QuillOak Writing desk

15 poems & readings

Anniversary Poems

Poems for the long game of love: lines for cards, toasts, and the people still choosing each other after the wedding photographs stopped being flattering.

Anniversary poems have a harder job than wedding poems. A wedding poem only has to be hopeful; an anniversary poem has to be true about a specific number of years. That is why Shakespeare's Sonnet 116 has become the standard reading — it defines love as the thing that "alters not when it alteration finds", which is a claim about endurance rather than romance, and endurance is what an anniversary is celebrating.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning's 'How Do I Love Thee?' (Sonnet 43) is the warmer choice and the better one for a card, because it counts ways rather than years. Burns's 'A Red, Red Rose' is the shortest of the three and the easiest to say out loud without your voice going. For a toast, quote four lines and then say one plain sentence of your own — what you have watched them do for each other. The borrowed lines carry the feeling; the specific sentence is what people remember.

LengthForm

When You Are Old

W. B. Yeats · 1893

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,And nodding by the fire, take down this book,And slowly read, and dream of the soft look

12 lines · lyric

To My Dear and Loving Husband

Anne Bradstreet · 1678

If ever two were one, then surely we.If ever man were lov'd by wife, then thee.If ever wife was happy in a man,

12 lines · lyric

Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

William Shakespeare · 1609

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?Thou art more lovely and more temperate:Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

14 lines · sonnet

Sonnet 116: Let me not to the marriage of true minds

William Shakespeare · 1609

Let me not to the marriage of true mindsAdmit impediments. Love is not loveWhich alters when it alteration finds,

14 lines · sonnet

How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43)

Elizabeth Barrett Browning · 1850

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.I love thee to the depth and breadth and heightMy soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

14 lines · sonnet

A Red, Red Rose

Robert Burns · 1794

O my Luve is like a red, red roseThat's newly sprung in June;O my Luve is like the melody

16 lines · ballad

Roses Are Red (I Would Still Pick You)

The QuillOak Editors

Roses are red, as they were at the start,when I practiced your name and rehearsed every part;the petals have changed, but the question stays true:

4 lines · roses are red

One More Year of We

The QuillOak Editors

One more year of "where's my keys?",of "taste this," and "come see" —one more year I'd trade for nothing:

4 lines · quatrain

Two Cups

The QuillOak Editors

Marriage is two cupson one small shelf —not matching, never matching,

7 lines · free verse

Slow Dance in the Kitchen

The QuillOak Editors

We never learned the proper steps,we sway more than we dance,the dinner's burning on the stove,

8 lines · lyric

Still

The QuillOak Editors

After all the years and weather,after every flight delayed,after arguments in IKEA

8 lines · lyric

Two Degrees

The QuillOak Editors

We battle on the thermostat —you win by two degrees;I get you back in hoodie theft

8 lines · lyric

The Secret

The QuillOak Editors

Our wedding song sounds older now,the photos soft with age,but you still get top billing, love,

8 lines · lyric

The Load-Bearing Years

The QuillOak Editors

The first year gets champagne.The fiftieth gets gold.But these — the middle years,

10 lines · free verse

Sonnet 104: To me, fair friend, you never can be old

William Shakespeare · 1609

To me, fair friend, you never can be old,For as you were when first your eye I ey'd,Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold,

14 lines · sonnet