Poems & Readings - Ralph's Regal Weddings

Conveniently located in Spokane, WA

near East 17th Avenue and South Ray Street.

Also serving Coeur d’Alene, ID and Post Falls, ID

and other areas within Eastern Washington and Northern Idaho

To contact us:

Phone or Text: 509-599-5632

E-mail: Info@RalphsRegalWeddings.com

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Sound Of Silence

Raymond J. Baughan

Here in the space between us and the world

lies human meaning.

Into the vast uncertainty we call.

The echoes make our music,

sharp equations which can hold the stars,

and marvelous mythologies we trust.

This may be all we need

to lift our love against indifference and pain.

Here in the space between us and each other

lies all the future

of the fragment of the universe

which is our own.

To Be One With Each Other

George Eliot

What greater thing is there for two human souls

than to feel that they are joined together to strengthen

each other in all labor, to minister to each other in all sorrow,

to share with each other in all gladness,

to be one with each other

in silent unspeakable memories?

Love Is Friendship Caught Fire

Author Unknown

Love is a friendship that has caught fire.

It is quiet understanding,

mutual confidence,

sharing and forgiving.

It is loyalty through good and bad.

It settles for less than perfection,

and makes allowances for human weakness.

Love is content with the present.

It hopes for the future and it doesn’t brood over the past.

It’s the day-in and day-out chronicle of irritations, problems, compromises,

small disappointments, big victories, and working toward common goals.

If you have love in your life,

it can make up for a great many things you lack.

If you don’t have it,

no matter what else there is,

it is not enough.

The Passionate Shepherd

to His Love

Christopher Marlowe

Come live with me and be my love,

And we will all the pleasures prove

that valleys, groves, hills, and fields,

Woods, or steepy mountain yields.

And we will sit upon the rocks

Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks,

By shallow rivers, to whose falls

Melodious birds sing madrigals.

And I will make thee beds of roses

And a thousand fragrant posies,

A cap of flowers and a kirtle

Embroider’d all with leaves of myrtle

A gown made of the finest wool,

Which from our pretty lambs we pull;

Fair lined slippers for the cold,

With buckles of the purest gold.

A belt of straw and ivy buds,

With coral clasps and amber studs:

And if these pleasures may thee move,

Come live with me and be my love.

The shepherd swains shall dance and sing

For thy delight each May morning:

If these delights thy mind may move,

Then live with me and be my love.

A White Rose

J. B. O’Reilly

The red rose whispers of passion,

And the white rose breathes of love;

O, the red rose is a falcon,

And the white rose is a dove.

But I send you a cream-white rosebud

With a flush on its petal tips;

For the love that is purest and sweetest

Has a kiss of desire on the lips.

How Do I Love Thee

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 everyday’s

Most quite 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 passion 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 last saints, — I love thee with the breadth,

Smiles, tears, of all my life! — and, if God choose,

I shall 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...

When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

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

Hope Is The Thing With Feathers

Emily Dickenson

Hope is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul,

And sings the tune without the words,

And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;

And sore must be the storm

That could abash the little bird

That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chilliest land,

And on the strangest sea;

Yet, never, in extremity

It asked a crumb of me.

Sonnet 116

William Shakespeare

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 cheeks

Within his bending sickle’s compass come;

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom,

It this be error, and upon me prov’d,

I never writ, nor man ever lov’d.

Love’s Philosophy

Percy Bysshe Shelley

The Fountains mingle with the River

And the Rivers with the Ocean,

The winds of Heaven mix for ever

With a sweet emotion;

Nothing in the world is single;

All things by a law divine

In one spirit meet and mingle.

Why not I with thine?

See the mountains kiss high Heaven

And the waves clasp one another;

No sister-flower would be forgiven

If it disdained its brother,

And the sunlight clasps the earth

And the moonbeams kiss the sea:

What is all this sweet work worth

If thou kiss not me?

Dove Poem

Author Unknown

Two doves meeting in the sky

Two loves hand in hand eye to eye

Two parts of a loving whole

Two hearts and a single soul

Two stars shining big and bright

Two fires bringing warmth and light

Two songs played in perfect tune

Two flowers growing into bloom

Two Doves gliding in the air

Two loves free without a care

Two parts of a loving whole

Two hearts and a single soul

True Love

Author Unknown

True love is a sacred flame

That burns eternally,

And none can dim its special glow

Or change its destiny.

True love speaks in tender tones

And hears with gentle ear,

True love gives with open heart

And true love conquers fear.

True love makes no harsh demands

It neither rules nor binds,

And true love holds with gentle hands

The hearts that it entwines.

To Love is Not to Possess

James Kavanaugh

(A favorite of same-sex couples.)

To love is not to possess,

To own or imprison,

Nor to lose one's self in another.

Love is to join and separate,

To walk alone and together,

To find a laughing freedom

That lonely isolation does not permit.

It is finally to be able

To be who we really are

No longer clinging in childish dependency

Nor docilely living separate lives in silence,

It is to be perfectly one's self

And perfectly joined in permanent commitment

To another–and to one's inner self.

Love only endures when it moves like waves,

Receding and returning gently or passionately,

Or moving lovingly like the tide

In the moon's own predictable harmony,

Because finally, despite a child's scars

Or an adult's deepest wounds,

They are openly free to be

Who they really are–and always secretly were,

In the very core of their being

Where true and lasting love can alone abide.

POEMS & readings

Ralph’s Regal Weddings

More than just Wedding Officiants

Wedding Minister and Ceremony Coordinator

Providing Ceremony Preparation, Staging and Direction

Spokane, Washington and Coeur d’Alene, Idaho

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