Dear beloved,
I bring you glad tidings
To some a hard pill to swallow
Others, its fills the hollow.
For I've seen it all
Our vows are unbreakable
We fall, but we always stand tall
The bond we share is unshakable.
Joy in marriage, blood to life
Is not something expected in life
But a mutual strive between partners
Takes responsibility and harmony.
It all builds on love
And the essence of love is confidence
Confidence in your partner's judgement
Confidence in their honesty and fidelity.
Embrace this, as we do, and find peace
For happiness in marriage does not come in ease
But its benefits are boundless
Therefore its quest endless.
Two hearts beat as one
Red hearts merged as one
Two hearts knotted as one
Loving hearts grew strong, not wan
Merging of hearts, solemnized as one
Cruising darts, piloted by the Almighty One
Scents of Chrysanthemum, crowned in leis
Glade of momentum, sweeping for deis
As you renew your vows
There are no buts or hows
Cling to each other without noise
Sing for each other with poise
As years go by, love will grow more
Teach yourselves to be meek
With trusting reliance to seek
Love will never appear short or small
In God's name nothing will fall
when both of you stand tall
Let us bath in the spirit;
Let us splash within ourselves;
Flowing waters flow;
Drenching all sons and daughters
Naked we came into the world
While at death we just rest
And in the awakening we’re wearing purple and golden robes
2/3/22
Written words by James Edward Lee Sr. 2022©
Underneath her heart is the Fathers breath
Under her mind feelings of loving bliss
And under her apparel those the clothes she adorns
Ravishing silks, perfumed and her tapered body
Scented and oiled for her husband
A view of nakedness amidst this cloaked skins of cloth
~
He is arouse high off her innermost spirit
Parts of his eyes explore the beauty she hides
on the following morning they exchange hearts
Bathing in each other’s arms loving as such in the Bridal Chamber
Now legally wed they surcom to their bed
was natural ravishing bodily touchingly
2/3/22
Written words by James Edward Lee Sr. 2022©
and yes we are the ones who assume that good will prevail
because we profess good practices in life
such is our commiseration and pity
acquiescence and bliss
pretending to forget the success of iniquity and impudence
of those unjust who fight with forbidden weapons
and conquer us every most holy day
making us the eternal losers
proud of our spilled ideal
our beliefs mocked
and the infinitely defiled pride.
came with fog the day in that cold morning
the dogs were silent and what else
and now again forever
we dare not even be what we are or suppose
our kidnapped desire no longer burns
for it's just a tired desire
that sad and without glory will
of cowardly living.
Hello friends and future friends. I hope my
choice of my poetic form is totally absurd.
I don't even know what an Epithalamium is;
so if you are looking for this form, I'm sorry
to disappoint. I haven't posted in awhile, and
perhaps it may be a bit instead of me just
blurting out my mind through my mouth.
I just got vack from a recent trip to
Cartagena, Colombia and have been
writing a collection.
I am going to title it "poems from a broard";
the broad in this case is mi Musa Melissa.
(Maureen, Melissa said you are beautiful
and kept saying "weeeeee" [your last comment]
Presently I am trying to organize poems that
I wrote on my trip as well as a lot written in the
airport waiting to reluctantly leave Cartagena.
Please por favor keep in mind that I would like
to present this as if a book; but know only 10
poems for a period of 24 hours.; so hang in
there with me and I will start to share.
Thanks to all the folks I have met here,
and the folks I hope to meet. Blessings!!!
She was lovelier than any bride the church had ever blessed.
A beauty in love with a pure heart.
Her groom was handsome, standing tall and delighted.
The whole church lit up when they saw her walking down the aisle.
Heads swiveled watching him watch his bride.
It was a fantastic match; they had grown up together in the church.
There was no his side and her side, only their side.
The empaths heard harp music as they met at the altar.
Recognizing a heavenly union.
Most of us had never witnessed such a pairing before
or since.
Dong!!!
Dong!!
Dong!
The sounds of the chapel bells
Ringing to the rhythm of Christian and other spectators wails;
She comes my love, flowing walking down the aisle;
Formal dress flowing in the midst of the evening winds
Amidst this outside wedding…
Sweet suddenly, comes to greet me
I graze into her eyes so lovingly…
And your spirit, caress me
Your beauty invests me
And I’m richer for it;
And I’m better in all this;
My love I shall, gather;
Here and eternity I’d rather…
At the song, as the bells rings toll their calls;
You walk down this flowered path…
Through all those spectators, they “gasp”
Dong!!!
