The Best Love Poems of All Time

[Admin]

I'd like to compile a list of the best love poems of all time.

This is one of my favorites:

http://www.online-literature.com/donne/371/



PLEASE RESPECT COPYRIGHT LAWS: READ THIS BEFORE POSTING:

http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?t=17515

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[Koa]

(how long has this topic been here? i had never seen it)

The one that comes to my mind now is by Emily Dickinson, and it starts with:

I cannot live-with you
It would be life
and life is over there
behind the shelf
the sexton keeps the key to

or this is what i remember by heart... I dont know if it's on this site...I cna write it all when i have time, or look for a link.

[Downer]

A nice bit of cummings is hard to beat:

http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/eecummings/mayifeel.shtml

Downer

[MadammeCal]

Hello All, I just love this site. And it is so great that so many are inspired by the deepest emotions of others. Some words penetrate to the core of my being, its so amazing that something so powerful are only appreciated by so few.

[Phoenix_Tears]

i believe my favourite love poem would be one written by this guy( nicknamed Phoenix_Arises, odd huh? but i swear its not me) i stumbled upon it a drakkan.com in poetry. i only remember one line,

"I'll gladly take you up to heaven
Because that is where all angels belong"

i printed it and its somewhere i n my numerous folders...hmm i think i might drag it out someday.
-Phoen-X

[gatsbysghost]

Jim Morrison Wilderness vol. 2

I am troubled immeasurably
by your eyes
I am struck by the feather
of your soft reply

Broken glass
speaks quick disdain
and conceals what your
heart trys to explain.

Simple and short but still a good one from the lizard king.

[tree]

I'd like to compile a list of the best love poems of all time.
i like them
This is one of my favorites:

http://www.online-literature.com/donne/371/

[Shea]

This is one of my favorite songs to play on my harp, but its more my favorite because of the words and the story behind it. The Irish poet Thomas Moore (1779-1852) wrote this song for his wife after she contracted a disfiguring skin disease and feared he would no longer care for her.

Believe me, if all those endearing young charms
Which I gaze on so fondly today,
Were to change by tomorrow, and fleet in my arms
Like fairy gifts fading away;
Thou wouldst still be adored
As this moment thou art,
Let thy loveliness fade as it will.
And around the dear ruin each wish of my heart
Would entwine itself verdantly still.

It is not while beauty and youth are thine own,
And thy cheeks unprofaned by a tear,
That the fervour and faith of a soul can be known,
To which time will but make thee more dear.
No, the heart that has truly loved never forgets,
But as truly loves on to the close,
As the sun-flower turns on her god, when he sets,
The same look which she turned when he rose.

[Lothwen]

This is one of my favourite poems written by one of my favourite poetesses (of course it is translation, but the "official", not mine :D )

Nothin Twice - Wislawa Szymborska

Nothing can ever happen twice.
In consequence, the sorry fact is
that we arrive here improvised
and leave without the chance to practice.

Even if there is no one dumber,
if you're the planet's biggest dunce,
you can't repeat the class in summer:
this course is only offered once.

No day copies yesterday,
no two nights will teach what bliss is
in precisely the same way,
with exactly the same kisses.

One day, perhaps, some idle tongue
mentions your name by accident:
I feel as if a rose were flung
into the room, all hue and scent.

The next day, though you're here with me,
I can't help looking at the clock:
A rose? A rose? What could that be?
Is it a flower or a rock?

Why do we treat the fleeting day
with so much needless fear and sorrow?
It's in its nature not to stay:
Today is always gone tomorrow.

With smiles and kisses, we prefer
to seek accord beneath our star,
although we're different (we concur)
just as two drops of water are.

[putty]

I agree that Donne's Valediction poem is one of the best loved with its wonderful figure of the compass. I think Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale" should also make the list.

[putty]

I misread "love" for "loved" in suggesting Keats' Ode. With an apology I want to add that Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress" should be on the list of best "love" poems.[/i]

[Zoe]

This poem is one of the most widly love poems in the world, written about her husband Robert Browning.

"How do i love thee, let me count the ways"
"if god choose, i shall but love thee better after death"

just 2 lovely lines - looking the rest up on the net is worth it - i love it.

[AbdoRinbo]

At the end of the poem, you realize Rimbaud was referring to the waking dawn, not a fleeing lover. A beautiful personification of a different kind of love, in my opinion.

'I embraced the summer dawn.

Nothing yet stirred on the face of the palaces. The water was dead. The shadows still camped in the woodland road. I walked, waking quick warm breaths; and stones looked on, and wings rose without sound.

The first venture was, in a path already filled with fresh, pale gleams, a flower who told me her name.

I laughed at the blond watterfall that tousled through the pines: on silver summer I recognized the goddess.

Then, one by one, I lifted up her veils. In the lane, waving my arms. Across the plain, where I notified the ****. In the city, she fled among the steeples and the domes; and running like a beggar on the marble quays, I chased her.

Above the road near a laurel wood, I wrapped her up in her gathered veils, and I felt a little her immense body. Dawn and the child fell down at the edge of the wood.

Waking, it was noon.'

[The original French]

'J'ai embrassé l'aube d'été.

Rien ne bougeait encore au front des palais. L'eau était mortre. Les camps d'ombres ne quittaient pas la route du bois. J'ai marché, réveillant les haleines vives et tièdes; et les pierries regardèrent, et les ailes se levèrent sans bruit.

La première enterprise fut, dans le sentier déjà empli de frais et blêmes éclats, une fleur qui me dit son nom.

Je ris au wasserfall blond qui s'échevela à travers les sapins: à la cime argentée je reconnus la déesse.

Alors je levai un à les voiles. Dans l'allée, en agitant les bras. Par la plaine, où je l'ai dénoncée au coq. A la grand'ville elle fuyait parmi les clochers et les dômes, et, courant comme un mendiant sur les quais de marbre, je la chassais.

En haut de la route, près d'un bois de lauriers. Je l'ai entourée avec ses voiles amassés, et j'ai senti un peu son immense corps. L'aube et l'enfant tombèrent au bas du bois.

Au réveil, il était midi.'

[penscrimson]

Easy...this request. One of the greatest 'love' poems of all time, you ask? Search no further than Bob Dylan's 'Blood On The Tracks' album. Cue up to 'Simple Twist Of Fate'. For those of you who will or can not...here it is.

They sat together in the park
As the evening sky grew dark
She looked at him and he felt a spark tingle to his bones
'twas then he felt alone and wished that he'd gone straight
And watched out for a simple twist of fate.

They walked along by the old canal
A little confused, I remember well
And stopped into a strange hotel with a neon burning bright
He felt the heat of the night hit him like a freight train
Moving with a simple twist of fate.

A saxophone someplace far off played
As she was walking by the arcade
As the light bust through the beat-up shade where he was wakin up
She dropped a coin into the cup of a blind man at the gate
And forgot about a simple twist of fate.

He woke up, the room was bare
He didn't see her anywhere.
He told himself he didn't care, pushed the window open wide
Felt an emptiness inside to which he just could not relate
Brought on by a simple twist of fate.

He hears the ticking of the clocks
And walks along with a parrot that talks.
Hunts her down by the waterfront docks where the sailors all come in.
Maybe she'll pick him out again, how long must he wait
Once more for a simple twist of fate.

People tell me it's a sin
to know and feel too much within
I still believe she was my twin, but I lost the ring
She was born in spring, but I was born too late
Blame it on a simple twist of fate.

Bob Dylan
(Born Robert Zimmerman)

[b]

This will be my shortest reply ever:

Dante

[Stillborn]

Everyone has a different opinion about the "best poem". I know that the poems i like at the moment reflect things going on in my life. Dead ends, betrayed by my lover, misplaced trust, And total depression.

[Isagel]

Perhaps not a poem, but poetic and the most beautiful thing written about love that I can find :

I Corinthians 13 (Revised Standard Version)

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never ends; as for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For our knowledge is imperfect and our prophecy is imperfect; but when the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away.

When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood.

So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

[Carmella]

Annabell 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
Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she 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 wingèd 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, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee,
So that her high-born 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 one night,
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 feel 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 the sepulchre there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.

This is one of my all time favourite poems by Edgar Allan Poe. I have lost count of the number of times I find myself reading it. It is most definitely a love poem, albeit a rather tragic one.

[Isagel]

A swedish poet called Karin Boye has written alot of beautiful poems about love. Her way of using swedish makes the words sing. Unfortunately english somehow kills them. This one is one of the few that survives translation, if somewhat bruised in the process. It´s translated by Jenny Nunn and I found it at http://www.karinboye.se/verk/dikter/dikter-engelska/ :

How Can I Tell ...
How can I tell if your voice is beautiful.
I only know, that it penetrates me
and makes me shake like a leaf
and tears me to shreds and splits me.

What do I know about your skin and limbs.
It makes me tremble that they are yours,
so for me there is no sleep or rest,
till they are mine.

[AbdoRinbo]

I'll try and translate it into Logban.

[Isagel]

Sorry. I guess it´s some kind of joke but I don´t get it.
Logban?

[Isagel]

Never mind, now I know what Logban is (used ten minutes of work time to find clues) Like esperanto?
But why Logban? Will it sound better?

[Sindhu]

I've got three favourite love poems all very different from each other:

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let airplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crpe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood,
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
-Auden.

Non Sum Qualis Eram Bonae Sub Regno Cynarae
Last night, ah, yesternight, betwixt her lips and mine
There fell thy shadow, Cynara! thy breath was shed
Upon my soul between the kisses and the wine;
And I was desolate and sick of an old passion,
Yea, I was desolate and bowed my head:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.

All night upon mine heart I felt her warm heart beat,
Night-long within mine arms in love and sleep she lay;
Surely the kisses of her bought red mouth were sweet;
But I was desolate and sick of an old passion,
When I awoke and found the dawn was gray;
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.

