Poems about Love

What do we know about love? What kind is it? There is no definite answer, because love is different. But in each of its manifestations, it finds a response in the work of writers. A selection of beautiful intimate lyrics by famous English and American poets will help you to understand the world of love. Perhaps these poems will help you to share your feelings with a loved person and inspire you to make a declaration of love!

Thomas Wyatt

The Lover’s Appeal

And wilt thou leave me thus?
Say nay! say nay! for shame!
To save thee from the blame
Of all my grief and grame.
And wilt thou leave me thus?
Say nay! say nay!

And wilt thou leave me thus,
That hath loved thee so long
In wealth and woe among?
And is thy heart so strong
As for to leave me thus?
Say nay! say nay!

And wilt thou leave me thus,
That hath given thee my heart
Never for to depart
Neither for pain nor smart:
And wilt thou leave me thus?
Say nay! say nay!

And wilt thou leave me thus,
And have no more pity
Of him that loveth thee?
Alas! thy cruelty!
And wilt thou leave me thus?
Say nay! say nay!

Henry Howard Surrey

Description and Praise of his Love Geraldine

From Tuscane came my Lady’s worthy race;
Fair Florence was sometimes her ancient seat:
The western isle, whose pleasant shore doth face
Wild Cambers cliffs, did give her lively heat.
Foster’d she was with milk of Irish breast:
Her sire an Earl; her dame of Prince’s blood.

From tender years, in Britain she doth rest,
With Kinges child; where she tasteth costly food.
Hunsdon did first present her to mine eyen:
Bright is her hue, and Geraldine she hight.
Hampton me taught to wish her first to mine;
And Windsor, alas! doth chase me from her sight.
Her beauty of kind; her virtues from above;
Happy is he that can obtain her love.

Edmund Spenser

What guyle is this, that those her golden tresses
She doth attyre under a net of gold;
And with sly skill so cunningly them dresses,
That which is gold, or heare, may scarse be told?
Is it that mens frayle eyes, which gaze too bold,
She may entangle in that golden snare;
And, being caught, may craftily enfold
Theyr weaker harts, which are not wel aware?
Take heed, therefore, my ne eyes, how ye doe stare
Henceforth too rashly on that guilefull net,
In which, if ever ye entrapped are,
Out of her hands ye by no meanes shall get.
Fondnesse it were for any, being free,
To covet fetters, though they golden bee!

Christopher Marlowe

The passionate shepherd to his love

Come live with me and be my Love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That hills and valleys, dale and field,
And all the craggy mountains yield.

There will we sit upon the rocks
And see the shepherds feed their flocks,
By shallow rivers, to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.

There will I make thee beds of roses
And a thousand fragrant posies,
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
Embroider’d all with leaves of myrtle.

A gown made of the finest wool,
Which from our pretty lambs we pull,
Fair linèd slippers for the cold,
With buckles of the purest gold.

A belt of straw and ivy buds
With coral clasps and amber studs:
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me and be my Love.

The shepherd swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May-morning:
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me and be my Love.

William Shakespeare

So is it not with me as with that Muse,
Stirr’d by a painted beauty to his verse,
Who heaven itself for ornament doth use,
And every fair with his fair doth rehearse,
Making a couplement of proud compare,
With sun and moon, with earth and sea’s rich gems,
With April’s first-born flowers, and all things rare
That heaven’s air in this huge rondure hems.
O, let me, true in love, but truly write,
And then believe me, my love is as fair
As any mother’s child, though not so bright
As those gold candles fixt in heaven’s air:
Let them say more that like of hearsay well;
I will not praise that purpose not to sell.

***

Then hate me when thou wilt; if ever, now;
Now, while the world is bent my deeds to cross,
Join with the spite of fortune, make me bow,
And do not drop in for an after-loss:
Ah, do not, when my heart hath ’scaped this sorrow,
Come in the rearward of a conquer’d woe;
Give not a windy night a rainy morrow,
To linger out a purposed overthrow.
If thou wilt leave me, do not leave me last,
When other petty griefs have done their spite,
But in the onset come: so shall I taste
At first the very worst of fortune’s might;
And other strains of woe, which now seem woe,
Compared with loss of thee will not seem so.

***

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests, and is never shaken,
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error, and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips’ red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damaskt, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound:
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.

