Classical Vows for the Reaffirmation Service
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If you are planning a formal reaffirmation service, you may wish to incorporate classical writings into your reaffirmation vows, drawing from Elizabeth Barrett Browning's letters, for example, or from the Bible or Shakespeare's many writings. Shakespeare's sonnets work especially well, in fact, and here are several of them that may be used in their entirety, if so desired. You and your spouse may alternate lines, if you wish, or you may each recite your own sonnet.
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 | | 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,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimmed.
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall Death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st.
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
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| | Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion's paws,
And make the earth devour her own sweet brood;
Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger's jaws,
And burn the long-lived phoenix in her blood;
Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleet'st,
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