I have forgot much, Cynara! gone with the wind,
Flung roses, roses riotously with the throng,
Dancing, to put thy pale, lost lilies out of mind;
But I was desolate and sick of an old passion,
Yea, all the time, because the dance was long;
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.

I cried for madder music and for stronger wine,
But when the feast is finished and the lamps expire,
Then falls thy shadow, Cynara! the night is thine;
And I was desolate and sick of an old passion,
Yea hungry for the lips of my desire:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.
-Ernest Dowson

It lies not in our power to love, or hate,
For will in us is over-rulde by fate.
When two are stript long ere the course begin,
We wish that one should lose, the other win.
And one especially doo we affect,
Of two gold Ingots like in each respect,
The reason no man knowes, let it suffise,
What we behold is censur'd by our eyes.
Where both deliberat, the love is slight,
Who ever lov'd, that lov'd not at first sight?
-Marlowe.

[lazy cat]

This is one of my most favourite poems,I do have more ,but they are in Greek and I wouldn't dare to try and translate them... I Like For You to be Still"
By Pablo Neruda

I like for you to be still: it is as though you were absent,
and you hear me from far away and my voice does not touch you.
It seems as though your eyes had flown away
and it seems that a kiss had sealed your mouth.

As all things are filled with my soul
you emerge from the things, filled with my soul.
You are like my soul, a butterfly of dream,
and you are like the word Melancholy.

I like for you to be still, and you seem far away.
It sounds as though you were lamenting, a butterfly cooing like a dove.
And you hear me from far away, and my voice does not reach you:
Let me come to be still in your silence.

And let me talk to you with your silence
that is bright as a lamp, simple as a ring.
You are like the night, with its stillness and constellations.
Your silence is that of a star, as remote and candid.

I like for you to be still: it is as though you were absent,
distant and full of sorrow as though you had died.
One word then, one smile, is enough.
And I am happy, happy that it's not true.

[AbdoRinbo]

Logban's purpose would be to create a universal language that isn't rooted in Latin (instead, it will be rooted in all languages). Its purpose is to deconstruct the language of western imperialism, and some other shít.

[apstudent]

Anything that starts with Roses are Red. My favorite being:

Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
I love you.

[sloegin]

And I bet you believe all the canon bulls*ht, they teach you.

[Isagel]

Originally posted by lazy cat

And let me talk to you with your silence
that is bright as a lamp, simple as a ring.
[/B]

That was wonderful! I´ve never read a love poem like it. Now I have to read something more by Neruda. Thank you.

[AbdoRinbo]

I can't imagine he'd find much time for poetry readings between PT and reloading his M16.

He's one of God's soldiers, you know.

[sloegin]

God's soldiers are funny. The days of Gallows Hill. Ah, those where the days...

[AbdoRinbo]

Back in those days the shtick never went cold.

[sloegin]

There was always something worth while to get your tunic in a bunch. Better than TV. And more entertaining to boot.

[AbdoRinbo]

Posts are disappearing in a precarious way. Perhaps it means something?

[sloegin]

There must be a golem at work.

[AbdoRinbo]

I'll consult the Sefer Yetzira.

[AbdoRinbo]

Nope, nothing.

[sloegin]

Loew and behold, I was almost postive that's what it was. Perhaps it was a garden gnome from Montmartre?

[AbdoRinbo]

Heh, do you ever listen to coast-to-coast AM with Art Bell? This lady called in a few weeks ago and claimed that her garden gnomes were walking her land (which was supposed to symbolize the suffering of the native americans somehow). Next day it was alien abduction. Yesterday it was the transmigration of the soul, &c., &c.

Someone has a new theory every night.

[sloegin]

Nah. What time's it on?

[AbdoRinbo]

It is on at midnight in Detroit. It usually goes until two or three in the morning, maybe later.

[sloegin]

I'll look for it.

[AbdoRinbo]

Lately Art Bell has not been hosting; incidentally, his daughter was kidnapped. What fùcking luck. Anyway, they got this new guy, George Norry, on as host who is out there. I mean, in the ether. You really should check it out if you get a chance.

[sloegin]

I'll check it out, in about half an hour.

[sloegin]

I'm listening to it now. The host doesn't seem, to be that far out there. The guest is another story.

[AbdoRinbo]

It's funny thoug when he talks about his childhood and his psychic/out-of-body experiences. Total slapstick.

[sloegin]

I bet. W.C. Fields, is still the king.

Do you know who Ram Dhas(sp?) is?

Sefer Yetzira, reminds me of a movie called, the symbol for pi.

[AbdoRinbo]

Aranofsky's Pi? That's an awesome film.

Who is Ram Dhas?

[sloegin]

Yeah, that's the flick. The crazy hassidics in it.

He was some big wig at Harvard in the late 50's. Then he gave the students LSD. Got booted out. Moved to India. Came back here, changed his name and started writing craZy stuff.

[AbdoRinbo]

Like what stuff?

[sloegin]

Hang on a sec.

[sloegin]

Be Here Now, without digging more.

[sloegin]

It's Ram Dass. His name was Dr. Richard Alpert.

[AbdoRinbo]

Was he Hindu or Zen?

[AbdoRinbo]

Because I'm thinking of Krishnamurti for some reason. Ram Dass does sound familiar.

[sloegin]

He's like Dali on acid.

[sloegin]

I'm thinking Buddhist/Zen, but I'm not positive. I'd consider it more of a pot-luck.

[james_schwartz]

~ponders this...~ hmm...Tennyson's "The Lady of Shalot"...

[Stanislaw]

The Lady of Shallot is a good one. The song is also pretty good. Does anyone know who sang it?

[nicholasburrus]

I'll try em

[sloegin]

Don't hurt yourself.

[David J]

What about Whitman's Song of Myself?

[poeboy]

" She walks in beauty like the night of cloudless climes and starry skies, and all that's best of dark and bright meet in her aspect and her eyes...." Sigh!
One of my favorite poems of all time.

[Demona]

One of my favourite abstracts about love would be by Demon in Lermontov's poem - The Demon.
I have found the English version of it and i shall post the beginning...but i must say that it isn't even as near good as the original....
but...here goes:

Demon

By the first day of the creation
And by its latest day I swear,
By God's law and its violation
The triumph of eternal truth,
The bitter shame of sin I bear;
By the brief glory of this dream
I swear, and by our meeting here
And by the threat of separation;
I swear by all the spirit hosts
Whom Fate has set at my command,
On swords divine I take my oath
As wielded by my enemies
The impassive, sleepless angel band;
I swear by you, your life, your death,
Your last, long look and your first tear,
The gentle drawing of your breath,
The silken torrents of your hair;
I swear by suffering and bliss,
I swear even by this love of ours,-
I have renounced all vengefulness
I have renounced the pride of years;

etc....it's pretty long...

[zerotule]

george gascoigne- ?1525-1577
also these poems=
"the strange passion of lover",
"the crystal glass and the glass of steel",


"a lover`s lullaby"

sing lullaby, as women do,
wherewith they bring their babies to
rest;
and lullaby can i sing to
as womanly as can the best
with lullaby they still the child
and, if i be not much beguiled,
full many a wanton babe have i,
which must be stilled with lullaby.

first, lullaby my youthfull years!
it is now time to go to bed,
for crooked age and hoary hairs
have won the haven within my head.
with lullaby then, youth, be still,
with lullaby content thy will.
since courage quails and comes behind,
go sleep, and so beguile thy mind!

next, lullaby my gazing eyes,
which wonted were to glance aspace,
for every glass may now suffice
to show the furrows in my face!
with lullaby then wink a while;
with lulaby yours looks beguile;
let no fair face, nor beauty bright,
entice you eft with vain delight.

and lullaby my wanton will!
let reason`s rule now rein thy thought;
since all too late i find my skill
how dear i have thy fancies bought,
with lullaby now take thine ease,
with lullaby thy doubts appease,
for trust to this, if thou be still
my body shall obey thy will.

Eke lullaby my loving boy-
my little robin, take thy rest!
since age is cold and nothing coy,
keep close thy coin, for so is best.
with lullaby be thou content,
with lullaby thy lusts relent!
let others pay which have more pence;
thou are too poor for such expense.

thus lullaby my youth, mine eyes,
my will, my ware, and all thet was!
i can no more delays devise;
but welcome pain, let pleasure pass!
with lulaby now take your leave,
with lullaby your dreams deceive,
and when you rise with waking eye,
remember then this lullaby.

Hundredth Sundry Flowers, about 1572
from a small leatherbound book called [the biblots/an elizabethan garland].
jm

[zerotule]

by John Greenleaf Whittier

just a bit from this long poem-story


http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~pattyrose/rose/extra/mogg.html



There’s a sudden light in the Indian’s glance,
A moment’s trace of powerful feeling –
Of love or triumph, or both perchance,
Over his proud, calm features stealing.
‘The words of my father are very good —
He shall have the land, and water, and wood,
And he who harms the Sagamore John
Shall feel the knife of MOGG MEGONE –
But the fawn of the Yengeese shall sleep on my breast,
And the bird of the clearing shall sing in my nest.’

‘But, father!’ and the Indian’s hand
Falls gently on the white man’s arm,
And, with a smile as shrewdly bland
As the deep voice is slow and calm:
‘Where is my father’s singing-bird –
The sunny eye and sunset hair?
I know I have my father’s word,
And that his word is good and fair;
But, will my father tell me where
Megone shall go and look for his bride? –
For he sees her not by her father’s side.’

The dark, stern eye of Bonython
Flashes over the features of MOGG MEGONE,
In one of those glances which search within –
But the stolid calm of the Indian alone
Remains where the trace of emotion had been.
‘Does the Sachem doubt? Let him go with me,
And the eyes of the Sachem his bride shall see.’

Cautious and slow, with pauses oft,
And watchful eyes and whispers soft,
The twain are stealing through the wood,
Leaving the downward-rushing flood,
Whose deep and hollow roar behind,
Grows fainter on the evening wind.