Dong!!
Dong! Alas my love before I say I do, allow me to woo you with “song”
08/19/19
Written by James Edward Lee Sr. 2019©
Looming bells;
Celebrating marriage and love
Channelling flowers;
Overlooking for the bride;
From a distant you can smell her;
Aromatic like oracle flowers;
She walks softly and quietly;
Celebrating marriage and love
Flowers surround and hang surrounds them;
Bride to be and her groom;
Standing in a row the bride-man/groom alongside him his best man;
Flowers fold outside wedding blossoms claps;
Father of the bride sheds tears,
Celebrating marriage and love
He stumbles yet says something blew in his eyes;
As the organist plays here comes the bride...
8/13/19
written by James Edward Lee Sr.©2019
O' my lady whose was on her way to her marriage chamber,
both Father and father embrace her;
A smile as long as God's horizon,
as you thank Him for your bridegroom;
Hallelujah;
8/10/19
Written by James Edward Lee Sr.2019©
At the altar together they stand;
An open venue love is present;
As a guest we honour;
Ahh! we celebrate shower you in flowers;
We see that you love each other;
Mr Man God has loaned you His daughter;
We share your love we honour your choice;
To be man and wife;
Oh, how a blessing to wed a wife to share their life;
God sanctions this so nice as we celebrate this wedding bliss;
A wedding nothing more beautiful than this;
8/10/19
Written by James Edward Lee Sr.2019©
From forth coming anthology “Old Gospel Songs Sung"
A poem written in honour of the bride and groom.
EPITHALAMIUM
O' Father we come to saturate
We come to honour to celebrate
EPITHALAMIUM
lo' epithalamium
Hallehullia, wedding angel
These two bride and groom
Holy nuptials these two shall make
1st we honour you, God
For the creation of this your child, beautiful woman
And this adorning man of your heart
A breath of love these two shares
We shall honour
wedding angel
lo' epithalamium, Hallehullia
A marriage vow, a marriage bed
We all stand here to celebrate
EPITHALAMIUM
O' Father we come to saturate
We come to honour to celebrate
EPITHALAMIUM
lo' epithalamium
These two in holy matrimony
8/10/19
written by James Edward Lee Sr.
Your heart is in my possession,
to show the heaven that my love
is so dear,even if the cloud is not clear,
I stand in this summer light
to let my true complexion exhibits
itself with rays of emotions_
that is true and eternal,
As the untrimmed branches of the
coconut tree dances ~dances to
this rhythm of romance and passion,
Oh!my bride, my gold I cherish you with pride ,
Under this shade of hope and love buds,
I profess my love in the presence of men,
As I lease my strength like a brave lion,
This temperate region shall bear witness ~this day.
8-3-2019
Contest:A summer's Day Redo sponsored by Michelle Faulkner.
WORDS DECRIBED THIS
THEY DID NOTHING TO
DETAIL, WHAT THE EYE
REALLY SEE'S
I POSTURED MYSELF TO REDEFINE
EXPERIENCE
I POSTURED MYSELF TO DESCRIBE
WHAT WAS BEFORE ME
IT MAKES EVERYTHING BEFORE IT'S CREATION
INFERIOR
IT'S ARROWS POINT TO ALL DIRECTION
AND THIS ENCOURAGES ALL TO WANT
WISH AND DISCOVER
FOR THE SAKE OF CREATION
IT FILLS CAVITY'S
AND TRENCHES DRY SPACES
IT STANDS STILL
AND GOES PLACES
IT IS TIMELESS
AND EVER GOING
RELENTLESS
AND AWE SHOWING
IT'S AMPLIFIED AND WHISPERED
DIFFERENT AND STRANGE
IT'S RIGHT IN WRONG PLACES
IT WHY THINGS MAKE A CHANGE
IT'S HOW WE WILL DEAL WITH TOMORROW
IT WAS THOUGHT OF YESTERDAY
FROM NOW ON IT SHALL BE SPOKE OF
AS IT WAS HERE ALWAYS
Introduction
The deepest pleasure of an epithalamium often lies in its negotiation between public celebration and private intimacy. A wedding gathers families, friends, customs, hopes, and anxieties around two particular people; the poem must decide which of those voices may enter. Some poets create ceremonial warmth, while others approach the occasion through a quiet gesture, a remembered difficulty, a comic detail, or an image of the future. Reading such poems side by side reveals how differently praise can be earned rather than merely announced.
