Famous Marriage Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Marriage poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous marriage poems. These examples illustrate what a famous marriage poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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Church Going

...s of ground
Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt
So long and equably what since is found
Only in separation--marriage and birth 
And death and thoughts of these--for which was built
This special shell? For though I've no idea
What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth 
It pleases me to stand in silence here;

A serious house on serious earth it is 
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet 
Are recognisd and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be ...Read more of this...
by Larkin, Philip


Endymion: Book IV

...n'd of his house.
Now was he slumbering towards heaven's gate,
That he might at the threshold one hour wait
To hear the marriage melodies, and then
Sink downward to his dusky cave again.
His litter of smooth semilucent mist,
Diversely ting'd with rose and amethyst,
Puzzled those eyes that for the centre sought;
And scarcely for one moment could be caught
His sluggish form reposing motionless.
Those two on winged steeds, with all the stress
Of vision search'd for him, as one w...Read more of this...
by Keats, John

Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie

...inen and woollen stuffs, by the hand of Evangeline woven.
This was the precious dower she would bring to her husband in marriage,
Better than flocks and herds, being proofs of her skill as a housewife.
Soon she extinguished her lamp, for the mellow and radiant moonlight
Streamed through the windows, and lighted the room, till the heart of the maiden
Swelled and obeyed its power, like the tremulous tides of the ocean.
Ah! she was fair, exceeding fair to behold, as she stood wi...Read more of this...
by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

Let It Enfold You

...,i had no male
freinds,

I changed jobs and
cities,I hated holidays,
babies,history,
newspapers, museums,
grandmothers,
marriage, movies,
spiders, garbagemen,
english accents,spain,
france,italy,walnuts and
the color 
orange.
algebra angred me,
opera sickened me,
charlie chaplin was a
fake
and flowers were for
pansies.

peace an happiness to me
were signs of
inferiority,
tenants of the weak
an
addled
mind.

but as I went on with
my alley fights,
my suicidal years,
my passage ...Read more of this...
by Bukowski, Charles

Maple

...ret if we could now:
We are not looking for it any more."

 Thus had a name with meaning, given in death,
Made a girl's marriage, and ruled in her life.
No matter that the meaning was not clear.
A name with meaning could bring up a child,
Taking the child out of the parents' hands.
Better a meaningless name, I should say,
As leaving more to nature and happy chance.
Name children some names and see what you do....Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert


Marriage

...g of the earth
is but deformity -- a fire
"as high as deep as bright as broad
as long as life itself,"
he stumbles over marriage,
"a very trivial object indeed"
to have destroyed the attitude
in which he stood --
the ease of the philosopher
unfathered by a woman.
Unhelpful Hymen!
"a kind of overgrown cupid"
reduced to insignificance
by the mechanical advertising
parading as involuntary comment,
by that experiment of Adam's
with ways out but no way in --
the ritual of marriage...Read more of this...
by Moore, Marianne

New Hampshire

...n it that was worked for gold;
But not gold in commercial quantities,
Just enough gold to make the engagement rings
And marriage rings of those who owned the farm.
What gold more innocent could one have asked for?
One of my children ranging after rocks
Lately brought home from Andover or Canaan
A specimen of beryl with a trace
Of radium. I know with radium
The trace would have to be the merest trace 
To be below the threshold of commercial;
But trust New Hampshire not to have...Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert

Paradise Lost: Book 05

...nd needed hands to check 
Fruitless embraces: or they led the vine 
To wed her elm; she, spoused, about him twines 
Her marriageable arms, and with him brings 
Her dower, the adopted clusters, to adorn 
His barren leaves. Them thus employed beheld 
With pity Heaven's high King, and to him called 
Raphael, the sociable Spirit, that deigned 
To travel with Tobias, and secured 
His marriage with the seventimes-wedded maid. 
Raphael, said he, thou hearest what stir on Earth 
Sata...Read more of this...
by Milton, John

Passage to India

...n’d, connected by net-work, 
The people to become brothers and sisters, 
The races, neighbors, to marry and be given in marriage, 
The oceans to be cross’d, the distant brought near,
The lands to be welded together. 

(A worship new, I sing; 
You captains, voyagers, explorers, yours! 
You engineers! you architects, machinists, your! 
You, not for trade or transportation only,
But in God’s name, and for thy sake, O soul.) 