Ben Jonson

From “The Sad Shepherd, or A Tale of Robin Hood”

Though I am young, and cannot tell,
Either what Death or Love is, well,
Yet I have heard they both bear darts
And both do aim at human hearts:
And then again, I have been told,
Love wounds with heat, as Death with cold;
So that I fear they do but bring
Extremes to touch, and mean one thing.

As in a ruin we it call
One thing to be blown up, or fall;
Or to our end, like way may have,
By flash of lightning, or a wave:
So Love’s infamèd shaft, or brand,
May kill as soon as Death’s cold hand;
Except Love’s fires the virtue have
To fright the frost out of the grave.

John Donne

The Good-Morrow

I wonder by my troth, what thou, and I
Did, till we lov’d? were we not wean’d till then?
But suck’d on countrey pleasures, childishly?
Or snorted we in the seaven sleepers den?
’Twas so; But this, all pleasures fancies bee.
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desir’d, and got, ’twas but a dreame of thee.

And now good morrow to our waking soules,
Which watch not one another out of feare;
For love, all love of other sights controules,
And makes one little roome, an every where.
Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,
Let Maps to others, worlds on worlds have showne,
Let us possesse one world, each hath one, and is one.

My face in thine eye, thine in mine appeares,
And true plaine hearts doe in the faces rest,
Where can we finde two better hemispheares
Without sharpe North, without declining West?
What ever dyes, was not mixt equally;
If our two loves be one, or thou and I
Love so alike, that none doe slacken, none can die.

Andrew Marvell

The Definition of Love

My Love is of a birth as rare
As ’tis for object strange and high:
It was begotten by Despair
Upon Impossibility.

Magnanimous Despair alone
Could show me so divine a thing,
Where feeble Hope could ne’r have flown
But vainly flapt its Tinsel Wing.

And yet I quickly might arrive
Where my extended Soul is fixt,
But Fate does Iron wedges drive,
And alwais crouds it self betwixt.

For Fate with jealous Eye does see
Two perfect Loves; nor lets them close:
Their union would her ruine be,
And her Tyrannick pow’r depose.

And therefore her Decrees of Steel
Us as the distant Poles have plac’d,
(Though Loves whole World on us doth wheel)
Not by themselves to be embrac’d.

Unless the giddy Heaven fall,
And Earth some new Convulsion tear;
And, us to joyn, the World should all
Be cramp’d into a Planisphere.

As Lines so Loves oblique may well
Themselves in every Angle greet:
But ours so truly Paralel,
Though infinite can never meet.

Therefore the Love which us doth bind,
But Fate so enviously debarrs,
Is the Conjunction of the Mind,
And Opposition of the Stars.

George Gordon Byron

Farewell! if ever fondest prayer,
For other’s weal avail’d on high,
Mine will not all be lost in air,
But waft thy name beyond the sky.
’T were vain to speak, to weep, to sigh:
Oh! more than tears of blood can tell,
When wrung from guilt’s expiring eye,
Are in that word — Farewell! — Farewell!

These lips are mute, these eyes are dry;
But in my breast and in my brain,
Awake the pangs that pass not by,
The thought that ne’er shall sleep again.
My soul nor deigns nor dares complain,
Though grief and passion there rebel;
I only know we loved in vain —
only feel — Farewell! — Farewell!

John Keats

The day is gone, and all its sweets are gone!
Sweet voice, sweet lips, soft hand, and softer breast,
Warm breath, light whisper, tender semi-tone,
Bright eyes, accomplished shape, and lang’rous waist,
Faded the flower and all its budded charms,
Faded the sight of beauty from my eyes,
Faded the shape of beauty from my arms,
Faded the voice, warmth, whiteness, paradise —
Vanish’d unseasonably at shut of eve,
When the dusk holiday — or holinight
Of fragrant-curtained love begins to weave
The woof of darkness thick, for hid delight;
But, as I’ve read love’s missal through to-day,
He’ll let me sleep, seeing I fast and pray.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Love Enthroned

I marked all kindred Powers the heart finds fair: —
Truth, with awed lips; and Hope, with eyes upcast;
And Fame, whose loud wings fan the ashen Past
To signal-fires, Oblivion’s flight to scare;
And Youth, with still some single golden hair
Unto his shoulder clinging, since the last
Embrace wherein two sweet arms held him fast;
And Life, still wreathing flowers for Death to wear.
Love’s throne was not with these; but far above
All passionate wind of welcome and farewell
He sat in breathless bowers they dream not of;
Though Truth foreknow Love’s heart, and Hope foretell,
And Fame be for Love’s sake desirable,
And Youth be dear, and Life be sweet to Love.

