic clutter. 
I often think of the smooth hickory bars. 
It got so I would say--you know, half fooling-- 
"It's time I took my turn upstairs in jail"-- 
Just as you will till it becomes a habit. 
No wonder I was glad to get away. 
Mind you, I waited till Len said the word. 
I didn't want the blame if things went wrong. 
I was glad though, no end, when we moved out, 
And I looked to be happy, and I was, 
As I said, for a while--but I don't know! 
Somehow the change wore out like a prescription. 
And there's more to it than just window-views 
And living by a lake. I'm past such help-- 
Unless Len took the notion, which he won't, 
And I won't ask him--it's not sure enough. 
I 'spose I've got to go the road I'm going: 
Other folks have to, and why shouldn't I? 
I almost think if I could do like you, 
Drop everything and live out on the ground-- 
But it might be, come night, I shouldn't like it, 
Or a long rain. I should soon get enough, 
And be glad of a good roof overhead. 
I've lain awake thinking of you, I'll warrant, 
More than you have yourself, some of these nights. 
The wonder was the tents weren't snatched away 
From over you as you lay in your beds. 
I haven't courage for a risk like that. 
Bless you, of course, you're keeping me from work, 
But the thing of it is, I need to be kept. 
There's work enough to do--there's always that; 
But behind's behind. The worst that you can do 
Is set me back a little more behind. 
I sha'n't catch up in this world, anyway.
I'd rather you'd not go unless you must.

 A New Version: 1980

 What is that little black thing I see there
 in the white?
 Walt Whitman


One

Out of poverty
To begin again: 

With the color of the bride
And that of blindness,

Touch what I can
Of the quick,

Speak and then wait,
As if this light

Will continue to linger
On the threshold.



All that is near,
I no longer give it a name.

Once a stone hard of hearing,
Once sharpened into a knife...

Now only a chill
Slipping through.

Enough glow to kneel by and ask
To be tied to its tail

When it goes marrying
Its cousins, the stars.



Is it a cloud?
If it's a cloud it will move on.

The true shape of this thought,
Migrant, waning.

Something seeks someone,
It bears him a gift

Of himself, a bit
Of snow to taste,

Glimpse of his own nakedness
By which to imagine the face.



On a late afternoon of snow
In a dim badly-aired grocery,

Where a door has just rung
With a short, shrill echo,

A little boy hands the old,
Hard-faced woman

Bending low over the counter,
A shiny nickel for a cupcake.

Now only that shine, now
Only that lull abides.



That your gaze
Be merciful,

Sister, bride
Of my first hopeless insomnia.

Kind nurse, show me
The place of salves.

Teach me the song
That makes a man rise

His glass at dusk
Until a star dances in it.



Who are you? Are you anybody
A moonrock would recognize?

There are words I need.
They are not near men.

I went searching.
Is this a deathmarch?

You bend me, bend me,
Oh toward what flower!

Little-known vowel,
Noose big for us all.



As strange as a shepherd
In the Arctic Circle.

Someone like Bo-peep.
All his sheep are white

And he can't get any sleep
Over lost sheep.

And he's got a flute
Which says Bo-peep,

Which says Poor boy,
Take care of your snow-sheep.

 to A.S. Hamilton



Then all's well and white,
And no more than white.

Illinois snowbound.
Indiana with one bare tree.

Michigan a storm-cloud.
Wisconsin empty of men.

There's a trap on the ice
Laid there centuries ago.

The bait is still fresh.
The metal glitters as the night descends.



Woe, woe, it sings from the bough.
Our Lady, etc...

You had me hoodwinked.
I see your brand new claws.

Praying, what do I betray
By desiring your purity?

There are old men and women,
All bandaged up, waiting

At the spiked, wrought-iron gate
Of the Great Eye and Ear Infirmery.



We haven't gone far...
Fear lives there too.

Five ears of my fingertips
Against the white page.

What do you hear?
We hear holy nothing

Blindfolding itself.
It touched you once, twice,

And tore like a stitch
Out of a new wound.



Two

What are you up to son of a gun?
I roast on my heart's dark side.

What do you use as a skewer sweetheart?
I use my own crooked backbone.

What do you salt yourself with loverboy?
I grind the words out of my spittle.

And how will you know when you're done chump?
When the half-moons on my fingernails set.

With what knife will you carve yourself smartass?
The one I hide in my tongue's black boot.



Well, you can't call me a wrestler
If my own dead weight has me pinned down.

Well, you can't call me a cook
If the pot's got me under its cover.

Well, you can't call me a king
if the flies hang their hats in my mouth.