4
Passage to India! 
Lo, soul, for thee, of tableaus ...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

Ravenna

...d,
The rose that burgeons on the climbing briar,
The crocus-bed, (that seems a moon of fire
Round-girdled with a purple marriage-ring);
And all the flowers of our English Spring,
Fond snowdrops, and the bright-starred daffodil.
Up starts the lark beside the murmuring mill,
And breaks the gossamer-threads of early dew;
And down the river, like a flame of blue,
Keen as an arrow flies the water-king,
While the brown linnets in the greenwood sing.
A year ago! - it seems a little ...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar

Samson Agonistes

...ter of an Infidel: they knew not
That what I motion'd was of God; I knew
From intimate impulse, and therefore urg'd
The Marriage on; that by occasion hence
I might begin Israel's Deliverance,
The work to which I was divinely call'd;
She proving false, the next I took to Wife
(O that I never had! fond wish too late)
Was in the Vale of Sorec, Dalila,
That specious Monster, my accomplisht snare. 
I thought it lawful from my former act,
And the same end; still watching to oppress...Read more of this...
by Milton, John

Song of Myself

...y boots, and went and had a good time:
(You should have been with us that day round the chowder-kettle.) 

I saw the marriage of the trapper in the open air in the far west—the bride
 was a red girl; 
Her father and his friends sat near, cross-legged and dumbly smoking—they
 had moccasins to their feet, and large thick blankets hanging from their
 shoulders; 
On a bank lounged the trapper—he was drest mostly in skins—his
 luxuriant beard and curls protected his neck—...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

Sonnet 116: Let me not to the marriage of true minds

...Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and ch...Read more of this...
by Shakespeare, William

The Break Away

...our house forever.

We were
blessed by the House-Die
by the altar of the color T.V.
and somehow managed to make a tiny marriage,
a tiny marriage
called belief,
as in the child's belief in the tooth fairy,
so close to absolute,
so daft within a year or two.
The daisies have come
for the last time.
And I who have,
each year of my life,
spoken to the tooth fairy,
believing in her,
even when I was her,
am helpless to stop your daisies from dying,
although your voice cries into t...Read more of this...
by Sexton, Anne

The Female Vagrant

...from the last hill-top, my sire surveyed,  Peering above the trees, the steeple tower  That on his marriage-day sweet music made?  Till then he hoped his bones might there be laid,  Close by my mother in their native bowers:  Bidding me trust in God, he stood and prayed,—  I could not pray:—through tears that fell in showers,  Glimmer'd our dear-loved home, alas! no longer ours!   There wa...Read more of this...
by Wordsworth, William

The Flea

...tay, three lives in one flea spare,
Where we almost, yea more than married are.
This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed and marriage temple is;
Though parents grudge, and you, we are met,
And cloistered in these living walls of jet.
  Though use make you apt to kill me,
  Let not to that, self-murder added be,
  And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.

Curel and sudden, hast thou since
Purpled thy nail, in blood of innocence?
Wherein could this flea ...Read more of this...
by Donne, John

The Man of Laws Tale

...s to the
death of Blanche, wife of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, the
poet's patron, and afterwards his connexion by marriage.

5. The Saintes Legend of Cupid: Now called "The Legend of
Good Women". The names of eight ladies mentioned here are
not in the "Legend" as it has come down to us; while those of
two ladies in the "legend" -- Cleopatra and Philomela -- are her
omitted.

6. Not the Muses, who had their surname from the place near
Mount Olympus where the Thracians fi...Read more of this...
by Chaucer, Geoffrey

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

...The Argument.


Rintrah roars & shakes his fires in the burdend air;
Hungry clouds swag on the deep

Once meek, and in a perilous path,
The just man kept his course along 
The vale of death.
Roses are planted where thorns grow.
And on the barren heath
Sing the honey bees.

Then the perilous path was planted:
And a river, and a spring
On every cliff and tom...Read more of this...
by Blake, William

The Wife of Baths Tale

...ence, though none authority* *authoritative texts
Were in this world, is right enough for me
To speak of woe that is in marriage:
For, lordings, since I twelve year was of age,
(Thanked be God that *is etern on live),* *lives eternally*
Husbands at the church door have I had five,2
For I so often have y-wedded be,
And all were worthy men in their degree.
But me was told, not longe time gone is
That sithen* Christe went never but ones *since
To wedding, in the Cane* of Galilee...Read more of this...
by Chaucer, Geoffrey

The Witch Of Atlas

...e no ill;
Of many thousand schemes which lovers find,
The Witch found one,--and so they took their fill
Of happiness in marriage warm and kind.
Friends who, by practice of some envious skill,
Were torn apart (a wide wound, mind from mind)
She did unite again with visions clear
Of deep affection and of truth sincere.

These were the pranks she played among the cities
Of mortal men. And what she did to Sprites
And Gods, entangling them in her sweet ditties,
To do her will, and ...Read more of this...
by Shelley, Percy Bysshe

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