A cottage hidden in the wood –
Red through its seams a light is glowing,
On rock and bough and tree-trunk rude,
A narrow lustre throwing.
‘Who’s there?’ a clear, firm voice demands –
‘Hold, Ruth – ‘t is I – the Sagamore!’
Quick, at the summons, hasty hands
Unclose the bolted door;
And on the outlaw’s daughter shine
The flashes of the kindled pine.

Tall and erect the maiden stands,
Like some young priestess of the wood,
Some creature born of Solitude,
And bearing still the wild and rude,
Yet noble trace of Nature’s hands –
Her dark-brown cheek has caught its stain
More from the sunshine than the rain;
Yet, where her long fair hair is parting,
A pure white brow into light is starting;
And, where the folds of her mantle sever,
Are a neck and bosom as white as ever
The foam-wreaths rise on the leaping river.
But, in the convulsive quiver and grip
Of the muscles around her bloodless lip,
There is something painful and sad to see’
And her eye has a glance more sternly wild
Than even that of a forest-child,
In it fearless and untamed freedom should be.

Oh! seldom, in hall or court, are seen
So queenly a form and so noble a mien,
As freely and smiling she welcomes them there –
Her outlawed sire and MOGG MEGONE;
‘Pray, father, how does thy hunting fare?
And, Sachem, say – does Scamman wear,
In spite of thy promise, a scalp of his own?’
Careless and light is the maiden’s tone;
But a fearful meaning lurks within
Her glance, as it questions the eye of Megone --
An awful meaning of guilt and sin! –
The Indian hath opened his blanket, and there
Hangs a human scalp by its long damp hair!

Now, God have mercy! – that maiden’s fingers
Are touching the scalp where the blood still lingers –
Turning up to the light its soft brown hair!
What an evil triumph her eye reveals!
What a baleful smile on her pale face steals –
Is the soul of a fiend in a form so fair?
Nay – traces of feeling are visible now,
In that quivering lip and that writhing brow!
But who shall measure the thoughts within,
Of hatred and love, of passion and sin?
Does not the eye of her mind go back
On the gloom and guilt of her stormy track? –
The traitor’s lip by her kisses met –
The traitor’s hand by her fine tears wet –
The trustless hopes on his promise built –
The gust of passion – the hell of guilt!
The warm embrace, when her tresses fair
Mingled themselves with that scalp’s brown hair –
And idly and fondly her small hand played
In dalliance sweet with its light and shade!
And, what are those tears which her wild eyes dim,
But tears of sorrow and love for him? –
For him, who drugged her cup with shame –
With a curse for her heart, and a blight for her name?
For him, whom her vengeance hath tracked so long,
Feeding its torch with the thought of wrong?

[Helga]

I have to say that one of my favourite love poems is Anabel Lee by Edgar Alan Poe it starts like this:

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
Than to love and be loved by me.


It's very sad and very beutyful, if you haven't read it you should.

[nothingman87]

There's a simple answer to this inquiry:
DANTE
Also, believe it or not my favorite romantic poet is Mr. Edgar Allan Poe. Try, Annabel Lee and Serenade.

[Isagel]

Rainer Maria Rilke:
"A good marriage is that in which each appoints the other guardian of his solitude. Once the realisation is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole and against a wide sky. Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other."

[verybaddmom]

I know that John Donne has been mentioned with regards to "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" but do not forget "Sonne Rising". nothing quite like making the bed of love the center of the world...

[hal9000]

Originally posted by Isagel
Rainer Maria Rilke:
"A good marriage is that in which each appoints the other guardian of his solitude. Once the realisation is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole and against a wide sky. Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other."

Thanks for this; it's well worth saving and remembering.

[Isagel]

I´m glad that you liked it.

Gibran wrote something similar in The Prophet, I thought you might like it:

Marriage



Then Almitra spoke again and said, "And what of Marriage, master?"

And he answered saying:

You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore.

You shall be together when white wings of death scatter your days.

Aye, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God.

But let there be spaces in your togetherness,

And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.

Love one another but make not a bond of love:

Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup.

Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.

Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,

Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.

Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping.

For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.

And stand together, yet not too near together:

For the pillars of the temple stand apart,

And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.

[hal9000]

Very nice. Gibran's, The Prophet, was very popular sometime back.

In other words, (and not to make light of the insight and romantic imagery) don't buy matching jogging suits. :D

[Isagel]

I´m a bit ambivalent towards the The Prophet. It´s is beautifully written, but some of the ideas I´m not sure I like at all. But this part I really do like.

(Mmm - I wonder - is it OK to read the same books? :-) )

[kilted exile]

Love me not for comely grace


LOVE not me for comely grace,
For my pleasing eye or face,
Nor for any outward part,
No, nor for my constant heart,—
For those may fail, or turn to ill, 5
So thou and I shall sever:
Keep therefore a true woman's eye,
And love me still, but know not why—
So hast thou the same reason still
To doat upon me ever! 10

[Miranda]

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediment.Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:-

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 ev'n to the edge of doom:-

If this be error, and upon me proved
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

W Shakespeare

[emily655321]

I've always loved "Faustine" by Algernon Charles Swinburne. A small, sickly guy who loved partying, paganism and free love -- a Lord Byron wannabe born half a century too late. It seems either people love him or hate him, because no one else I know likes him. But I think he's a lot of fun. :D This poem is too long, and possibly too racy, to post here so here's a link:

http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/poem2082.html

[Xiketa]

Neruda wrote some of the best love poems without any doubt. I'm spanish so maybe it is easy for me to enjoy Neruda's poetry but you must read "Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche". I have found it in english but it's not the same... I like to read poetry in the original language, it's better but I guess you would not understand it in spanish :)

SADDEST POEM
I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.

Write, for instance: "The night is full of stars,
and the stars, blue, shiver in the distance."

The night wind whirls in the sky and sings.

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

On nights like this, I held her in my arms.
I kissed her so many times under the infinite sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her.
How could I not have loved her large, still eyes?

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
To think I don't have her. To feel that I've lost her.

To hear the immense night, more immense without her.
And the poem falls to the soul as dew to grass.

What does it matter that my love couldn't keep her.
The night is full of stars and she is not with me.

That's all. Far away, someone sings. Far away.
My soul is lost without her.

As if to bring her near, my eyes search for her.
My heart searches for her and she is not with me.

The same night that whitens the same trees.
We, we who were, we are the same no longer.

I no longer love her, true, but how much I loved her.
My voice searched the wind to touch her ear.

Someone else's. She will be someone else's. As she once
belonged to my kisses.
Her voice, her light body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, true, but perhaps I love her.
Love is so short and oblivion so long.

Because on nights like this I held her in my arms,
my soul is lost without her.

Although this may be the last pain she causes me,
and this may be the last poem I write for her.

[amuse]

por favor, Xiketa, quiero leerla en espanol, si la tiene. gracias.

[Xiketa]

Yes, of course I have it! :)

PUEDO ESCRIBIR LOS VERSOS MÁS TRISTES ESTA NOCHE

Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.

Escribir, por ejemplo: "La noche está estrellada,
y tiritan, azules, los astros, a lo lejos."

El viento de la noche gira en el cielo y canta.

Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.
Yo la quise, y a veces ella también me quiso.

En las noches como esta la tuve entre mis brazos.
La besé tantas veces bajo el cielo infinito.

Ella me quiso, a veces yo también la quería.
Cómo no haber amado sus grandes ojos fijos.

Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.
Pensar que no la tengo. Sentir que la he perdido.

Oir la noche inmensa, más inmensa sin ella.
Y el verso cae al alma como al pasto el rocío.

Qué importa que mi amor no pudiera guardarla.
La noche esta estrellada y ella no está conmigo.

Eso es todo. A lo lejos alguien canta. A lo lejos.
Mi alma no se contenta con haberla perdido.

Como para acercarla mi mirada la busca.
Mi corazón la busca, y ella no está conmigo.

La misma noche que hace blanquear los mismos árboles.
Nosotros, los de entonces, ya no somos los mismos.

Ya no la quiero, es cierto, pero cuánto la quise.
Mi voz buscaba el viento para tocar su oído.

De otro. Será de otro. Como antes de mis besos.
Su voz, su cuerpo claro. Sus ojos infinitos.

Ya no la quiero, es cierto, pero tal vez la quiero.
Es tan corto el amor, y es tan largo el olvido.

Porque en noches como esta la tuve entre mis brazos,
mi alma no se contenta con haberla perdido.

Aunque este sea el ultimo dolor que ella me causa,
y estos sean los ultimos versos que yo le escribo.

[aabashenya]

One of the best love poets of all time, in my opinion, is the French poet Guillaume Apollinaire. "Company Commander" is one of my favorite love poems:

"My mouth will flame the sulphurs of the Pit
You will find my mouth a hell of sweetness and seduction
My mouth's angels will hold sway in your heart
My mouth's soldiers will take you by storm
The priests of my mouth will cense your beauty
Your soul will shake like a terrain in an earthquake
Your eyes will be charged will all the love that humanity has stored up in its eyes since the beginning
My mouth will be an army against you a stumbling awkward army
Tricky as a magician with his sleight of changing shapes
The choirs and orchestra of my mouth will tell you my love
It murmurs to you now from far away
While I stand here eyes fastened to my watch waiting for the exact moment to go over the top"

~ Company Commander (Chef de section), Guillaume Apollinaire

And as always, e.e. cummings and Dickinson are favorites as well. Also, check out Arthur Rimbaud, Paul Verlaine, and Langston Hughes.

Yours,
Raven

Love is anterior to life,
Posterior to death,
Initial of creation, and
The exponent of breath.

~ Emily Dickinson

[Monica]

My favourite one is by Paul Eluard, but somehow I don't know its title, I can't find it anywhere. I can only write it in Polish:

Z czołem na szybie jak w smutku bezsenni
Niebo którego noc przebyłem
Małe równiny w moich otwartych dłoniach
W ich podwójnym horyzoncie biernym obojętnym
Z czołem na szybie jak w smutku bezsenni

Szukam Cię poza oczekiwaniem
Szukam Cie poza sobą
I już nie wiem tak Cię kocham
Kto z nas dwojga jest nieobecny

[Monica]

I've found another one by Paul Eluard. This time fortunately in English.