Well, you can't call me smart,
When the rain's falling my cup's in the cupboard.

Nor can you call me a saint,
If I didn't err, there wouldn't be these smudges.



One has to manage as best as one can.
The poppies ate the sunset for supper.

One has to manage as best as one can.
Who stole my blue thread, the one

I tied around my pinky to remember?
One has to manage as best as one can.

The flea I was standing on, jumped.
One has to manage as best as one can.

I think my head went out for a walk.
One has to manage as best as one can.



This is breath, only breath,
Think it over midnight!

A fly weighs twice as much.
The struck match nods as it passes,

But when I shout,
Its true name sticks in my throat.

It has to be cold
So the breath turns white,

And then mother, who's fast enough
To write his life on it?



A song in prison
And for prisoners,

Made of what the condemned
Have hidden from the jailers.

White--let me step aside
So that the future may see you,

For when this sheet is blown away,
What else is left

But to set the food on the table,
To cut oneself a slice of bread?



In an unknown year
Of an algebraic century,

An obscure widow
Wrapped in the colors of widowhood,

Met a true-blue orphan
On an indeterminate street-corner.

She offered him
A tiny sugar cube

In the hand so wizened
All the lines said: fate.



Do you take this line
Stretching to infinity?

I take this chipped tooth
On which to cut it in half.

Do you take this circle
Bounded by a single curved line?

I take this breath
That it cannot capture.

Then you may kiss the spot
Where her bridal train last rustled.



Winter can come now,
The earth narrow to a ditch--

And the sky with its castles and stone lions
Above the empty plains.

The snow can fall...
What other perennials would you plant,

My prodigals, my explorers
Tossing and turning in the dark

For those remote, finely honed bees,
The December stars?



Had to get through me elsewhere.
Woe to bone

That stood in their way.
Woe to each morsel of flesh.

White ants
In a white anthill.

The rustle of their many feet
Scurrying--tiptoing too.

Gravedigger ants.
Village-idiot ants.



This is the last summoning.
Solitude--as in the beginning.

A zero burped by a bigger zero--
It's an awful licking I got.

And fear--that dead letter office.
And doubt--that Chinese shadow play.

Does anyone still say a prayer
Before going to bed?

White sleeplessness.
No one knows its weight.



What The White Had To Say

 For how could anything white be distinct
 from or divided from whiteness?
 Meister Eckhart


Because I am the bullet
That has gone through everyone already,
I thought of you long before you thought of me.
Each one of you still keeps a blood-stained handkerchief
In which to swaddle me, but it stays empty
And even the wind won't remain in it long.
Cleverly you've invented name after name for me,
Mixed the riddles, garbled the proverbs,
Shook you loaded dice in a tin cup,
But I do not answer back even to your curses,
For I am nearer to you than your breath.
One sun shines on us both through a crack in the roof.
A spoon brings me through the window at dawn.
A plate shows me off to the four walls
While with my tail I swing at the flies.
But there's no tail and the flies are your thoughts.
Steadily, patiently I life your arms.
I arrange them in the posture of someone drowning,
And yet the sea in which you are sinking,
And even this night above it, is myself.



Because I am the bullet
That has baptized each one of your senses,
Poems are made of our lusty wedding nights...
The joy of words as they are written.
The ear that got up at four in the morning
To hear the grass grow inside a word.
Still, the most beautiful riddle has no answer.
I am the emptiness that tucks you in like a
 mockingbird's nest,
The fingernail that scratched on your sleep's
 blackboard.
Take a letter: From cloud to onion.
Say: There was never any real choice.
One gaunt shadowy mother wiped our asses,
The same old orphanage taught us loneliness.
Street-organ full of blue notes,
I am the monkey dancing to your grinding--
And still you are afraid-and so,
It's as if we had not budged from the beginning.
Time slopes. We are falling head over heels
At the speed of night. That milk tooth
You left under the pillow, it's grinning.

 1970-1980



This currently out-of-print edition:
Copyright ©1980 Logbridge-Rhodes, Inc.

An earlier version of White was first published 
by New Rivers Press in 1972.

 Alas! Lord and Lady Dalhousie are dead, and buried at last,
Which causes many people to feel a little downcast;
And both lie side by side in one grave,
But I hope God in His goodness their souls will save. 

And may He protect their children that are left behind,
And may they always food and raiment find;
And from the paths of virtue may they ne'er be led,
And may they always find a house wherein to lay their head. 

Lord Dalhousie was a man worthy of all praise,
And to his memory I hope a monument the people will raise,
That will stand for many ages to came
To commemorate the good deeds he has done. 

