Feel it but only half way

During an elopement ceremony this evening, the bride’s very close friend did a reading by Roy Croft, entitled Love. She read it so beautifully. When I told her this after the ceremony, she said she had to practice for two hours to be able to get through the third paragraph without crying. She said she had practiced it again and again with her husband and he had told her to pause for longer. She told me that when she read it in the ceremony, she could only allow herself to feel the poem half way because otherwise she wouldn’t get through it.

I’ll place the poem below.

Photograph of the day: The Apostles as I left the rocks on Clifton 4th. Over to Roy:

I love you,
Not only for what you are,
But for what I am when I am with you.

I love you,
Not only for what you have made of yourself,
But for what you are making of me.

I love you for
the part of me that you bring out;
I love you for
putting your hand into my heaped-up heart
And passing over all the foolish, weak things
that you can’t help dimly seeing there,
And for drawing out into the light
All the beautiful things
that no one else had looked
Quite far enough to find.

I love you because you have done
More than any creed
Could have done
To make me good,
And more than any fate could have done
To make me happy.

You have done it
Without a touch,
Without a word,
Without a sign.