Silent Noon

Your hands lie open in the long fresh grass, —
The finger-points look through like rosy blooms:
Your eyes smile peace. The pasture gleams and glooms
’Neath billowing skies that scatter and amass.

All round our next, far as the eye can pass,
Are golden kingcup-fields with silver edge
Where the cow-parsley skirts the hawthorn-hedge.
’Tis visible silence, still as the hour-glass.

Deep in the sun-searched growths the dragon-fly
Hangs like a blue thread loosened from the sky: —
So this wing’d hour is dropt to us from above.

Oh! clasp we to our hearts, for deathless dower.
This close-companioned inarticulate hour
When twofold silence was the song of love.

Algernon Charles Swinburne

In the orchard
(Provencal Burden)

Leave go my hands, let me catch breath and see;
Let the dew-fall drench either side of me;
Clear apple-leaves are soft upon that moon
Seen sidelong like a blossom in the tree;
Ah God, ah God, that day should be so soon.

The grass is thick and cool, it lets us lie.
Kissed upon either cheek and either eye,
I turn to thee as some green afternoon
Turns toward sunset, and is loth to die;
Ah God, ah God, that day should be so soon.

Lie closer, lean your face upon my side,
Feel where the dew fell that has hardly dried,
Hear how the blood beats that went night to swoon;
The pleasure lives there when the sense has died;
Ah God, ah God, that day should be so soon.

О my fair lord, I charge you leave me this:
Is it not sweeter than a foolish kiss?
Nay, take it then, my flower, my first in June,
My rose, so like a tender mouth it is:
Ah God, ah God, that day should be so soon.

Love, till dawn sunder night from day with fire,
Dividing my delight and my desire,
The crescent life and love the plenilune,
Love me though dusk begin and dark retire;
Ah God, ah God, that day should be so soon.

Ah, my heart fails, my blood draws back; I know,
When life runs over, life is near to go;
And with the slain of love love’s ways are strewn,
And with their blood, if love will have it so;
Ah God, ah God, that day should be so soon.

Ah, do thy will now; slay me if thou wilt;
There is no building now the walls are built,
No quarrying now the corner-stone is hewn,
No drinking now the vine’s whole blood is spilt;
Ah God, ah God, that day should be so soon.

Nay, slay me now; nay, for I will be slain;
Pluck thy red pleasure from the' teeth of pain,
Break down thy vine ere yet grape-gatherers prune,
Slay me ere day can slay desire again;
Ah God, ah God, that day should be so soon.

Yea, with thy sweet lips, with thy sweet sword; yea
Take life and all, for I will die, I say;
Love, I gave love, is life a better boon?
For sweet night’s sake I will not live till day;
Ah God, ah God, that day should be so soon.

Nay, I will sleep then only; nay, but go.
Ah sweet, too sweet to me, my sweet, I know
Love, sleep, and death go to the sweet same tune;
Hold my hair fast, and kiss me through it so.
Ah God, ah God, that day should be so soon.

Rudyard Kipling

The Lovers’ Litany

Eyes of grey — a sodden quay,
Driving rain and falling tears,
As the steamer puts to sea
In a parting storm of cheers.

Sing, for Faith and Hope are high —
None so true as you and I —
Sing the Lovers’ Litany: —
“Love like ours can never die!”
Eyes of black — a throbbing keel,
Milky foam to left and right;
Whispered converse near the wheel
In the brilliant tropic night.
Cross that rules the Southern Sky!
Stars that sweep, and turn, and fly
Hear the Lovers’ Litany: —
“Love like ours can never die!"
Eyes of brown — a dusty plain
Split and parched with heat of June.
Flying hoof and tightened rein,
Hearts that beat the ancient tune.
Side by side the horses fly,
Frame we now the old reply
Of the Lovers’ Litany: —
“Love like ours can never die!”
Eyes of blue — the Simla Hills
Silvered with the moonlight hoar;
Pleading of the waltz that thrills,
Dies and echoes round Benmore.
“Mabel, ” “Officers, ” “Good-bye, ”
Glamour, wine, and witchery —
On my soul’s sincerity,
“Love like ours can never die!”
Maidens, of your charity,
Pity my most luckless state.
Four times Cupid’s debtor I —
Bankrupt in quadruplicate.
Yet, despite my evil case,
An’ a maiden showed me grace,
Four-and-forty times would I
Sing the Lovers’ Litany: —
“Love like ours can never die!”