The Beloved

She is standing on my eyelids
And her hair is wound in mine,
She has the form of my hands,
She has the colour of my eyes,
She is swallowed by my shadow
Like a stone against the sky.


Her eyes are always open
And will not let me sleep.
Her dreams in broad daylight
Make the suns evaporate
Make me laugh, cry and laugh,
Speak with nothing to say.

[amuse]

:) beautiful.

[anabanana]

My favorite love poem by Henrry VIII annd is called greensleeves, I do´t remember it well, but I think it is like:

Greensleeves was my delight
greensleeves was my heart of gold
Greensleeves was my heart of joy
and who but my lady greensleeves?

[mono]

The most romantic poem in history proves difficult to decide, but Shakespeare's sonnet LXXV should make the list.

So are you to my thoughts as food to life,
Or as sweet-season'd showers are to the ground;
And for the peace of you I hold such strife
As 'twixt a miser and his wealth is found;
Now proud as an enjoyer and anon
Doubting the filching age will steal his treasure,
Now counting best to be with you alone,
Then better'd that the world may see my pleasure;
Sometime all full with feasting on your sight
And by and by clean starved for a look;
Possessing or pursuing no delight,
Save what is had or must from you be took.
Thus do I pine and surfeit day by day,
Or gluttoning on all, or all away.

[WingedSpirit]

My favorate is <<when u r old>> by William Butler Yeats:

WHEN you are old and gray 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.

[vango]

"Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! "
Matthew Arnold: Dover Beach
they may be the sadest lines in the history. in this untrue world, the only thing that is true is true love. but is love always be true?

[Miranda]

Vango,
Shakespeare says 'love is not love which alters when it alterations finds'. In other words, if love ends then it wasn't true love to begin with because love is everlasting.

Miranda

[vango]

Hi, Miranda. Maybe you and Shakespeare are right. But before the feeling (since it is not love in your sense, i can only think of this word) ends, we take it as love. And when one is in..., he doesn't know (till he dies) if it will end some day. Anyway, Anything may happen. So no one can tell if he is in the true love? Only others can after his death?

[bjortan]

My favorate is <<when u r old>> by William Butler Yeats:

WHEN you are old and gray and full of sleep...



I can't help it, but this reminds me of another far less pretty verse:

Since I still appreciate you
Let's find love while we may
Because I know I'll hate you
When you are old and gray

So say you love me here and now
I'll make the most of that
Say you love and trust me
For I know you'll disgust me
When you're old and getting fat

An awful debility, a lessened utility
A loss of mobility is a strong possibility
In all probability I'll lose my virility
And you your fertility and desirability
And this liability of total sterility
Will lead to hostility and a sense of futility
So let's act with agility while we still have facility
For we'll soon reach senility and lose the ability

Your teeth will start to go, dear
Your waist will start to spread
In twenty years or so, dear
I'll wish that you were dead

I'll never love you then at all
The way I do today
So please remember
When I leave in December:
I told you so in May!

(Tom Lehrer)

[Farfalla]

I've always thought Neruda's love and sex poems were the best... but only in their original spanish. Alot of the lyrical effect is lost when its translated.

But still, "I Have Gone Marking" ( "He ido marcando") is definatly one of the best love poems ever written.

the best lines are the last ones:

Cuando he llagado al verice mas atrvido y frio
mi corazon se cierra como una flor nocturna.

translation:

When i have reached the most awesome and the coldest summit
my heart closes like a nocturnal flower.

[mono]

I posted a Shakespeare sonnet here earlier, LXXV, I think, but I thought to share the below that I just read:

My lady carries love within her eyes;
All that she looks on is made a pleasanter;
Upon her path men turn to gaze at her;
He whom she greeteth feels his heart to rise,
And droops his troubled visage, full of sighs,
And of his evil heart is then aware:
Hate loves, and pride becomes a worshipper.
O women, help to praise her in somewise.
Humbleness, and the hope that hopeth well,
By speech of hers into the mind are brought,
And who beholds is blessed oftenwhiles.
The look she hath when she a little smiles
Cannot be said, nor holden in the thought;
'Tis such a new and gracious miracle.

Dante Alighieri
Translated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

[Scheherazade]

There are so many beautiful love poems and I agree with many of those which are posted on here. However, my favorite love poem is by E.E. Cummings. I love his poetry althought I am first to admit that I can barely appreciate and praise them as they should be. :rolleyes:

I would like to hear what you think of this poem as everytime I read it, I am in awe and cannot stop my heart pounding in my chest. So strong to me the feelings and sentiments he expresses in this poem. :blush:




somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look will easily unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

[mono]

Yet another post:

Sonnet LXXV

One day I wrote her name upon the strand,
But came the waves and washed it away:
Again I wrote it with a second hand,
jBut came the tide, and made my pains his prey.
'Vain man,' said she, 'thou do'st in vain assay,
A mortal thing so to immortalize,
For I myself shall like to this decay.
And eek my name be wiped out likewise.'
'Not so,' quoth I, 'let baser things devise
To die in dust, but you shall live by fame:
My verse your virtues rare shall eternize,
And in the heavens write your glorious name,
Where, whenas death shall all the world subdue,
Our love shall live, and later life renew.'

Sir Edmund Spenser

[WingedSpirit]

just got one ancient Chinese poem:

by Wen Tinjun

The feelings of the separation
What there is to say
But that the heart is
An endless river of stars

[Jester]

Some of the best love songs are the best poetry personally my two favorites are "leaving on a jet plane" and "Why don't you and I" the latter one is by CHad Kroeger and Santana

[BSturdy]

Morning Sleep

When ye morning riseth redde
Rise not thou, but keepe thy bedde,
When ye dawne is dull and graye
Sleepe is still ye better way,
Beastes arise betimes - but then
They are beastes, and we are men.

Is ye weather fayre and fine?
It shall give thee dreams divine;
Doth it poure with pelting rayne?
'Tis a hint to doze agayne.
Is it niether drye nor wette?
Waite until ye weather's sette.

Wouldst thou walke unscaveng'd streetes,
Catch from shaken mattes ye sweetes,
Straye forlorne though chillie roomes,
Stumble over casuall broomes,
Scowling house-maydes round thee scan?
These befall ye earlie man.

Morning sleepe avoydeth broyles,
Wasteth not in greedye toyles;
Doth not suffer care nor greefe,
Giveth aking bones releefe.
Of all ye crimes beneath ye sunne,
Say, which in morning sleepe was done?

Anon.

Maybe it's a burlesque, but I love it literally: Can be used as a love poem
In conjunction with a certain Ian Dury track

[Scheherazade]

Which part of the UK are you from originally BSturdy? :)

[BSturdy]

The Bard is hard to beat. Not really a poem exactly but, anyway:

O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!
It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night
Like a rich jewel in an Ethiope's ear;
Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear!
So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows,
As yonder lady o'er her fellows shows.
The measure done, I'll watch her place of stand,
And, touching hers, make blessed my rude hand.
Did my heart love till now? forswear it, sight!
For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night.

[pepper39]

my room is empty...
my self
self-inflicted scars, by myself.

Spinning out of control...
once again I'll go away and hold on
to my pride where I lock it up inside
my room...
my self

it's all empty now
you've drained me of my dignity
self-infliction of wounds poured over
a sauce of *%#@.

easily I fall down on to you from 90 stories
over and over...

Patience is time.
time is ugly, ugly, like me...
easily flying by, 90 stories down onto you.

green eyes, brown possessive cold stares
my life is over and i'm going down with it ending up
in a nightmare of my sanity pushing til' the end of my
chain, chain of love and anger.

full of myself...
once again we come back to you, back again...
we come back to you!

dw

[Scheherazade]

BSturdy> Yes, it seems like Romeo has said it all :)

Pepper39> Is that your own poetry?

[midwest]

This is a good one, short for Donne yet that doesn't make it easier to work through.

Stay, O sweet, and do not rise;
The light that shines comes from thine eyes;
The day breaks not, it is my heart,
Because that you and I must part.
Stay, or else my joys will die.
And perish in their infancy.


Originally I think this is about a dream he had of his wife that had passed on, but let me know what you think!

[Hope`]

My favourite is Wordsworth's - She Was a Phantom of Delight...


She was a Phantom of delight
When first she gleamed upon my sight;
A lovely Apparition, sent
To be a moment's ornament;
Her eyes as stars of Twilight fair;
Like Twilight's, too, her dusky hair;
But all things else about her drawn
From May-time and the cheerful Dawn;
A dancing Shape, an Image gay,
To haunt, to startle, and waylay.

I saw her upon nearer view,
A Spirit, yet a Woman too!
Her household motions light and free,
And steps of virgin-liberty;
A countenance in which did meet
Sweet records, promises as sweet;
A Creature not too bright or good
For human nature's daily food,
For transient sorrows, simple wiles,
Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles.

And now I see with eye serene
The very pulse of the machine;
A Being breathing thoughtful breath,
A Traveller between life and death;
The reason firm, the temperate will,
Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill;
A perfect Woman, nobly planned,
To warn, to comfort, and command;
And yet a Spirit still, and bright
With something of angelic light.

[Rechka]

I thought this poem was beautiful when I read it and I'm normally not a fan of "love poems".

Amor condusse noi ad una morte

Love is an anguish, a question,
a luminous doubt suspended;
it is a desire to know the whole of you
and a fear of finally knowing it.

To love is to reconstruct, when you are away,
your steps, your silences, your words,
and to pretend to follow your thoughts
when unmoving at last by me side, you fall silent.

Love is a secret rage,
an icy and diabolic pride.

To love is not to sleep when in my bed
you dream between my circling arms,
and to hate the dream in which, beneath your brow,
you abandon yourself, perhaps in other arms.

