Gallery 0018 — permanent collection

Wedding

Q: Who wrote “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways”?

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, in sonnet XLIII of Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850).

Lines for speeches, readings and the inside of a card. Every one here is traced to the book, poem or verse it comes from, and a few of them mean something a little different in context, which is worth knowing before it is read aloud.

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“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.”

The Bible
What it means. Not written about weddings: it comes from Paul's first letter to the church at Corinth, describing what love does rather than what it feels like. Every item on the list is a behaviour, which is why it works as a promise.

1 Corinthians 13:4, New International Version. The King James Version reads: “Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up.”

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“Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.”

The Bible
What it means. Spoken by Ruth to her mother-in-law Naomi, not to a husband: both women have lost their husbands, and Ruth refuses to leave her. It is one of the plainest vows of loyalty in the Bible, and it loses nothing by its real context.

Ruth 1:16, King James Version

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“Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it.”

The Bible
What it means. From the Song of Solomon, a book of love poetry. The verse before it says love is “strong as death”; this one says nothing can put it out.

Song of Solomon 8:7, King James Version

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“Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is strong as death.”

The Bible
What it means. The speaker asks to be kept as close as a seal worn on the heart and the arm, and gives the reason in four words.

Song of Solomon 8:6, King James Version

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“Let me not to the marriage of true minds / Admit impediments.”

William Shakespeare
What it means. The sonnet goes on to argue that love which alters when circumstances alter was never love: it is “an ever-fixed mark / That looks on tempests and is never shaken”.

Sonnet 116, 1609

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“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
What it means. The sonnet does count: to the depth and breadth and height the soul can reach, to the level of everyday need, freely, purely, and finally “better after death”.

Sonnets from the Portuguese, XLIII, 1850

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“Grow old along with me! / The best is yet to be.”

Robert Browning
What it means. The poem is an argument that old age is what youth was for, “the last of life, for which the first was made”. Read at a wedding it becomes a promise; in the poem it is a philosophy of ageing.

“Rabbi Ben Ezra”, in Dramatis Personae, 1864

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“What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined for life—to strengthen each other in all labour, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain?”

George Eliot
What it means. The narrator's comment as Adam and Dinah agree to marry, near the end of the novel. The list is practical: labour, sorrow and pain, the things a marriage actually has to carry.

Adam Bede, ch. 54, 1859

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“Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.”

Emily Brontë
What it means. Catherine says it about Heathcliff while explaining why she will marry someone else. It is one of the great statements of kinship between two people, and in the novel it comes just before a wedding to the wrong man.

Wuthering Heights, ch. 9, 1847

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“My bounty is as boundless as the sea, / My love as deep; the more I give to thee, / The more I have, for both are infinite.”

William Shakespeare
What it means. Juliet, in the garden scene. Love is the one thing that grows by being given away, so giving it makes the giver richer.

Romeo and Juliet, act 2, scene 2

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“Grief can take care of itself; but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.”

Mark Twain
What it means. Sorrow manages alone; happiness needs company to count. It makes a good toast because it is true, and because it really is Twain's, which cannot be said of many lines credited to him.

Following the Equator, ch. XLVIII, 1897 (“Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar”)

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Read it in context once

Three of the wedding readings here were not written about weddings. Ruth's “whither thou goest” is said to her mother-in-law; Paul's “love is patient” is from a letter to a church; Catherine's “whatever our souls are made of” comes as she explains why she will marry the other man. None of that makes them wrong to read. They have earned their place by saying something true about loyalty and love. It is worth knowing, though, because someone in the room usually does.

Which Bible translation?

The wording of a Bible reading depends on the translation. “Love is patient, love is kind” is the New International Version; the King James Version of 1611 has “Charity suffereth long, and is kind”. Orders of service sometimes mix the two. If a reading is printed, it is worth printing the name of the translation with it, as this room does.

What is the most popular Bible reading at weddings?

1 Corinthians 13:4–7 is one of the most widely used: in the New International Version it begins “Love is patient, love is kind”; in the King James Version, “Charity suffereth long, and is kind”.

Is “whither thou goest, I will go” about marriage?

Not originally. In the Book of Ruth (1:16) Ruth says it to her mother-in-law Naomi, refusing to leave her. It became a wedding reading for its vow of loyalty.

Who wrote “Grow old along with me, the best is yet to be”?

Robert Browning, in the poem “Rabbi Ben Ezra”, published in Dramatis Personae in 1864.

Who wrote “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways”?

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, in sonnet XLIII of Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850).