The Starred Coverlet

A difficult achievement for true lovers
Is to lie mute, without embrace or kiss,
Without a rustle or a smothered sigh,
Basking each in the other’s glory.
Let us not undervalue lips or arms
As reassurances of constancy,
Or speech as necessary communication
When troubled hearts go groping through the dusk;
Yet lovers who have learned this last refinement —
To lie apart, yet sleep and dream together
Motionless under their starred coverlet —
Crown love with wreaths of myrtle.

John Wain

Eighth Types of Ambiguity

“Love is too young to know what conscience is,
Yet who knows not, conscience is born of love?”
It seems a meaning we could hardly miss.
Yet even such pellucid lines may prove
Unwilling to be readily construed;
Their needle travels in a double groove.

For love we find both delicate and crude;
And poets long ago began to ask
“Love rules the world, but is the world subdued?”
So understanding love is quite a task,
And Shakespeare was no more than being wise
In fitting out his statement with a mask;
For love is always seen with bleary eyes
And conscience (meaning “consciousness”) defines
The fire that blazes in a gale of sighs.
But still for love the silly spirit pines
In searching for the logic of its dream,
In pacing endlessly those dark confines.
When love as germ invades the purple stream
It splashes round the veins and multiplies
Till objects of desire are what they seem;
Then all creation wears a chic disguise,
And consciousness becomes a clever changer
Turning a punishment into a prize.
And so to every type love is a danger.
Some think it means no more than saying Yes,
And some turn canine when they reach the manger.
It seems a meaning we could hardly guess.

Elizabeth Jennings

Beyond Possession

Our images withdraw, the rose returns
To what it was before we looked at it.
We lift our look from where the water runs
And it’s pure river once again, we write
No emblems on the trees. A way begins
Of living where we have no need to beat
The petals down to get the scent of rose
Or sign our features where the water goes.

All is itself. Each man himself entire,
Not even plucking out his thoughts, not even
Bringing a tutored wilfulness to bear
Upon the rose, the water. Each has given
Essence of water back to itself, essence of flower,
Till he is yoked to his own heart and driven
Inward to find a private kind of peace
And not a mind reflecting his own face.
Yet must go deeper still, must move to love
Where thought is free to let the water ride,
Is liberal to the rose giving it life
And setting even its own shadow aside
Till flower and water blend with freedom of
Passion that does not close them in and hide
Their deepest natures; but the heart is strong
To beat with rose and river in one song.

Philip Hobsbaum

Heart’s Journey

How many times I caught sight of your face
Looking away, how many weary days
Tracking you down through endless trodden ways?
Did you go round that corner? When I looked
Only the long street stretched, level and bare,
So many days I searched, so many ways.
Were you the one, poised to alight, who fled
Seeing my glance? Or, in the window caught,
Half-turned away, it seemed, away always?
Or could it be this: imprinted in my brain
Always you flee my path like a shadow lost
Down trodden ways through my downtrodden days?
Do what you will, flit when you may, in shade
Or subtle moonlight, know I seek you out
Day after day through all these dreary ways,
Trusting, at last, to meet you face to face,
Sure touch of hand, pressure of lip, to end
My journey through so many ways and days.

William Butler Yeats

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

Edgar Allan Poe

Annabel Lee

It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
That to love and be loved by me.
She was a child and I was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea,
But we loved with a love that was more than love —
I and my Annabel Lee;
With a love that the winged seraphs of Heaven
Coveted her and me.
And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud by night
Chilling my Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsmen came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,
Went envying her and me: —
Yes! — that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud chilling
And killing my Annabel Lee.
But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we —
Of many far wiser than we —
And neither the angels in Heaven above
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee: —
For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I see the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling, my darling, my life and my bride,
In her sepulchre there by the sea —
In her tomb by the side of the sea.

Sylvia Plath

Poppies In October

Even the sun-clouds this morning cannot manage with skirts
Nor the woman in the ambulance
Whose red heart blooms through her coat so astoundingly —

A gift, a love gift
Utterly unasked for
By a sky
Palely and flamily
Igniting its carbon monoxides, by eyes
Dulled to a halt under bowlers.
O my God, what am I
That these late mouths should cry open
In a forest of frost, in a dawn of cornflowers.

Edna St Vincent Millay

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,
Or nagged by want past resolution’s power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It well may be. I do not think I would.