Poems

‘Somewhere I Have Never Traveled’ by e.e. cummings:

Your slightest look easily will unclose me

Though I have closed myself as fingers,

You open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens

(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose

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The Art of Marriage

by Alferd A. Peterson (short popular version)

A good marriage must be created.
In the art of marriage the little things are the big things…

It is never being too old to hold hands.
It is remembering to say “I love you” at least once each day.

It is never going to sleep angry.
It is having a mutual sense of values and common objectives.
It is forming a circle of love that gathers in the whole family.

It is speaking words of appreciation and
demonstrating gratitude in thoughtful ways.
It is having the capacity to forgive and forget.

It is giving each other an atmosphere in which each can grow.
It is finding room for the things of the spirit.
It is a common search for the good and the beautiful.

It is not only marrying the right partner…
It is being the right partner.

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Love One Another

by Kahlil Gibran (1883 – 1931):

Love one another, but make not a bond of love:

Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup.

Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.

Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each of you be alone.

Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.

Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping.

For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.

And stand together yet not too near together:

For the pillars of the temple stand apart,

And the oak tree and the Cyprus grow not in each other’s shadow.

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Voltaire (1694 – 1778)

“Sensual pleasure passes and vanishes in the twinkling

Of an eye,

but the friendship between us,

The mutual confidence,

the delights of the heart, The enchantment of the souls,

these things do not perish

and can never be destroyed.

I shall love you until I die.”

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From “A Night Among the Pines”

Robert Louis Stevenson

“…and yet even while I was exulting in my solitude

I became aware of a strange lack.

I wished a companion to lie near me in the starlight,

Silent and not moving, but

ever within my touch.

For there is a fellowship more quiet

even than solitude,

and which, rightly understood,

is solitude made perfect.

And to live…

With the woman a man loves

is of all lives the most complete

and free.”

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Sonnet 91

Shakespeare

They love is better than high birth to me,

Richer than wealth,

Prouder than garments cost,

Of more delight than hawks or horses be;

And, having thee, of all men’s pride I boast

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Shakespeare

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate…

When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

So long as lives this, and this gives life to thee.

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George Edward Moore (1873 – 1958)

The hours I spend with you I look upon as sort of a perfumed garden,

a dim twilight, and a fountain singing to it.

You and you alone make me feel that I am alive.

Other men it is said have seen angels,

but I have seen thee and thou art enough.

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Apache wedding prayer:

Now we feel no rain,

For each of us will be shelter to the other.

Now we will feel no cold,

For each of us will be warmth to the other.

Now there is no loneliness for us.

Now we are two bodies,but only one life.

We go now to our dwelling place,

To enter into the days of our togetherness

May our days be good and long upon this earth.

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Traditional Shoshone love poem:

Fair is the white star of twilight, and the sky clearer at the day’s end;

but she is fairer,

and she is dearer, She, my heart’s friend.

Fair is the white star of twilight, and the moon roving to the sky’s end;

but she is fairer,

better worth loving, She, my heart’s friend.

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