As you browse the poems in this collection, notice the range of possible speakers and audiences. One poem may address the couple directly, another may speak to the assembled guests, and another may seem to overhear a private promise. The emotional register can move from jubilant to tender, playful, solemn, sensual, wistful, or cautiously hopeful. Even when two poets begin with similar wedding imagery, their choices of scale can differ sharply: one may focus on rings, hands, clothing, music, or flowers, while another reaches toward weather, seasons, ancestry, or an imagined shared lifetime.
Read beyond the first example because this occasion-centered form gains meaning through comparison. A single poem can suggest that an epithalamium should sound grand, restrained, devotional, humorous, or contemporary; several poems show that none of those approaches has exclusive authority. Comparing community interpretations also makes craft decisions more visible. You can hear how repetition creates a ceremonial pulse, see how direct address establishes intimacy, and judge whether an ending offers a blessing, a prophecy, a question, or an image spacious enough to accompany the couple beyond the wedding day.
Reading Guide
Read an epithalamium as both a crafted lyric and a piece of language meant to matter within an occasion. Its praise, blessing, humor, or reflection has an implied social setting, even when the poem presents only two people in solitude. As you read the community poems, ask how each writer manages the distance between what guests can witness and what belongs only to the couple. The most revealing comparisons often involve not compliance with a fixed pattern, but the way voice, image, sound, and movement make celebration feel personal rather than interchangeable.
- Identify the speaking position. Notice whether the speaker sounds like a friend, relative, participant, observer, celebrant, or collective voice. This position determines what the poem can plausibly know and say. When comparing poems, ask: What relationship to the couple gives this speaker emotional authority?
- Track the poem's forms of address. A shift from speaking about the couple to speaking directly to them can turn description into blessing or counsel. Pronouns may also widen the social circle from two people to a family or community. Ask: When does the address become most intimate, and what triggers that change?
- Listen for ceremonial sound. Repetition, parallel phrasing, internal rhyme, alliteration, and recurring sentence shapes can make language feel speakable before a gathering. These effects may be stately or playful. Ask: Which sounds would carry aloud, and do they deepen feeling or merely decorate it?
- Follow the emotional procession. Many effective examples travel through stages such as arrival, recognition, praise, memory, promise, and projection into the future. The movement need not be literal, but it should create development. Ask: Where does the poem turn from the wedding moment toward married life?
- Examine the chosen symbols. Rings, doors, rooms, roads, gardens, meals, weather, and joined hands can acquire ceremonial force, yet familiar symbols require particular treatment. Ask: Does an image reveal something distinctive about this union, or could it belong to any wedding?
- Notice tonal complications. Joy can coexist with vulnerability, past loss, family change, uncertainty, or awareness that promises must be lived over time. Such shadows can make celebration credible. Ask: What resistance or risk gives the poem's hope weight?
- Study the final gesture. An ending may bless, toast, envision, release, advise, or return to one concrete image. Because the poem participates in a threshold moment, closure carries unusual pressure. Ask: Does the conclusion merely summarize good wishes, or does it send the couple forward?
Compare several poets' approaches aloud as well as silently. Hearing where a poem invites breath, emphasis, laughter, or stillness can reveal whether its ceremonial language feels lived or performed only on the page.
Writing Tips
Begin with the actual human stakes of the union rather than with a generalized idea of romance. Before drafting, list what only this speaker could say about these particular people: a shared habit, a difficult season, an illuminating contrast, a place, an inherited custom, or a small act that embodies commitment. An epithalamium has broad structural freedom, but that freedom creates pressure to build a convincing ceremonial arc through artistic choices rather than through prescribed scaffolding.
- Choose an occasion with emotional texture. Material suits this form when the marriage changes more than legal status: it may join households, alter family roles, honor endurance, cross distances, or turn private devotion into public promise. Find the transformation beneath the event. Without it, the draft may become a decorative wedding card.
- Give the speaker a credible role. Decide why this person is entitled to praise, tease, remember, caution, or bless the couple. A close friend may use revealing particulars; a more distant observer may rely on scene and gesture. Do not let elevated diction pretend to an intimacy the speaker has not established.
- Build praise from evidence. Instead of repeatedly calling the couple loving, faithful, or fortunate, dramatize qualities through action and detail. A remembered kindness or ordinary ritual can carry more conviction than a chain of compliments. Specificity also keeps homage from flattening two individuals into idealized figures.
