Richmond Wedding Guide - London Borough of Richmond upon ...

After the Lunch,
Wendy Cope
On Waterloo Bridge, where we said our goodbyes,
The weather conditions bring tears to my eyes.
I wipe them away with a black woolly glove
And try not to notice I’ve fallen in love.
On Waterloo Bridge I am trying to think:
This is nothing. You’re high on charm and drink.
But the jukebox inside me is playing a song
That says something different and when was it wrong?
On Waterloo Bridge with the wind in my hair
I am tempted to skip. You’re a fool. I don’t care.
The head does it’s best but the heart is the boss –
I admit it before I am halfway across.
I carry your heart with me,
e. e. cummins
I carry your heart with me
(I carry it in my heart)
I am never without it
(anywhere I go you go, my dear;
and whatever is done by only me
is your doing, my darling)
I fear no fate
(for you are my fate, my sweet)
I want no world
(for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the sky of the sky of a
tree called life,
which grows higher than soul can hope or mind can
hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart.
I carry your heart
(I carry it in my heart)
The First Day, Christina Rossetti
I wish I could remember the first day,
first hour, first moment of your meeting me,
If bright or dim the season, it might be
summer or winter for aught I can say,
so unrecorded did it slip away.
So blind was I to see and foresee,
so dull to mark the budding of my tree
that would not blossom yet for many a May.
If only I could recollect it, such
a day of days! I let it come and go
as traceless as a thaw of bygone snow;
It seemed to mean so little, meant so much;
If only now I could recall that touch,
first touch of hand in hand – did one but know!
I knew that I had been touched by love
I knew that I had been touched by love the first
time that I saw you, and felt your warmth and
heard your laughter.
I knew that I had been touched by love when I was
hurting from something that happened, and you came
along and made the hurt go away.
I knew that I had been touched by love when I quit
making plans with my friends and starting Dreaming
dreams with you.
I knew that I had been touched by love when suddenly I
couldn’t make any decisions by myself any more, and I
had the strong desire to share everything with you.
I knew that I had been touched by love the first time we
spent alone together, and I knew that I wanted to stay
with you forever because - I had never felt this touched
by love.
Sonnet from the Portuguese,
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
my soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
for the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s most quiet
need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right,
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the fervour put to use
In my old griefs and with my childhood’s faith…
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose with my
lost youth,
I love thy breath, smiles, tears of all
my life – and if fate choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
Sonnet 18, William Shakespeare
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate;
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometimes too the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his golden complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines.
By chance, or nature’s changing course untrimmed:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade.
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade
When in eternal lines to time thou growest.
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see.
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
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