To love is to listen at your breast,
until my greedy ear is glutted,
to the noise of your blood and the tide
of your measured breath.

To love is to absorb your young sap
and join our mouths in one river-bed
until the breeze of your breath
impregnates my entrails forever.

Love is a mute, green envy,
a subtle and shining greed.

To love is to provoke the sweet moment
in which your skin seekd my awakened skin,
to gratify the nocturnal appetite
and to die once more the same death—
provisional, heart-rending, dark.

Love is a thirst, like that of a wound
that burns without being consumed or healing,
and the hunger of a tormented mouth
that begs for more and more and is not sated.

Love is an unaccustomed luxury
and a voracious gluttony, always empty.

But to love is also to close our eyes,
to let sleep invade our bodies
like a river of darkness and oblivion,
and to sail without a course, drifting;
because love, in the end, is indolence.

[SwiftSleigh7]

Some of the best love songs are the best poetry personally my two favorites are "leaving on a jet plane" and "Why don't you and I" the latter one is by CHad Kroeger and Santana

I agree with Leaving on a Jet Plane! It's so sweet!

One of the best love poems is this one... although I don't know who wrote it:

Absence

Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle
Everything I do is stitched with its colour

Tell me what you think of this one?

[mono]

I have posted in this thread multiple times, but, well, this seems the life of a "sucker" for both art and love. I cannot possibly choose my favorite love poem, but I read this poem today, and felt an urge to share.

Lay your sleeping head, my love,
Human on my faithless arm;
Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, and the grave
Proves the child ephemeral;
But in my arms till break of day
Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.

Soul and body have no bounds;
To lovers as they lie upon
Her tolerant enchanted slope
In their ordinary swoon,
Grave the vision Venus sends
Of supernatural sympathy,
Universal love and hope;
While an abstract insight wakes
Among the glaciers and the rocks
The hermit's sensual ecstasy.

Certainy, fidelity
On the stroke of midnight pass
Like vibrations of a bell
And fashionable madmen raise
Their pedantic boring cry;
Every farthing of the cost,
All the dreaded cards foretell,
Shall be paid, but from this night
Not a whisper, not a thought,
Not a kiss nor look be lost.

Beauty, midnight, vision dies;
Let the winds of dawn that blow
Softly round your dreaming head
Such a day of sweetness show
Eye and knocking heart may bless,
Find the mortal world enough;
Noons of dryness see you fed
By the involuntary powers,
Nights of insult let you pass
Watched by every human love.

W.H. Auden (1907-1973)

[SwiftSleigh7]

mono: You act as if you were the only one here. IF YOU FALL for Auden's drivel then you are aptly self-described. I would prefer "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" although I would not be so boorish as to quote it in its entirety. Dialogue, not mono-logue is what I desire. But please, don't be offended by my pale fire! I'm really an easy guy to get to know. If you'd care to, that is.

1 Corinthians 13 is, of course, the best poem on love available. I can guess what's coming next, of course!

[Rifka]

Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress"

[SwiftSleigh7]

:lol:
Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress"

Since when is a poem on seduction an example of love!

It always amazes me how easily people confuse lust with love.

To His Coy Mistress is an elaborate ploy to make the "mistress"
give in to his sexual desires--simply put, he wants to have his way with her.

This is NOT a love poem.

[mono]

I would prefer "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" although I would not be so boorish as to quote it in its entirety.
Good suggestion. Some of T.S. Eliot's work I find a little difficult to understand, The Wasteland, for example, but The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock I have adored since my first read:

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question...
Oh, do not ask, `` What is it? ''
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening.
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains.
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys.
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me.
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, ``Do I dare?'' and, ``Do I dare?''
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair--
[They will say: ``How his hair is growing thin!'']
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin--
[They will say: ``But how his arms and legs are thin!'']
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all--
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all--
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
[But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?
. . . . .
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? . . .

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
. . . . .
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep. . . tired . . . or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet--and here's no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: `` I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all''--
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: ``That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all.''

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor--
And this, and so much more?--
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow, or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
``That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.''
. . . . .
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous--
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old . . . I grow old . . .
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

T.S. Eliot

---

Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress"
I loved this one too - a classic of which I can never grow weary, though I can understand SwiftSleigh7's interpretation.

To His Coy Mistress

Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love's day;
Thou by the Indian Ganges' side
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood;
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow.
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.

But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long preserv'd virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust.
The grave's a fine and private place,
But none I think do there embrace.

Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may;
And now, like am'rous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour,
Than languish in his slow-chapp'd power.
Let us roll all our strength, and all
Our sweetness, up into one ball;
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life.
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.

Andrew Marvell

[SwiftSleigh7]

Phyllis Gotlieb (1926-)

First Person Demonstrative


1 I'd rather
2 heave half a brick than say
3 I love you, though I do
4 I'd rather
5 crawl in a hole than call you
6 darling, though you are
7 I'd rather
8 wrench off an arm than hug you though
9 it's what I long to do
10 I'd rather
11 gather a posy of poison ivy than
12 ask if you love me


13 so if my
14 hair doesn't stand on end it's because
15 I never tease it
16 and if my
17 heart isn't in my mouth it's because
18 it knows its place
19 and if I
20 don't take a bite of your ear it's because
21 gristle gripes my guts
22 and if you
23 miss the message better get new
24 glasses and read it twice


This is one of the best modern love poems I can remember
I love how its understated irony mingles with the flavor of sarcasm to create an aftertaste of satire that teases as much as it satiates.

[Monica]

It's a great one, Swift! :) I've not heard anything about the author yet, so I'll have to google. The last 3 lines are hilarious and sad at the same time.

[Monica]

Paul Eluard "I Cannot Be Known"

I cannot be known
Better than you know me

Your eyes in which we sleep
We together
Have made for my man's gleam
A better fate than for the common nights

Your eyes in which I travel
Have given to signs along the roads
A meaning alien to the earth

In your eyes who reveal to us
Our endless solitude

Are no longer what they thought themselves to be

You cannot be known
Better than I know you.

[lavendar1]

Short and oh! so sweet:

"A Deep-Sworn Vow"

Others because you did not keep
That deep-sworn vow have been friends of mine;
Yet always when I look death in the face,
When I clamber to the heights of sleep,
Or when I grow excited with wine,
Suddenly I meet your face.


"When You Are Old"

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 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.

I suppose unrequited (or almost unrequited) love has always been a catalyst for poetry.

[Basil]

Yeats is great:

I carry from my mother's womb
A fanatic heart.

By the way, how's the Brit-Lit coming along? :)

[lavendar1]

Re: the Brit-Lit -- I'm proceeding and persevering. Right now we're "doing Dickens," or more precisely, Great Expectations. I've a renewed appreciation for Mr. Dickens (it had been years since I'd last read any of his work); his abilities in character development and narrative technique are remarkable. But then I suppose that's why he's still being read. Some of the students have difficulty following the long descriptive passages. To counter the problem, we read excerpts and I try to get alot of discussion going. I think we'll wrap it all up with a Victorian-style tea party. Then...it's on to Ivanhoe. I might try a little Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Anyway, thanks for asking.

I just thought of another favorite love poem -- The Old Testament's "Song of Songs." If you want to read a wonderful translation, try the one by Ariel Bloch and Chana Bloch:

Bind me as a seal upon your heart,
a sign upon your arm,

for love is as fierce as death
its jealousy bitter as the grave
Even its sparks are a raging fire,
a devouring flame.

Great seas cannot extinguish love,
no river can sweep it away.

[mono]

Another good one, classic:

The Passionate Shepherd to his Love

Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove,
That valleys, groves, hills, and fields,
Woods, or steepy mountain yields.

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

And I will 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 lined 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.

Christopher Marlowe

[Rachy]

I have to admit I don't really like poetry, but there is one poem that I love and will always stay with me called, "What were they like?" by Denise Levertov:

1. Did the people of Vietnam
use lanterns of stone?


2. Did they hold ceremonies
to reverence the opening of buds?


3. Were they inclined to quiet laughter?


4. Did they use bone and ivory,
and silver, for ornament?


5. Had they an epic poem?


6. Did they distinguish between speech and singing?




1. Sir, their light hearts turned to stone.
It is not remembered whether in gardens the lanterns illumined pleasant ways.


2. Perhaps they gathered once to delight in blossom,but after the children were killed, there were no more buds.


3. Sir, laughter is bitter to the burned mouth.


4. A dream ago, perhaps. Ornament is for joy.
All the bones were charred.


5. It is not remembered. Remember,
most were peasants; their life
was in rice and bamboo.
When peaceful clouds were reflected in the paddies
And the water buffalo stepped surely along terraces,
maybe fathers told their sons old tales.
When bombs smashed those mirrors
there was time only to scream.


6. There is an echo yet
Of their speech which was like a song.
It was reported their singing resembled
the flight of moths in moonlight.
Who can say? It is silent now.



Denise Levertov

[Bandini]

It's not that you don't like poetry - it's jsut that you haven't found anything you like yet! Keep looking. ;)

[Veritas]

This is mine :-)

Oh Beloved,
take me.
Liberate my soul.
Fill me with your love and
release me from the two worlds.

If I set my heart on anything but you
let fire burn me from inside.

Oh Beloved,
take away what I want.
Take away what I do.
Take away what I need.
Take away everything
that takes me from you.
[Rumi]

[songfuse]

*YOU*
God is love,
Love is creation,
As you were created,
Out of this act called love.

Among the forests,of serpentire'and simple dreams.
Flavoring the sense that has so art troubled you thus'
Painted,deserted,calling for aid,
Become,
Whole...born.
Awake,see what is anew befroth untouched breathing freely.
Sit comfortable,uncomfortably shallowed vessle,
That which so everently houses you.
Warm summer rain,bashing down smooth youth's brow
Purchase the whimper,the winter,your very first cold.
All the things,the shiny,the red ball,or green dress.
Now is loss ever so gently,YOU.

*Songfuse*

[mmcdonald]

my favorite love poem at the moment:

The More Loving One

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.

