Epithalamion is an ode written by Edmund Spenser to his bride, Elizabeth Boyle, on their wedding day in 1594.

The volume included the sequence of 89 sonnets (Amoretti), along with a series of short poems called Anacreontics and the Epithalamion, a public poetic celebration of marriage.

The ode's content progresses from the enthusiasm of youth to the concerns of middle age by beginning with high hopes for a joyful day and ending with an eye toward the speaker's legacy to future generations.

Spenser spends a majority of the poem praising his bride to be, which is depicted as both innocent and lustful.

[5] The poem starts at midnight of the day of the wedding, as Spenser grows anxious of the future he is embracing.

Every hour is described in detail; from what is being worn to where the wedding is taking place to Spenser's own thoughts.

James Lambert[6] wrote about how the poem connected to the Protestant Reform of the time "Spenser’s Epithalamion reflects this communal joy as it narrates a public celebration of marriage, and does so in song and psalmic refrains.

Finally, the poem moves toward affective joy, bestowing a kind of blessedness, or even grace, upon the listener, much like the practice of reciting the Psalms itself was supposed to do.

Countering the relative absence of joy as a lived emotion, Spenser’s Epithalamion sets out to combine the discourses of joy—psalmic praises, hymnody, spiritual comfort, heavenly foretaste, festivity, matrimony, and finally, sex—into an all-inclusive articulation."

In 1929 British composer Edgar Bainton wrote his orchestral rhapsody Epithalamion, based on Spenser's poem.