He was beloved by men of high and low degree,
Especially in Forfarshire by his tenantry:
And by many of the inhabitants in and around Dundee,
Because he was affable in temper. and void of all vanity. 

He had great affection for his children, also his wife,
'Tis said he loved her as dear as his life;
And I trust they are now in heaven above,
Where all is joy, peace, and love. 

At the age of fourteen he resolved to go to sea,
So he entered the training ship Britannia belonging the navy,
And entered as a midshipman as he considered most fit
Then passed through the course of training with the greatest credit. 

In a short time he obtained the rank of lieutenant,
Then to her Majesty's ship Galatea he was sent;
Which was under the command of the Duke of Edinburgh,
And during his service there he felt but little sorrow. 

And from that he was promoted to be commander of the Britannia,
And was well liked by the men, for what he said was law;
And by him Prince Albert Victor and Prince George received a naval education.
Which met with the Prince of Wales' roost hearty approbation. 

'Twas in the year 1877 he married the Lady Ada Louisa Bennett,
And by marrying that noble lady he ne'er did regret;
And he was ever ready to give his service in any way,
Most willingly and cheerfully by night or by day. 

'Twas in the year of 1887, and on Thursday the 1st of December,
Which his relatives and friends will long remember
That were present at the funeral in Cockpen, churchyard,
Because they had for the noble Lord a great regard. 

About eleven o'clock the remains reached Dalhousie,
And were met by a body of the tenantry.
They conveyed them inside the building allseemingly woe begone
And among those that sent wreaths was Lord Claude Hamilton. 

Those that sent wreaths were but very few,
But one in particular was the Duke of Buccleuch;
Besides Dr. Herbert Spencer, and Countess Rosebery, and Lady Bennett,
Which no doubt were sent by them with heartfelt regret. 

Besides those that sent wreaths in addition were the Earl and Countess of Aberdeen,
Especially the Prince of Wales' was most lovely to be seen,
And the Earl of Dalkeith's wreath was very pretty too,
With a mixture of green and white flowers, beautiful to view. 

Amongst those present at the interment were Mr Marjoribanks, M.P.,
Also ex-Provost Ballingall from Bonnie Dundee;
Besides the Honourable W. G. Colville, representing the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh,
While in every one's face standing at the grave was depicted sorrow. 

The funeral service was conducted in the Church of Cockpen
By the Rev. J. Crabb, of St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, town of Brechin;
And as the two coffins were lowered into their last resting place,
Then the people retired with sad hearts at a quick pace.

 We quarreled that morning,
For he was sixty-five, and I was thirty,
And I was nervous and heavy with the child
Whose birth I dreaded.
I thought over the last letter written me
By that estranged young soul
Whose betrayal of me I had concealed
By marrying the old man.
Then I took morphine and sat down to read.
Across the blackness that came over my eyes
I see the flickering light of these words even now:
"And Jesus said unto him, Verily
I say unto thee, To-day thou shalt
Be with me in paradise."

 Dear Colette,
I want to write to you
about being a woman
for that is what you write to me.

I want to tell you how your face
enduring after thirty, forty, fifty. . .
hangs above my desk
like my own muse.

I want to tell you how your hands
reach out from your books
& seize my heart.

I want to tell you how your hair
electrifies my thoughts
like my own halo.

I want to tell you how your eyes
penetrate my fear
& make it melt.

I want to tell you
simply that I love you--
though you are "dead"
& I am still "alive."

Suicides & spinsters--
all our kind!

Even decorous Jane Austen
never marrying,
& Sappho leaping,
& Sylvia in the oven,
& Anna Wickham, Tsvetaeva, Sara Teasdale,
& pale Virginia floating like Ophelia,
& Emily alone, alone, alone. . . .

But you endure & marry,
go on writing,
lose a husband, gain a husband,
go on writing,
sing & tap dance
& you go on writing,
have a child & still
you go on writing,
love a woman, love a man
& go on writing.
You endure your writing
& your life.

Dear Colette,
I only want to thank you:

for your eyes ringed
with bluest paint like bruises,
for your hair gathering sparks
like brush fire,
for your hands which never willingly
let go,
for your years, your child, your lovers,
all your books. . . .

Dear Colette,
you hold me
to this life.

 Once, after long-drawn revel at The Mermaid,
He to the overbearing Boanerges
Jonson, uttered (if half of it were liquor,
 Blessed be the vintage!)

Saying how, at an alehouse under Cotswold,
He had made sure of his very Cleopatra,
Drunk with enormous, salvation-con temning
 Love for a tinker.