Auden

[Bandini]

For Jane:With All the Love I Had, Which Was Not Enough:-



I pick up the skirt,

I pick up the sparkling beads

in black,

this thing that moved once

around flesh,

and I call God a liar,

I say anything that moved

like that

or knew

my name

could never die

in the common verity of dying,

and I pick

up her lovely

dress,

all her loveliness gone,

and I speak to all the gods,

Jewish gods, Christ-gods,

chips of blinking things,

idols, pills, bread,

fathoms, risks,

knowledgeable surrender,

rats in the gravy of 2 gone quite mad

without a chance,

hummingbird knowledge, hummingbird chance,

I lean upon this,

I lean on all of this

and I know:

her dress upon my arm:

but

they will not

give her back to me.


Bukowski.

Brings tears to my eyes everytime.

[arlecchino]

Hello, I like the idea of this poll. Though it will always be a very subjective sort of thing, and so much the better for it, for it shows how someone can be touched by a piece of work written, possible, hundreds of years ago and a thousand miles away. Really enjoyed reading some poetry that I've never encountered before, some that I'm surprised to see/not see here. (The Lovesong Of J. Alfred Prufrock, I feel, is less of a 'love' poem, in the romantic sense of the word than say 'La Figlia che Piange') but my favourite is He Wishes For the Cloths of Heaven by W.B. Yeats.

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The Blue, the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

I enjoy this poem partly becuase it is technically perfect; see the skill he has over so few lines, how expertly crafted it is, how although he uses the same words for the rhymes it feels perfectly natural, without any strong (that is to say undeliberate, for all short poetry, most notably sonnets, are very self-consciously artificial) sense of artificiality, as if he's improvising this to a lover. It is also lyrically beautiful. Those few lines sound so sweet that if you say them aloud, you'd better make sure you brush yur teeth afterwards. But not only is it stylistically perfect. There is real substance created in those few lines, feelings that all who have been in love have felt, the desire to connect on a more than earthly level with a partner. I think it has much in common with the Metaphysical Poets.

[lavendar1]

I think you're right. Absoulutely (I meant that spelling) beautiful...

[arlecchino]

I think you're right. Absoulutely (I meant that spelling) beautiful...

I take it by that you don't like it, then? Why not?

[lavendar1]

You've misunderstood -- I do like the poem. In fact, in an earlier thread, I posted several of Yeats' poems, "When You Are Old" and "A Deep Sworn Vow" as favorites.

While I'm no scholar of poetry, I know what pleases my ear and my heart. And Mr. Yeats verse gets "the nod..." What I mean to say is that his poetry gets my approval.

[arlecchino]

Sorry for the misunderstanding. I also like your choices. There are plenty of other poems Yeats' wrote that are great love poems; he could have a category to himself.

[amuse]

you know, that's a wonderful idea, sub-sections for poets like we have for authors.

Rachy, i missed your earlier "What Were They Like" post. i emphatically think it's great.

[Rachy]

It just effected me because I'm very anti-war and at the time that we were reading I was doing Vietnam coursework for history! I love it!

[blp]

Sorry if this is repeated. I think I've read all the pages, but can't be sure

A slumber did my spirit seal
I knew no human fears
She seemed a thing that could not feel
The touch of earthly years

No motion has she now nor force
She neither hears nor sees
Rolled round in earth's diurnal course
With rocks and stones and trees

Wordsworth

[mono]

A lesser known love poem by Andrew Marvell (1621-1678):

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'er have flown
But vainly flapped its tinsel wing.

And yet I quickly might arrive
Where my extended soul is fixed,
But Fate does iron wedges drive,
And always crowds itself betwixt.

For Fate with jealousy eye does see
Two perfect loves, nor lets them close:
Their union would her ruin be,
And her tyrannic power depose.

And therefore her decrees of steel
Us as the distant poles have placed,
(Though love's whole world on us doth wheel)
Not by themselves to be embraced,

Unless the giddy heaven fall,
And earth some new convulsion tear,
And, us to join, the world should all
Be cramped into a planisphere.

As lines, so loves oblique may well
Themselves in every angle greet;
But ours, so truly parallel,
Though infinite, can never meet.

Therefore the love which us doth bind,
But fate so enviously debars,
Is the conjunction of the mind,
And opposition of the stars.

[Monica]

A Description of Love - Sir Walter Raleigh

Now what is Love, I pray thee, tell?
It is that fountain and that well
Where pleasure and repentance dwell;
It is perhaps the sauncing bell
That tolls all into heaven or hell:
And this is Love, as I hear tell.

Yet what is Love, I pray thee, say?
It is work on holy-day,
It is December matched with May,
When lusty bloods in fresh array
Hear ten months after of the play:
And this is Love, as I hear say.

Yet what is Love, I pray thee sain?
It is sunshine mixed with rain;
It is a toothache, or like pain,
It is a game where none hath gain;
The lass saith no, yet would full fain:
And this is Love, as I hear sain.

Yet what is Love, I pray thee say?
It is a yea, it is a nay
A pretty kind of sporting fray,
It is a thing will soon away.
Then take the vantage while you may:
And this is Love, as I hear say.

Yet what is Love, I pray thee show?
A thing that creeps, it cannot go,
A prize that passeth to and fro,
A thing for one, a thing for mo,
And he that proves shall find it so;
And this is Love, sweet friend, I trow.

Lovely :D

[IrishCanadian]

Easy! She Walks In Beauty Like The Night by Byron. It should be easy to find. If not then shakespeare's sonnets never stear wrong. But Byron has it for me.

[Monica]

Shakespeare is maestro, isn't he ;)

Sonnet LXXV

So are you to my thoughts as food to life,
Or as sweet-season'd showers are to the ground;
And for the peace of you I hold such strife
As 'twixt a miser and his wealth is found;
Now proud as an enjoyer and anon
Doubting the filching age will steal his treasure,
Now counting best to be with you alone,
Then better'd that the world may see my pleasure;
Sometime all full with feasting on your sight
And by and by clean starved for a look;
Possessing or pursuing no delight,
Save what is had or must from you be took.
Thus do I pine and surfeit day by day,
Or gluttoning on all, or all away.

[mono]

Easy! She Walks In Beauty Like The Night by Byron. It should be easy to find. If not then shakespeare's sonnets never stear wrong. But Byron has it for me.
I, personally, love this poem too. I think most people call it, however, "She Walks In Beauty." :)

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o'er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!

Shakespeare is maestro, isn't he

Sonnet LXXV
Probably my favorite sonnet by The Bard also, Monica. Thanks. ;)

[Maxos]

Leopardi's poem: "A se stesso"

Or poserai per sempre,
Stanco mio cor. Perì l'inganno estremo,
Ch'eterno io mi credei. Perì. Ben sento,
In noi di cari inganni,
Non che la speme, il desiderio è spento.
Posa per sempre. Assai
Palpitasti. Non val cosa nessuna
I moti tuoi, né di sospiri è degna
La terra. Amaro e noia
La vita, altro mai nulla; e fango è il mondo.
T'acqueta omai. Dispera
L'ultima volta. Al gener nostro il fato
Non donò che il morire. Omai disprezza
Te, la natura, il brutto
Poter che, ascoso, a comun danno impera,
E l'infinita vanità del tutto.

That's a translation I found on the net:

To Himself (XXVIII)

Now you’ll rest forever
my weary heart. The last illusion has died
I thought eternal. Died. I feel, in truth,
not only hope, but desire
for dear illusion has vanished.
Rest forever. You’ve laboured
enough. Not a single thing is worth
your beating: the earth’s not worthy
of your sighs. Bitter and tedious,
life is, nothing more: and the world is mud.
Be silent now. Despair
for the last time. To our race Fate
gave only death. Now scorn Nature,
that brute force
that secretly governs the common hurt,
and the infinite emptiness of all.

[Koa]

Leopardi's poem: "A se stesso"
!!! Incredible! I was talking about this very poem a couple of nights ago! A r(ather unknown) masterpiece of that genius of pessimist poetry who is Leopardi! (cosmic pessmism lol, but then, Maxos, probably only me and you know what I'm talking about ;))

*reading it again* I adore this poem.

The 'Assai/Palpitasti' bit is amazing... And looking at the translation, it gives me one more reason to be extremely upset when I think of translation in general..

Amaro e noia
La vita, altro mai nulla; e fango il mondo.
(Bitter and tedious,
life is, nothing more: and the world is mud)

I had found this poem 4 or 5 years ago but the other night when it came to my mind it took 5 minutes to find it on my old schoolbook...It really impressed me a lot.

All the run on lines here are so perfectly placed...The rhythm is wonderful,

[Maxos]

The poem is indeed one of the poet's greatest masterpieces, critics like Monteverdi, underlined the reasons to consider it as an anticipation of twentieth century poetry.

We can notice a total lack of adjectives connoting qualities, for they belong to the language of "vago ed indefinito" (vague and indefinite) and the poet is tired with Nature's (an poetry's, as a result) evil jokes, he does not want to be tricked any longer by their pleasant and attractive forms, we do point out that the style of the sole prince of italian poetry (Petrarch), is characterised by a large use of a small set of adjectives which are juxtapposed to connote precisely but softly (without Dante's "semantic whirlpools") the meaning of words.

Koa correctly focusses on lines 9 and 10, here Leopardi reaches the climax of his modernity, getting rid even of the verbs.
Although the translation betrays the poet's purposes; in fact it sounds like that (without obeying to English syntax):

Bitterness and Boredom/Life. Nothing else ever. And mud the world.

Further on let's have a look to that "callida iunctura" which "brutto/poter" is:
The translator's choice: "brute", is completely unfit to the situation, I would probably have used "ugly", for this is the current meaning of the word, the poet wants us to look at Nature as an abandoned child looks at his violent and cruel stepmother, Nature's power forces us to be born, grow up, suffer, cry, and this all without any sense or possibility for us to escape "the net" (montalian imagery), considering that, the only word the poet finds out to explain it is one of the most simple (and childish as well) words of italian language: "brutto".

