Poetry for Honeymooners

By Edna St. Vincent Millay, William Shakespeare and W B Yeats

Honeymoons are a relatively modern concept in the western world, dating from the 19th Century and have since become a multi-billion dollar industry turning the beginning of wedded bliss into a smorgsboard of ‘must have this’ and ‘must do that’.

However, celebrating a marriage is something we perhaps all feel should be a more intimate occasion. After all this part of the journey is possibly unique as well as universal and timeless. Sex, possibly for the first time, is now an expression of the wedded state, cementing and reframing the relationship as a new couple.

Within the lines of this volume are perfect poems for those on such a journey, whether it a romantic holiday setting or relaxed at home as our classic poets revel in the sensual, the sexy and above all the love for that very special chosen person in our lives. Our verse includes those from Shakespeare, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Rossetti, W B Yeats, Khalil Gibran, Ella Wheeler Wilcox and many more.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Portable Poetry
• Release date: Nov 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9781835470466

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Edna St. Vincent Millay was born in 1892 in Rockland, Maine, the eldest of three daughters, and was encouraged by her mother to develop her talents for music and poetry. Her long poem "Renascence" won critical attention in an anthology contest in 1912 and secured for her a patron who enabled her to go to Vassar College. After graduating in 1917 she lived in Greenwich Village in New York for a few years, acting, writing satirical pieces for journals (usually under a pseudonym), and continuing to work at her poetry. She traveled in Europe throughout 1921-22 as a "foreign correspondent" for Vanity Fair. Her collection A Few Figs from Thistles (1920) gained her a reputation for hedonistic wit and cynicism, but her other collections (including the earlier Renascence and Other Poems [1917]) are without exception more seriously passionate or reflective. In 1923 she married Eugene Boissevain and -- after further travel -- embarked on a series of reading tours which helped to consolidate her nationwide renown. From 1925 onwards she lived at Steepletop, a farmstead in Austerlitz, New York, where her husband protected her from all responsibilities except her creative work. Often involved in feminist or political causes (including the Sacco-Vanzetti case of 1927), she turned to writing anti-fascist propaganda poetry in 1940 and further damaged a reputation already in decline. In her last years of her life she became more withdrawn and isolated, and her health, which had never been robust, became increasingly poor. She died in 1950.

Book preview

Poetry for Honeymooners

An Introduction

Honeymoons are a relatively modern concept in the western world, dating from the 19th Century and have since become a multi-billion dollar industry turning the beginning of wedded bliss into a smorgsboard of ‘must have this’ and ‘must do that’. 

However, celebrating a marriage is something we perhaps all feel should be a more intimate occasion.  After all this part of the journey is possibly unique as well as universal and timeless.  Sex, possibly for the first time, is now an expression of the wedded state, cementing and reframing the relationship as a new couple. 

Within the lines of this volume are perfect poems for those on such a journey, whether it a romantic holiday setting or relaxed at home as our classic poets revel in the sensual, the sexy and above all the love for that very special chosen person in our lives.   Our verse includes those from Shakespeare, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Rossetti, W B Yeats, Khalil Gibran, Ella Wheeler Wilcox and many more.

Index of Contents

He Wishes For the Cloths of Heaven by W B Yeats

A Red, Red Rose by Robert Burns

Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal (from The Princess) by Alfred Lord Tennyson

I Love You by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Wild Nights, Wild Nights by Emily Dickinson

Love and Sleep by Algernon Charles Swinburne

Nuptial Sleep by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

The Sunne Rising by John Donne

Song of the Flower by Khalil Gibran

My Delight and Your Delight by Robert Seymour Bridges

The Passionate Shepherd to His Love by Christopher Marlowe

The Willing Mistress by Aphra Behn

A Nuptial Verse to Mistress Elizabeth Lee, Now Lady Tracy by Robert Herrick

The Bride by Laurence Hope aka Violet Nicholson

Love's Philosophy by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Her Breast is Fit For Pearls by Emily Dickinson

Invitation to Love by Paul Laurence Dunbar

The Flea by John Donne

To Celia by Ben Jonson

She Lay All Naked in Her Bed by Anonymous

Delight in Disorder by Robert Herrick

Amores - Book I - Elegy V - Corinna in an Afternoon by Ovid

For the Courtesan Ch'ing Lin Wu Zao

The Kiss by Charlotte Dacre

That Kiss by Daniel Sheehan

The First Kiss Of Love by Lord Byron

First Love by John Clare

Longing by Matthew Arnold

Give All To Love by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Sonnet IV - Lovesight by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Love is Enough by William Morris

Lips and Eyes by Thomas Carew

She Walks in Beauty by Lord Byron

When I Too Long Have Looked Upon Your Face by Edna St Vincent Millay

Go Lovely Rose by Edmund Waller

Sonnet 18 - Shall I Compare Thee to a Summers Day by William Shakespeare

Beauty