How, while he hid from Sir Thomas's keepers,
Crouched in a ditch and drenched by the midnight
Dews, he had listened to gipsy Juliet
 Rail at the dawning.

How at Bankside, a boy drowning kittens
Winced at the business; whereupon his sister--
Lady Macbeth aged seven--thrust 'em under,
 Sombrely scornful.

How on a Sabbath, hushed and compassionate--
She being known since her birth to the townsfolk--
Stratford dredged and delivered from Avon
 Dripping Ophelia

So, with a thin third finger marrying
Drop to wine-drop domed on the table,
Shakespeare opened his heart till the sunrise--
 Entered to hear him.

London wakened and he, imperturbable,
Passed from waking to hurry after shadows . . .
Busied upon shows of no earthly importance?
 Yes, but he knew it!

 Ere the seamer bore him Eastward, Sleary was engaged to marry
An attractive girl at Tunbridge, whom he called "my little Carrie."
Sleary's pay was very modest; Sleary was the other way.
Who can cook a two-plate dinner on eight poor rupees a day?

Long he pondered o'er the question in his scantly furnished quarters --
Then proposed to Minnie Boffkin, eldest of Judge Boffkin's daughters.
Certainly an impecunious Subaltern was not a catch,
But the Boffkins knew that Minnie mightn't make another match.

So they recognised the business and, to feed and clothe the bride,
Got him made a Something Something somewhere on the Bombay side.
Anyhow, the billet carried pay enough for him to marry --
As the artless Sleary put it: -- "Just the thing for me and Carrie."

Did he, therefore, jilt Miss Boffkin -- impulse of a baser mind?
No! He started epileptic fits of an appalling kind.
[Of his modus operandi only this much I could gather: --
"Pears's shaving sticks will give you little taste and lots of lather."]

Frequently in public places his affliction used to smite
Sleary with distressing vigour -- always in the Boffkins' sight.
Ere a week was over Minnie weepingly returned his ring,
Told him his "unhappy weakness" stopped all thought of marrying.

Sleary bore the information with a chastened holy joy, --
Epileptic fits don't matter in Political employ, --
Wired three short words to Carrie -- took his ticket, packed his kit --
Bade farewell to Minnie Boffkin in one last, long, lingering fit.

Four weeks later, Carrie Sleary read -- and laughed until she wept --
Mrs. Boffkin's warning letter on the "wretched epilept." . . .
Year by year, in pious patience, vengeful Mrs. Boffkin sits
Waiting for the Sleary babies to develop Sleary's fits.

 Marrying left yor maiden name disused. 
Its five light sounds no longer mean your face, 
Your voice, and all your variants of grace; 
For since you were so thankfully confused 
By law with someone else, you cannot be 
Semantically the same as that young beauty: 
It was of her that these two words were used. 

Now it's a phrase applicable to no one, 
Lying just where you left it, scattered through 
Old lists, old programmes, a school prize or two, 
Packets of letters tied with tartan ribbon - 
Then is it secentless, weightless, strengthless wholly 
Untruthful? Try whispering it slowly. 
No, it means you. Or, since your past and gone, 

It means what we feel now about you then: 
How beautiful you were, and near, and young, 
So vivid, you might still be there among 
Those first few days, unfingermarked again. 
So your old name shelters our faithfulness, 
Instead of losing shape and meaning less 
With your depreciating luggage laiden.

How can I think, or edge my thoughts to action,

When the miserly press of each day's need

Aches to a narrowness of spilled distraction

My soul appalled at the world's work's time-greed?

How can I pause my thoughts upon the task

My soul was born to think that it must do

When every moment has a thought to ask

To fit the immediate craving of its cue?

The coin I'd heap for marrying my Muse

And build our home i'th' greater Time-to-be

Becomes dissolved by needs of each day's use

And I feel beggared of infinity,

Like a true-Christian sinner, each day flesh-driven

By his own act to forfeit his wished heaven.

 Behold I bring you tidings of great joy-”
especially now that the snow & gale are still-”
for Henry is delivered.
Not only is he delivered from the gale
but he has a little one. He's out of jail
also. It is a boy.

Henry's pleasure in this unusual event
reminds me of the extra told at Hollywood & Vine
that TV cameras
were focussed on him personally then & there
and 'Just a few words . . . Is it what you meant?
Was there a genuine sign?'

Couvade was always Henry's favourite custom,
better than the bride biting off the penises, pal,
remember? All the brothers
marrying her in turn & dying mutilated
until the youngest put in instead a crowbar, pal,
and pulled out not only her teeth but also his brothers' dongs & no
 doubt others'.