Courtship and engagement: I shall be married on Monday morning / Anonymous -- Suitor / Theocritus -- Her father's house / Anonymous (Bojpuri) -- To her doubts / Edmund Spenser -- Love in the valley / George Meredith -- Owl and the pussy-cat / Edward Lear -- My last duchess / Robert Browning -- Betrothal / Edna St. Vincent Millay.

Weddings: Marriage morning / Alfred, Lord Tennyson -- Wedding morn / D.E. Lawrence -- Wedding morning / Thomas Hardy -- from The song of songs - The bride sings -- Bride / Rainer Maria Rilke -- Marriage of Hero and Leander / Musaeus -- Lord Thomas and fair Eleanor / Anonymous -- Frog and the mouse / Anonymous -- Ceremonials / John Donne -- Hiawatha's wedding-feast / Henry Wadsworth Longfellow -- Wedding out West / Walt Whitman -- On the marriage of a virgin / Dylan Thomas -- At the altar-rail / Thomas Hardy -- For a remarriage / Lucan -- Upon a second marriage / James Merrill -- On the two dwarfs that were married at court / Edmund Waller -- Epithalamium on a late happy marriage / Christopher Smart -- To a friend on his nuptials / Matthew Prior -- Wedding toast / Edmund Spenser -- Wedding night / Edmund Spenser -- Beauty's soliloquy during her honeymoon / Thomas Hardy -- Harmony / Richard Crashaw -- Song ('Now hath Flora fob'd her bowers') / Thomas Campion -- Wedding-wind / Philip Larkin.

Domesticities: Couple / Rosanna Warrwen -- Eros turannos / Edwin Arlington Robinson -- For poorer / Anonymous (Sanskrit) -- At the dinner-table / Thomas Hardy -- Question of marriage / Thomas Hardy -- Question of marriage / Thomas Hardy -- Painter's wife / D.H. Lawrence -- Marriage / Moishe Leib Halpern -- Unpon one Lillie, who married with a maid call'd Rose / Robert Herrick -- Story of Baucis and Philemon / Ovid -- from Love / Rachel Hadas -- She revisits alone the church of her marriage / Thomas Hardy -- Progress of marriage / Jonathan Swift -- At tea / Thomas Hardy -- "To speak of woe that is in marriage" / Robert Lowell -- Before the birth of one of her children / Anne Bradstreet -- Discourse / John Milton -- Telephone / Robert Frost -- Upon Jolly and Jilly / Robert Herrick -- Modern marriage / George Meredith -- Nuptial sleep / Dante Gabriel Rossetti -- Witch-wife / Edna St. Vincent Millay -- Hill wife / Robert Frost -- Householder / Robert Browning -- Tithonus / Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

Anniversaries: Silver wedding / Arthur Hugh Clough -- Second ring / Samuel Bishop -- Jeane / William Barnes -- On an anniversary / Donald Justice -- On a wedding anniversary / Dylan Thomas -- Marriage / Yvor Winters -- Commemoration / Edwin Muir -- To my wife / J.V. Cunningham -- John Anderson my Jo / Robert Burns -- Epitaph upon husband and wife who died and were buried together / Richard Crashaw.

Adulteries: Foolish marriage vow / John Dryden -- Menelaus and Helen / Rupert Brooke -- Wraggle taggle gipsies / Anonymous -- My mother made me marry / Anonymous (Spanish) -- Flower-girl / Anonymous (Indian) -- Art of deceiving a husband / Ovid -- In the restaurant / Thomas Hardy -- Guests for dinner / George Meredith -- Harp song of the Dane women / Rudyard Kipling -- Triangle / George Meredith -- Adultery / James Dickey -- Jus primae noctis / Robert Graves.

Separations: Valediction: forbidding mourning -- Longing for the Emperor / Empress Iwa No Hime -- World as meditation / Wallace Stevens -- Parting / Chiang Yen -- On leaving his wife / Kakinomoto Hitomaro -- Letter to her husband, absent upon public employment / Anne Bradstreet -- River-merchant's wife: a letter / Ezra Pound -- Wife's lament / Anonymous (Anglo-Saxon) -- Penelope in doubt / Edwin Muir -- For both of you, the divorce being final / John Hollander -- For Anastasia's grave / Julian (Prefect of Egypt) -- In a London flat / Thomas Hardy -- Cornelia from the grave to her husband / Propertius -- On his dead wife / Henry King -- Reuben bright / Edwin Arlington Robinson -- Benjamin Pantier / Edgar Lee Masters -- Mrs. Benjamin Pantier / Edgar Lee Masters -- Widow's hymn / George Wither -- Song of the widow / Rainer Maria Rilke -- Widower / Rudyard Kipling -- Widow's song / Edward Coute Pinkney -- Complaint / James Wright -- Over the coffin / Thomas Hardy -- Methought / John Milton.

Symbolic marriages: Life is motion / Wallace Stevens -- Marriage of earth and heaven / Jay MacPherson -- World stands solemner to me / Emily Dickinson -- New wife / Omar Khayyam -- Married sounds / William Shakespeare -- South garden / Li Ho -- Jane's marriage / Rudyard Kipling -- For a marriage of St. Catherine by Memling / Dante Gabriel Rossetti -- Title divine / Emily Dickinson.

For and against marriage: "No cause or just impediment" / William Shakespeare -- Dreariest journey / Percy Bysshe Shelley -- To the virgins, to make much of time / Robert Herrick -- Real and true and sure / Robert Browning -- Need of posterity / William Shakespeare -- Word against wives / Sir Philip Sidney -- Wasted beauty / William Shakespeare -- Warning to a wife / Martial -- Marriage of souls / William Carlos Williams -- Marriage / Gregory Corso -- Call it a good marriage / Robert Graves -- Toward a definition of marriage / Mona Van Duyn -- Way things are / Lucretius -- Marriages / Philip Larkin.