Water is a beautiful analogy for so many things in life, including marriage. Whether it symbolizes the ebb and flow of life, or its strength against even the toughest of materials, or its life giving properties. Or if you are like us, maybe it is a shared love for the sea that attracts you to a nautical reading. What ever the reason may be we have collected a sample of readings here for your use. We even included a couple of Portuguese options as well. Enjoy!
From A Gift From the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh
“When you love someone you do not love them all the time, in exactly the same way, from moment to moment. It is an impossibility. It is even a lie to pretend to. We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow and tide and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return. We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible, in life as in love, is in growth, in fluidity–in freedom, in the sense that dancers are free, barely touching as they pass, but partners in the same pattern. “The only real security is not in owning or possessing, not in demanding or expecting, not in hoping, even. Security in a relationship lies neither in looking back to what it was in nostalgia, nor forward to what it might be in dread and anticipation, but living in the present relationship and accepting it as it is now. For relationships, too, must be like islands, one must accept them for what they are here and now, within their limits – islands, surrounded and interrupted by the sea, and continually visited and abandoned by the tides. One must accept the security of the winged life, of the ebb and flow, of intermittency.”
“Come Live With Me and Be My Love” by Christopher Sousa
Come live with me and be my love,
We’ll lay and watch the skies above.
I’ll take you out upon the sea,
And show you what it means to me.
The wind will be calm yet lightly blowing,
The cabin’s warm with oil’s glowing.
Just think of us upon this ocean,
Sipping tea as a soothing potion.
I’ll climb up high into the rig above,
To share the starry night with you, my love.
The sails will be full with autumn’s breeze,
Our bow dipping gracefully into the glowing seas.
And as we dig into my coffers’ deep,
You shall behold the things that make women weep.
Bottles of wine from the finest vineyards,
And wool from only the most renowned spinners.
These things and more can be fully your own,
But mostly the beauty that the sea has shown.
The most graceful porpoises will be swimming by,
As the sea birds sing with their siren-like cry.
Precious few have answered our ocean’s calling,
Shouting out with eyes bright and bawling.
So take this proposal and fly like the dove,
To come with me and be my love.
“Beach Chairs” by Joyce Ebrecht
Sitting on the beach chairs
watching the setting sun
holding hands and reminiscing
how it all begun
Sitting on the beach chairs
watching the ships out on the sea
holding hands and smiling
together we’re meant to be
Sitting on the beach chairs
watching people walking past
holding hands and knowing
that our love will always last
Sitting on the beach chairs
watching the waves along the shore
holding hands we realize
our love is stronger than before
Sitting on the beach chairs
watching the changing tide
holding hands with happiness
to be by each others side
Sitting on the beach chairs
watching the sunrise
holding hands with tears of joy
there are no more good-byes
“Romeo & Juliet” Act 2 Scene 2 by William Shakespeare
“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.”
Chapter One of One Thousand by O. J. Preston
For two people this dawn brought on a magical day
Now husband and wife they head on their way
As a boat setting sail may their journey begin
With calmest of waters, most helpful of wind
And if they should stumble upon turbulent sea
May it pass them unharming – leave them be.
For here are two people whom love has well bitten
Here opens their book which has yet to be written
As the first page unfolds and their life inks its path
May it write a true story where forever love lasts
Let their journey be happy till death do they part
Of one thousand chapters may this be the start.
The Wide Ocean from ‘Canto General’ by Pablo Neruda
Ocean, if you were to give, a measure, a ferment, a fruit
of your gifts and destructions, into my hand,
I would choose your far-off repose, your contour of steel,
your vigilant spaces of air and darkness,
and the power of your white tongue,
that shatters and overthrows columns,
breaking them down to your proper purity.
Not the final breaker, heavy with brine,
that thunders onshore, and creates
the silence of sand, that encircles the world,
but the inner spaces of force,
the naked power of the waters,
the immoveable solitude, brimming with lives.
It is Time perhaps, or the vessel filled
with all motion, pure Oneness,
that death cannot touch, the visceral green
of consuming totality.
Only a salt kiss remains of the drowned arm,
that lifts a spray: a humid scent,
of the damp flower, is left,
from the bodies of men. Your energies
form, in a trickle that is not spent,
form, in retreat into silence.
The falling wave,
arch of identity, shattering feathers,
is only spume when it clears,
and returns to its source, unconsumed.
Your whole force heads for its origin.
The husks that your load threshes,
are only the crushed, plundered, deliveries,
that your act of abundance expelled,
all those that take life from your branches.
Your form extends beyond breakers,
vibrant, and rhythmic, like the chest, cloaking
a single being, and its breathings,
that lift into the content of light,
plains raised above waves,
forming the naked surface of earth.
You fill your true self with your substance.
You overflow curve with silence.
The vessel trembles with your salt and sweetness,
the universal cavern of waters,
and nothing is lost from you, as it is
from the desolate crater, or the bay of a hill,
those empty heights, signs, scars,
guarding the wounded air.
Your petals throbbing against the Earth,
trembling your submarine harvests,
your menace thickening the smooth swell,
with pulsations and swarming of schools,
and only the thread of the net raises
the dead lightning of fish-scale,
one wounded millimetre, in the space
of your crystal completeness.
Mar in Poesia, 1944
I
De todos os cantos do mundo
Amo com um amor mais forte e mais profundo
Aquela praia extasiada e nua,
Onde me uni ao mar, ao vento e à lua.
II
Cheiro a terra as árvores e o vento
Que a Primavera enche de perfumes
Mas neles só quero e só procuro
A selvagem exalação das ondas
Subindo para os astros como um grito puro.
Uma Após Uma as Ondas Apressadas
Ricardo Reis, in “Odes”
Heterónimo de Fernando Pessoa
Uma Após Uma
Uma após uma as ondas apressadas
Enrolam o seu verde movimento
E chiam a alva ‘spuma
No moreno das praias.
Uma após uma as nuvens vagarosas
Rasgam o seu redondo movimento
E o sol aquece o ‘spaço
Do ar entre as nuvens ‘scassas.
Indiferente a mim e eu a ela,
A natureza deste dia calmo
Furta pouco ao meu senso
De se esvair o tempo.
Só uma vaga pena inconsequente
Pára um momento à porta da minha alma
E após fitar-me um pouco
Passa, a sorrir de nada.