- Use ceremonial language selectively. Refrains, invocations, balanced clauses, and repeated imperatives can give the poem public resonance. Apply them at emotional thresholds, not automatically in every stanza. Mechanical patterning can make sincere feeling sound compulsory; strategic recurrence makes the words feel gathered and offered.
- Shape a movement larger than the ceremony. The draft might travel from separate histories toward a shared future, from crowded celebration toward private stillness, or from one physical object toward a vision of years together. This progression gives the form momentum and prevents a static catalogue of wedding details.
- Refresh familiar imagery. Flowers, light, rings, roads, and seasons remain useful when altered by precise observation. Ask what kind of light, what condition of road, or what imperfection in a ring matters here. A common beginner mistake is to assemble conventional symbols without allowing any one of them to develop.
- Let joy contain pressure. Marriage promises duration, which means an honest poem may acknowledge change, labor, uncertainty, grief, or human fallibility. The aim is not to darken the occasion gratuitously, but to make hope resilient. Celebration becomes more moving when it understands what commitment must withstand.
- Design for the ear and the room. Read the draft aloud as though the couple and guests were listening. Mark passages where syntax tangles, abstractions accumulate, humor could embarrass rather than include, or ornate sound delays the emotional point. Test whether repeated phrases gain force when heard and whether pauses allow important images to settle.
- End with an offering, not a slogan. Avoid concluding only with a generic wish for happiness. The last lines might entrust the couple to time, transform an earlier image, offer a measured blessing, or leave them inside a vivid shared action. The ending should feel usable by memory after the ceremony has passed.
During revision, underline every statement that could apply to any couple and replace the weakest ones with observed detail. Then map the draft's changes in speaker, pace, imagery, and time. Tighten ceremonial repetitions until each return carries new meaning, vary sentence length to prevent unbroken grandeur, and read the final passage aloud twice: once as a poem on the page and once as words entrusted to real listeners.
Interesting Facts
- Freedom can be more demanding than restriction. Because an epithalamium can accommodate many lengths, rhythms, and arrangements, the poet cannot depend on a fixed pattern to create coherence. Voice, recurring imagery, and emotional progression must make the occasion feel shaped rather than merely described.
- Praise becomes stronger when it meets resistance. Acknowledging time, difference, former hardship, or the vulnerability of commitment need not weaken celebration. These pressures can give a blessing something substantial to answer, allowing hope to sound considered instead of automatic.
- The implied audience changes every line. Language that feels intimate on a private page may feel exposing before relatives and friends, while formal language may protect privacy but lose warmth. Experienced poets manage this boundary through suggestion, selective detail, and shifts between direct and indirect address.
- Repetition can perform social work. A recurring phrase does more than create sound: it may invite listeners to anticipate, assent, remember, or mentally participate. The same device can produce solemnity, exuberance, humor, or urgency depending on wording and placement.
- Scale determines emotional character. A poem centered on one touch or household object can make commitment tangible; a poem reaching across generations or imagined decades can make the union feel expansive. Neither scale is inherently stronger, but changing scale without a clear transition may dilute the focus.
- The final lines face a distinctive temporal challenge. The ceremony occupies one day, while marriage points beyond it. Memorable endings often preserve the immediate scene while opening toward time, giving readers both a moment to hold and a future to contemplate.
- Variation clarifies identity. When you browse the poems in this collection, one interpretation may emphasize song, another narrative, another intimate address, and another reflective meditation. Reading several examples helps distinguish the form's enduring nuptial purpose from any single poet's stylistic solution.
Popular Themes
Subject matter and occasion cannot be separated in an epithalamium: the chosen theme determines what kind of blessing, praise, reflection, or emotional complication the poem can sustain. The possibilities below are literary pathways, not a statistical ranking of what community poets use most often.
- Two histories becoming one future. Contrasting childhoods, places, families, or temperaments can create a natural movement from separateness toward partnership. The poem can honor difference without pretending that union erases individuality.
- Commitment tested by time. A marriage looks forward, so seasons, aging, daily rituals, and imagined later years can extend the poem beyond ceremonial happiness. This theme works best when the future is rendered through concrete possibilities rather than vague promises of forever.
- Home and shared domestic life. Doors, tables, kitchens, gardens, and rooms can translate a public vow into ordinary acts of belonging. Domestic imagery gives the poem warmth while suggesting that enduring love will be practiced in repeated, often unglamorous moments.
