STYLETHREAD -- LET'S TALK SHOP!

DC Shopper · Dooney & Bourke

random: need a good quote for wedding invites

halleybird · Hermes

Ohhh, love poems of a non-cheesy variety are difficult to find. Here are a few I came up with. Also, please, please don't use any Shakespearean sonnets!

"Love is a canvas furnished by Nature
And embroidered by imagination." -Voltaire c. mid-1700s

"Beauty, strength, youth, are flowers but fading seen/Duty, faith, love, are roots, and ever green." -George Peele, A Farewell to Arms (to Queen Elizabeth) c. 1590s

"If love were what the rose is/and I were like the leaf,/our lives would grow together/in sad or singing weather" (Algernon Charles Swinburne) c.late 1800s

"Love is the blossom where there blows/every thing that lives or grows" (Giles Fletcher) c. early 1600s (from "The Wooing Song")

"Love is a fruit in season at all times, and within reach of every hand." (Mother Teresa)

"This have I known always: Love is no more than the wide blossom which the wind assails, than the great tide that treads the shifting shore, strewing fresh wreckage gathered in the gales; Pity me that the heart is slow to learn, that the swift mind beholds at every turn." (Edna St. Vincent Millay) c. 1923, from "The Harp Weaver"

ha ha, this would be funny (j/k):

When daisies pied and violets blue,
And lady-smocks all silver-white,
And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue
Do paint the meadows with delight,
The cuckoo then, on every tree,
Mocks married men

-Shakespeare Love's Labours Lost

If these don't work, try http://home.att.net/~quotesexchange/index.html and bartleby.com for more. The first one is the most comprehensive, IMO.

ETA: This DH Lawrence poem (http://www.ymaverick.com/vance/lawrence/bei_hennef.html) has some great nature imagery in it, too.

-- Edited by halleybird at 23:12, 2005-01-10

DC Shopper · Dooney & Bourke

ooh, thanks halleybird - I like this one:

"Beauty, strength, youth, are flowers but fading seen/Duty, faith, love, are roots, and ever green."

I'm going to look at those sites you posted.

and...any poems with the word "cuckoo" in them are automatically out, anyway. hehe.

Elle · Hermes

I really like this one:

"Beauty, strength, youth, are flowers but fading seen/Duty, faith, love, are roots, and ever green."

It perfectly explains the 'tree-as-marriage'.

alb · Marc Jacobs

Hey DCS--I like the one mentioned above and I also really like this one:

"Love is the blossom where there blows/every thing that lives or grows" (Giles Fletcher) c. early 1600s (from "The Wooing Song")

I bet you could also find some more by going to Barnes and Noble or Borders and flipping through books of quotes. Online is a good option too of course. I think it's a cute idea and your invites sound really cute and different!