Foreword / Robert Hass (p.xv)
Introduction : poems and weddings / Robert Hass (p.xix)
Readings. From Love song / Rainer Maria Rilke (p.3)
The two of you / Czeslaw Milosz (p.4)
wild nights!; Of all the souls that stand create
At the wedding march / Gerard Manley Hopkins (p.7)
Song / John Fletcher (p.8)
Now you will feel no rain / Apache song (p.9)
Sonnet XVII / Pablo Neruda (p.10)
You that love lovers / Rumi (p.11)
I'll give my love an apple without a core / Anonymous (p.12)
Married love / Kuan Tao-Sheng (p.13)
We two, how long we were fool'd / Walt Whitman (p.14).
Cont.): A wedding toast / Richard Wilbur (p.15)
From The imitation of Christ / Thomas A Kempis (p.16)
Is it for now or for always / Philip Larkin (p.17)
The owl and the pussy-cat / Edward Lear (p.18)
Psalm 1 / The Book of Psalms (p.20)
From Letters to a young poet / Rainer Maria Rilke (p.21)
From A wedding / Boris Pasternak (p.24)
Come, my beloved, let us go up the shining mountain / Abanaki song (p.25)
The tongues of the lightning snakes flicker and twist / Aboriginal Australian song (p.26)
Lavender's blue, dilly, dilly, lavender's green / Anonymous (p.27)
Sukey, you shall be my wife / Anonymous (p.28)
The peace : a wedding song / Aristophanes (p.29)
Variation on the word sleep / Margaret Atwood (p.30)
Shoshone wedding song / Mary Austin (p.32)
The dance / Wendell Berry (p.33).
Cont.): From Several questions answered / William Blake (p.35)
In the month of May / Robert Bly (p.36)
Psalm 100; Psalm 148 / The Book of Psalms
All night the cicada chirps / The Book of songs (p.40)
Unlimited friendliness / The Buddha (p.41)
O, my luve's like a red, red rose / Robert Burns (p.42)
Roman Epithalamion / Catullus (p.43)
Epithalamion / Richard Crashaw (p.48)
if everything happens that can't be done; love is more thicker than forget / E.E. Cummings (p.50)
From The divine comedy / Dante (p.53)
; Alter! When the hills do
/ Emily Dickinson (p. 54)
The good-morrow; From The anniversary; A wedding song on St. Valentine's Day; An epithalamion for lawyers / John Donne (p.57).
Cont.): No love, to love of man and wife / Richard Eedes (p.62)
This love is as good / Ancient Egyptian (p.63)
From Iphigeneia at Aulis / Euripides (p.64)
The master speed / Robert Frost (p.66)
The creation; The world / Eduardo Galeano (p.67)
Whole love; From Everywhere is here / Robert Graves (p.69)
Here all seeking is over / Hawaiian song (p.71)
Love / George Herbert (p.72)
Pale clouds, away! and welcome, day! / Thomas Heywood (p.73)
As I dig for wild orchids / Izumi Shikibu (p.74)
Butterfly wine / Japanese (p.75)
I unpetalled you, like a rose; To the bridge of love / Juan Ramon Jimenez (p.76)
Now, bride and bridegroom help to sing / Ben Jonson (p.78)
The flute of interior time is played whether we hear it or not / Kabir (p.79).
Cont.): Wedding-wind / Philip Larkin (p.80)
From Know deeply, know thyself more deeply; From Fidelity / D.H. Lawrence (p.81)
The ache of marriage / Denise Levertov (p.83)
From The garden of earthly delights / Czeslaw Milosz (p.84)
Adam and Eve in the garden / John Milton (p.85)
The night chant / Navajo song (p.,87)
From Sonnet XII; From Sonnet XLVIII / Pablo Neruda (p.89)
Calling-one's-own / Ojibway song (p.91)
The wedding vow; The knowing / Sharon Olds (p.92)
From The First Letter to the Corinthians / Paul of Tarsus (p.96)
Wreath for a bridal / Sylvia Plath (p.97)
From The second duino elegy (p.98)
From the third duino elegy; From The seventh duino elegy; The sonnets to Orpheus I,4; The sonnets to Orpheus I,12 / Rainer Maria Rilke.
Cont.): My heart is like a singing bird / Christina Rosetti (p.104)
Turn me like a waterwheel turning a millstone; This marriage be wine with halvah, honey dissolving in milk; The minute I heard my first love story / Rumi (p.105)
Song for the Goddess of Love / Sappho (p.108)
Prothalamion for an autumn wedding / May Sarton (p.109)
From The mind of absolute trust / Seng-ts'an (p.110)
Sonnet 116; From Romeo and Juliet / William Shakespeare (p.112)
O fair! O sweet! when I do look on thee; Long their coupled joys maintain / Sir Philip Sidney (p.114)
Now touch the air softly / William Jay Smith (p.117)
I have come into my garden; Wake up, my love, my companion; Bind me as a seal upon your heart / The Song of Songs (p.119).
Cont.): From Epithalamion / Edmund Spenser (p.122)
Re-statement of romance / Wallace Stevens (p.124)
I will make you brooches and toys for your delight / Robert Louis Stevenson (p.125)
Wedding song : lullaby for sleepy lovers / Theocritus (p.126)
From When I heard at the close of day / Walt Whitman (p.127)
Marriage; The rewaking / William Carlos Williams (p.128)
Where will you and I sleep? / Wintu song (p.130)
A blessing / James Wright (p.131)
I want to be your friend / The Yueh-fu (p.132)
Longer readings. From Poetry and marriage / Wendell Berry (p.135)
From Love / Ralph Waldo Emerson (p.137)
From The imitation of Christ / Thomas A Kempis (p.141)
From Women in love / D.H. Lawrence (p.143)
From The sacred marriage of Shiva and Parvati / Parancoti Munivar (p.143).
Cont.): From Letters to a young poet; From Letters / Rainer Maria Rilke (p.151)
From The courtship of Inanna and Dumuzi / Ancient Sumerian (p.156)
From Forms of the implicit love of God / Simone Weil (p.161)
Ceremonies. Preface / Robert Hass (p.167)
A Protestant ceremony (p.170)
A Catholic ceremony (p.176)
A Jewish ceremony (p.180)
A non-theistic Judeo-Christian ceremony (p.182)
A Zen-Unitarian-Catholic-American-Transcendentalist ceremony (p.189)
Afterword : the Tao of marriage / Stephen Mitchell (p.195)