My dear Koa, may I ask you where you are from? Just because I noticed your close acquaintance to the subject.

I don't know whether my English is good enough to talk about poetry, anyway I did my best.

[GruesomeBugman]

well, a song might not really count, but who can say music isn't poetry?

that given, I'd have to say Unchained Melody by the Righteous brothers is a pretty good one.

[Monica]

well, a song might not really count, but who can say music isn't poetry?

that given, I'd have to say Unchained Melody by the Righteous brothers is a pretty good one.


Music is poetry :nod: And Unchained Melody is really nice


Oh, my love, my darling,
I've hungered for your touch a long,
lonely time. Time goes by so slowly
and time can do so much.
Are you still mine?

I need your love.
I need your love.
God speed your love to me.

Lonely rivers flow to the sea, to the sea,
to the open arms of the sea.
Lonely rivers sigh, wait for me,
wait for me.
I'll be coming home, wait for me.

Oh, my love, my darling,
I've hungered for your touch a long
lonely time. Time, goes by so slowly,
and time can do so much,
Are you still mine?

I need your love.
I need your love.
God speed your love, to me.


U2 made a good cover of this one.

[amuse]

George Benson does the most amazing version of this song. :nod:

[Monica]

I'll have to find it because I looooooooove this song :)

[metaxy99]

i've been avoiding this thread - you know, thinking it was full of sappy love poetry - but there are some really good ones in here!

my two cents:

ORIGINS AND HISTORY OF CONSCIOUSNESS

Adrienne Rich, 1972-1974

I

Night-life. Letters, journals, bourbon
sloshed in the glass. Poems crucified on the wall,
dissected, their bird-wings severed
like trophies. No one lives in this room
without living through some kind of crisis.

No one lives in this room
without confronting the whiteness of the wall
behind the poems, planks of books,
photographs of dead heroines.
Without contemplating last and late
the true natures of poetry. The drive
to connect. The dream of a common language.

Thinking of lovers, their blind faith, their
experienced crucifixions,
my envy is not simple. I have dreamed of going to bed
as walking into water ringed by a snowy wood
white as cold sheets thinking, I'll freeze in there.
My bare feet are numbed already by the snow
but the water
is mild, I sink and float
like a warm amphibious animal
that has broken the net, has run
through fields of snow leaving no print;
this water rushes off the scent -
You are clear now
of the hunter, the trapper
the wardens of the mind -

yet the warm animal dreams on
of another animal
swimming under the snow-flecked surface of the pool,
and wakes, and sleeps again.

No one sleeps in this room without the dream of a common language.


II

It was simple to meet you, simple to take your eyes
into mine, saying: these are eyes I have known
from the first....It was simple to touch you
against the hacked background, the grain of what we
had been, the choices, years....It was even simple
to take each other's lives in our hands, as bodies.

What is not simple: to wake from drowning
from where the ocean beat inside us like an afterbirth
into this common, acute particularity
these two selves who walked half a lifetime untouching -
to wake to something deceptively simple: a glass
sweated with dew, a ring of the telephone, a scream
of someone beaten up far down the street
causing each of us to listen to her own inward scream

knowing the mind of the mugger and the mugged
as any woman must who stands to survive in this city,
this century, this life....
each of us having loved the flesh in its clenched or loosened beauty
better than trees or music (yet loving those too
as if they were flesh - and they are - but the flesh
of beings unfathomed as yet in our roughly literal life).


III

It's simple now to wake from sleep with a stranger,
dress, go out, drink coffee,
enter a life again. It isn't simple
to wake from sleep into the neighborhood
of one neither strange nor familiar
whom we have chosen to trust. Trusting, untrusting,
we lowered ourselves into this, let ourselves
downward hand over hand as on a rope that quivered
over the unsearched....We did this. Conceived
of each other, conceived each other in a darkness
which I remember as drenched in light.
I want to call this, life.

But I can't call it life until we start to move
beyond this secret circle of fire
where our bodies are giant shadows flung on a wall
where the night becomes our inner darkness, and sleeps
like a dumb beast, head on her paws, in the corner.

[mono]

ORIGINS AND HISTORY OF CONSCIOUSNESS

Adrienne Rich, 1972-1974
Thanks, metaxy, I have always loved this one, too. :) :thumbs_up

[amuse]

Monica, there's an additional verse:

Lonely mountains gaze
at the stars, at the stars,
Waiting for the dawn of the day.
All alone, I gaze
at the stars, at the stars,
Dreaming of my love far away.

Oh, my love, my darling,
I've hungered for your touch
a long, lonely time.
And time goes by so slowly
and time can do so much,
are you still mine?
I need your love,
I need your love,
God speed your love to me!

[Koa]

My dear Koa, may I ask you where you are from? Just because I noticed your close acquaintance to the subject.

I don't know whether my English is good enough to talk about poetry, anyway I did my best.


Of course I'm Italian as well...noone else would be slightly acquainted with the subject, especially regarding this poem which was in a corner of my schoolbook at the time...

And your English is better than mine...really (even if mine is really good ;) :D)

[metaxy99]

i just realized something. all this love poetry, and no sappho?!
how about 2 short ones:

44
Without warning

As a whirlwind
swoops an oak
Love shakes my heart


45
If you will come

I shall put out
new pillows for
you to rest on

[happyjing365]

This one by Yeats
When You Are Old
.... one will love the pilgrim soul in you

lingering and almost desperate love,knowing that his beloved wouldn't accept him at the moment

[lesterva5870]

Donne's "Air and Angels" and Browning's "How Do I Love Thee?" and perhaps even Shelley's "When the Lamp is Shattered".

[Bix12]

Ah, Sappho. Her poems are some of the rarest on the planet. I was just reading that they found another one of her complete poems...very cool. That brings the total number of complete existing Sappho poems to 4.

I just picked up 'The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats' in paperback. It's the first paperback edition of the authorized canon of Yeats's poetry. 382 poems!


WHITE MAGIC

George Sterling (1869-1926)

KEEP ye her brow with starshine crost
And bind with ghostly light her hair,
O powers benign, lest I accost
Song's peaceless angel unaware!

One eve her whisper came to earth,
As eastward woke a thorny star,
To tell me of her kingdom's worth
And what her liberations are:

She hath the Edens in her gift
And songs of sovereignties unborn;
In realms agone her turrets lift,
Wrought from the purples of the morn.

Where swings to foam the dusky sea,
She waits with sapphires in her hand
Whose light shall make thy spirit be
Lost in a still, enchanted land.

Musing, she hears the subtle tunes
From chords where faery fingers stray--
A rain of pearl from crumbling moons
Less clear and delicate than they.

The strain we lost and could not find
Think we her haunted heart forgets?
She weaves it with a troubled wind
And twilight music that regrets.

Often she stands, unseen, aloof,
To watch beside an ocean's brink
The gorgeous, evanescent woof
Cast from the loom of suns that sink.

Often, in eyries of the West,
She waits a lover from afar--
Frailties of blossom on her breast
And o'er her brow the evening star.

She stands to greet him unaware,
Who cannot find her if he seek:
A sigh, a scent of heavenly hair--
And oh, her breath is on his cheek!

[mono]

Ah, Sappho. Her poems are some of the rarest on the planet. I was just reading that they found another one of her complete poems...very cool. That brings the total number of complete existing Sappho poems to 4.
I also love Sappho; having picked up a translated collection of her works a number of months ago, I paged through the whole book in a shockingly short time. If you would like to take a look, amuse, simon, and I pieced together a thread, sharing some of our favorite works:
http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3095

[red leaves]

I love this one by Sarah Teasdale

I said,"I have shut my heart"
As one shuts an open door,
That Love may starve therein
And trouble me no more."

BUt over the roofs there came
the wet new wind of May,
And a tune blew up from the curb
Where the street-pianos play.

My room was white with the sun
And Love cried out in me,
"I am strong,I will break your heart
Unless you set me free."

[blp]

there is one poem that I love and will always stay with me called, "What were they like?" by Denise Levertov:

Thanks for this. It's great. Here's another great (perhaps THE other great) Vietnam Poem

To Whom It May Concern
by Adrian Mitchell


I was run over by the truth one day.
Ever since the accident I've walked this way
So stick my legs in plaster
Tell me lies about Vietnam.

Heard the alarm clock screaming with pain,
Couldn't find myself so I went back to sleep again
So fill my ears with silver
Stick my legs in plaster
Tell me lies about Vietnam.

Every time I shut my eyes all I see is flames.
Made a marble phone book and I carved all the names
So coat my eyes with butter
Fill my ears with silver
Stick my legs in plaster
Tell me lies about Vietnam.

I smell something burning, hope it's just my brains.
They're only dropping peppermints and daisy-chains
So stuff my nose with garlic
Coat my eyes with butter
Fill my ears with silver
Stick my legs in plaster
Tell me lies about Vietnam.

Where were you at the time of the crime?
Down by the Cenotaph drinking slime
So chain my tongue with whisky
Stuff my nose with garlic
Coat my eyes with butter
Fill my ears with silver
Stick my legs in plaster
Tell me lies about Vietnam.

You put your bombers in, you put your conscience out,
You take the human being and you twist it all about
So scrub my skin with women
Chain my tongue with whisky
Stuff my nose with garlic
Coat my eyes with butter
Fill my ears with silver
Stick my legs in plaster
Tell me lies about Vietnam.