- Family, ancestry, and continuity. A wedding may alter relationships among generations or bring traditions into conversation. The ceremonial voice can acknowledge inheritance while making room for the couple to create customs and meanings of their own.
- Journey and crossing. Roads, bridges, thresholds, departures, and arrivals suit the form because the occasion marks a change in how two lives proceed. Strong versions complicate the metaphor by showing what is carried forward, what is left behind, and who travels beside whom.
- Resilience after difficulty. Distance, loss, illness, delay, misunderstanding, or social obstacles may deepen the significance of the celebration. Such material creates a persuasive contrast between what the couple has endured and what the poem now dares to hope.
- Joy, play, and companionship. Humor, shared eccentricities, dancing, food, and affectionate teasing can prevent ceremonial language from becoming stiff. The key is generosity: comedy should reveal the couple's bond and welcome listeners rather than turn private vulnerability into spectacle.
- Nature as witness. Weather, water, trees, birds, or changing light can enlarge the setting and reflect emotional movement. Nature becomes most effective when it interacts with the occasion in a precise way instead of serving as automatic decoration.
As you read the community poems, compare how writers transform similar themes through scale, speaker, tone, and image. Two poems about home may differ completely if one treats it as shelter and another as a difficult practice of making room.
Editorial Insights
The central artistic tension of an epithalamium is the need to honor an occasion without allowing occasion to dictate every feeling. Weddings arrive already surrounded by familiar language, established symbols, and expectations of happiness. A technically recognizable poem can reproduce those materials; a memorable one discovers why this union requires these particular words. Its praise is not simply asserted but made credible through observation, and its hope is strengthened by some awareness of time, change, or human limitation. The poem remains celebratory while refusing emotional simplification.
Structure feels necessary when it enacts a passage. A sequence of images may move from separate lives into shared space, a refrain may change from invitation to affirmation, or the speaking voice may widen from personal memory to communal blessing. Such choices give the poem an internal ceremony rather than using decorative solemnity as a substitute for development. Editors and attentive readers notice when sound participates in this movement: repeated consonants may gather energy, long sentences may create abundance, and a sudden short line may make a promise or image stand apart. Pattern matters because of what it makes the listener anticipate and feel.
Common weaknesses arise when the poet trusts inherited wedding language more than direct perception. Predictable flowers, stars, rings, and roads are not unusable, but they become inert when no detail alters them. Forced grandeur can make the speaker sound unlike any plausible friend or witness. Mechanical rhyme or repetition may create a ceremonial surface while interrupting syntax and thought. Over-explanation is another danger: if an image already embodies partnership, the following lines need not translate it into a moral. At the opposite extreme, a poem may remain so brief or generalized that the couple never becomes present as distinct people. Development requires not length for its own sake, but a meaningful change in understanding.
Individuality survives shared convention through perspective. One writer may build intimacy from domestic objects; another may use comic timing, spare understatement, layered family voices, or an expansive vision of future years. Even the conventional act of blessing can become personal through what the speaker chooses to wish for: not abstract perfection, perhaps, but patience, room for difference, durable laughter, or courage during change. Comparing multiple community poems sharpens judgment because quality then becomes visible as a relationship among choices. Readers can see that no single tone, pattern, or scale guarantees success; what matters is whether voice, sound, imagery, movement, and ending cooperate to make the nuptial occasion emotionally particular.
Read, Write & Share
Read several community poems before settling on what an epithalamium can sound like. Compare who speaks, how each poet balances public celebration with private feeling, which images make the couple distinct, and how the ending carries the occasion toward a shared future. Thoughtful comments can name a passage that felt especially speakable, moving, surprising, or well shaped.
Then try your own interpretation. Begin with one detail that could belong only to the people being honored, develop it into a meaningful ceremonial gesture, and publish the finished poem on PoetrySoup. Your approach can add another voice, scale, and emotional angle to the collection.
Collection Statistics
This collection contains 69 epithalamium poems, offering multiple interpretations of how nuptial praise, intimate address, ceremonial sound, and future-facing reflection can work together. The selection supports close comparison among poets who may follow familiar conventions, adapt them to a contemporary voice, or challenge expectations while retaining the marriage occasion as the poem's center. Reading across the collection can reveal possibilities that no isolated example could represent.
Epithalamium Categories
Definition | What is Epithalamium in Poetry?
Looking for the formal definition, structure, and history of this poetry form? Visit the Poetry Dictionary entry below. Then return to explore how PoetrySoup members bring the form to life through their own poems.