Marriage Vow

O, celestial beings
Let our feelings for each other
Continue without diminishing
Only when mountains are leveled
To basins, when ocean waters run
Dry, when winter is ripped
With thunders, when the summer sky
Rains snow, and heaven and earth
Are smashed together, shall we
Ever dare to be parted.

--Unknown Chinese Poet, Han Dynasty

(206 B.C.- A.D. 221)

Hawaiian Song

Here all seeking is over,
The lost has been found,
A mate has been found
To share the chills of winter—
Now Love asks
That you be united.
Here is a place to rest,
A place to sleep,
A place in heaven.
Now two are becoming one,
The black night is scattered,
The eastern sky grows bright.
At last the great day has come!

Now in midsummer a wedding. Attend.
Applaud. The music must be played lightly,
Quietly, at first, like July birdsongs
Hidden in thickets, like sun drying out
The mornings, like grass browsing, dreaming.
Then the words: this man, protecting, serving,
Believing; and this woman, favoring,
Giving, hoping. This family arriving.

Let the music accentuate, arise, float.
Dearly beloved, very dearly beloved,
This act praises and extends us all, as if,
In the afternoon airs, we are all made
Family, as if we are all sun, grass, dreaming.
Now, bells, astound! Ring out aloud, aloft!

--Arnold Kenseth