[lavendar1]

Sonnets From the Portuguese

When our two souls stand up erect and strong,
Face to face, sillent, drawing aigh and nigher,
Until the lengthening wings break into fire
At either curved point - what bitter wrong
Can the earth do to us, that we should not long
Be here contented? Think. In mounting higher,
The angels would press on us, and aspire
To drop some golden orb of perfect song
Into our deep, dear silence. Let us stay
Rather on earth, Beloved - where the unfit
Contrarious moods of men recoil away
And isolate pure spirits, and permit
A place to stand and love in for a day,
With darkness and the death-hour rounding it.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

[Aurora Ariel]

***************************

[rachel]

I have always loved and admired Thomas Moore with all my heart. To stand against such a tide and still be pristine, pure and even filled with compassion and love for those of dark heart and soul, well to me such a life is like the very stars of heaven that bring light and warmth somehow, however faint to a black and cold place.
That poem to his wife reminds me of Tolkien's love for his Edith and how just before her death they would still steal away to the woods like Beren and Luthien. Such people make me weep even when they say nothing at all. Their very breath seem hallowed.

[Nocturnal]

Sonnet 116
by William Shakespeare

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.

[PistisSophia]

Auden: Lay Your Sleeping Head My Love, Human on my faithless arm........

[blp]

There are so many beautiful love poems and I agree with many of those which are posted on here. However, my favorite love poem is by E.E. Cummings. I love his poetry althought I am first to admit that I can barely appreciate and praise them as they should be. :rolleyes:

I would like to hear what you think of this poem as everytime I read it, I am in awe and cannot stop my heart pounding in my chest. So strong to me the feelings and sentiments he expresses in this poem. :blush:




somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look will easily unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

I vote for this one too.

[Monica]

As I wrote before, music is poetry, I think, so: (please, please, PLEASE don't get discouraged because of the fact that it's U2 again):

U2 - All I Want Is You

You say you want
Diamonds on a ring of gold
You say you want
Your story to remain untold

But all the promises we make
From the cradle to the grave
When all I want is you

You say you'll give me
A highway with no one on it
Treasure just to look upon it
All the riches in the night

You say you'll give me
Eyes in a moon of blindness
A river in a time of dryness
A harbour in the tempest
But all the promises we make
From the cradle to the grave
When all I want is you

You say you want
Your love to work out right
To last with me through the night

You say you want
Diamonds on a ring of gold
Your story to remain untold
Your love not to grow cold

All the promises we break
From the cradle to the grave
When all I want is you

You...all I want is...
You...all I want is...
You...all I want is...
You...

[veronic]

I won't post it here because of its length,
"The Convent Threshold" by Christina Rossetti.

http://celtic.benderweb.net/cr/cr55.html

and a shorter one..
(Sara Teasdale)

Oh you are coming, coming, coming,
How will hungry Time put by the hours till then? --
But why does it anger my heart to long so
For one man out of the world of men?

Oh I would live in myself only
And build my life lightly and still as a dream --
Are not my thoughts clearer than your thoughts
And colored like stones in a running stream?

Now the slow moon brightens in heaven,
The stars are ready, the night is here --
Oh why must I lose myself to love you,
My dear?

[IrishCanadian]

I should read dante, but Byron makes me cry.

[NNoah3]

I can't choose one poem as The Best Love Poem. A lot of difficult with so many poets, great poets indeed! Names like Pablo Neruda, Mario Benedetti, Antonio Machado, William Shakespeare, Amado Nervo, Gustavo Adolfo Becker, Ruben Dario, Gabriela Mistral, Jorge Luis Borges, Jose Martí, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, Robert Frost, Christina Rossetti, and the list go on.
Here are two poems by Pablo Neruda

I do not love you...
I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.
I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.
I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way
that this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

Spanish Version
No te amo como si fueras rosa de sal, topacio
o flecha de claveles que propagan el fuego:
te amo como se aman ciertas cosas oscuras,
secretamente, entre la sombra y el alma.
Te amo como la planta que no florece y lleva
dentro de sí, escondida, la luz de aquellas flores,
y gracias a tu amor vive oscuro en mi cuerpo
el apretado aroma que ascendió de la tierra.
Te amo sin saber cómo, ni cuándo, ni de dónde,
te amo directamente sin problemas ni orgullo:
así te amo porque no sé amar de otra manera,
sino así de este modo en que no soy ni eres,
tan cerca que tu mano sobre mi pecho es mía,
tan cerca que se cierran tus ojos con mi sueño.


You will remember...
You will remember that leaping stream
where sweet aromas rose and trembled,
and sometimes a bird, wearing water
and slowness, its winter feathers.
You will remember those gifts from the earth:
indelible scents, gold clay,
weeds in the thicket and crazy roots,
magical thorns like swords.
You'll remember the bouquet you picked,
shadows and silent water,
bouquet like a foam-covered stone.
That time was like never, and like always.
So we go there, where nothing is waiting;
we find everything waiting there.

Spanish
Recordarás aquella quebrada caprichosa
a donde los aromas palpitantes treparon,
de cuando en cuando un pájaro vestido
con agua y lentitud: traje de invierno.
Recordarás los dones de la tierra:
irascible fragancia, barro de oro,
hierbas del matorral, locas raíces,
sortílegas espinas como espadas.
Recordarás el ramo que trajiste,
ramo de sombra y agua con silencio,
ramo como una piedra con espuma.
Y aquella vez fue como nunca y siempre:
vamos allí donde no espera nada
y hallamos todo lo que está esperando.

[subterranean]

The I do Not Love You , reminds me of one of Rumi's:

This Will Not Win Him

Reason says,
I will win him with my eloquence.

Love says,
I will win him with my silence.

Soul says,
How can I ever win him
When all I have is already his?

He does not want, he does not worry,
He does not seek a sublime state of euphoria -
How then can I win him
With sweet wine or gold? . . .

He is not bound by the senses -
How then can I win him
With all the riches of China?

He is an angel,
Though he appears in the form of a man.
Even angels cannot fly in his presence -
How then can I win him
By assuming a heavenly form?

He flies on the wings of God,
His food is pure light -
How then can I win him
With a loaf of baked bread?

He is neither a merchant, nor a tradesman -
How then can I win him
With a plan of great profit?

He is not blind, nor easily fooled -
How then can I win him
By lying in bed as if gravely ill?

I will go mad, pull out my hair,
Grind my face in the dirt -
How will this win him?

He sees everything -
how can I ever fool him?

He is not a seeker of fame,
A prince addicted to the praise of poets -
How then can I win him
With flowing rhymes and poetic verses?

The glory of his unseen form
Fills the whole universe
How then can I win him
With a mere promise of paradise?

I may cover the earth with roses,
I may fill the ocean with tears,
I may shake the heavens with praises -
none of this will win him.

There is only one way to win him,
this Beloved of mine -

Become his.

[NNoah3]

Sighs.......

[subterranean]

Well i just instantly thought about it...

[literature2005]

Hello All, I just love this site. And it is so great that so many are inspired by the deepest emotions of others. Some words penetrate to the core of my being, its so amazing that something so powerful are only appreciated by so few.

making the world round round and round
like a lion rouring in roud of land louder

with loving once make the day goes round round and round

[michela]

I think that it's impossible to say what is the best love poem 'cause in my opinion there's just the best of the day, you know i mean?
Anyway there's just a sentence running through my head everyday that in my opinion explicates the best is possible the concept of love.Its by E. Bronte's W.H. here it is...
"...I am Heatcliff".
And that's all.
Poems are something strange, i mean some of them touch your mind because of the brightest words(as Dickinson's poems)some of them are just like a punch in your stomach and probably those are the real poems...unforgettable cause simple.

[rachel]

oh Sub,
that is an amazing poem. I have a question in my mind though-how does she become his. Does not becoming his mean doing all of those things really, I mean in a way. because it is the sum total of all she is and feels folding into his being that makes her his. Or is it?
love is such a mystery,such an unfathomable deep, who can really know it fully?

[Jannah]

Hello everyone...

it's not a poem but I couldn't find another suitable thread to put in.


My love for you will never die
Years from now, when life takes you away, or changes you, it will take my love along with you.
You and my love will be one,
Wherever you are, it will accompany you
On the long dark nights, my love will help you see the daylight again
With all your dreams, you may forget my love's presence
Even when you achieve them, you may forget to look back & see my love that helped you reach your place
But still... my love will help you every step of your way
When you get old and the hard days are upon you,
My heart will love you like you've never been loved before
And when you search through your memories, you will find your heart
You will find me and only me...
You will realize that you've loved me all along
That with every dream you'd go after
Your love for me would grow...
And One day, you will know that deep inside
I was your one and only dream

[IrishCanadian]

As I read "This iwll not win him" all I could think of was Vincent giving his ear to the woman he loved.
Jannah, who wrote that??

[Jannah]

Jannah, who wrote that??

I wrote it just yesterday.

Woops, sorry guys. didn't know that this thread is for poems of famous poets only. i'll pay attention next time!

[IrishCanadian]

Haha, no offence in what went through my min while reading the poem. I just looked at a VanGogh, so the whole concept of "this will win him" was so built in my head. What would you do if a guy gave you his ear eh?
Ah well.

[Jannah]

Lol! I know what you mean, but hey, I never heard of a guy who gave his ear to a woman. (""back to reality"")

[IrishCanadian]

Vincent VanGogh literally gave his ear to a woman in order to profess his love. I guess it is a truely romantic gift, no matter how creepy. He literally sacrificed his human figure for her. Anyway she turned him down.
As for a love poem nomination ... heres a popular classic that i love.

He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
W.B Yeats

HAD I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

[Jannah]

Van Gogh literally DID THAT? Unbelievable!
---------
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

I've always loved that one of W.B. Yeats...

[bluevictim]

I've always liked Pope's Eloisa to Abelard, but I'm not sure it qualifies as a love poem.

[Jannah]

Love Will Find Out the Way

Anonymous


OVER the mountains
And over the waves,
Under the fountains
And under the graves;
Under floods that are deepest, 5
Which Neptune obey;
Over rocks that are steepest
Love will find out the way.

Where there is no place
For the glow-worm to lie; 10
Where there is no space
For receipt of a fly;
Where the midge dares not venture
Lest herself fast she lay;
If love come, he will enter 15
And soon find out his way.

You may esteem him
A child for his might;
Or you may deem him
A coward from his flight; 20
But if she whom love doth honour
Be conceal’d from the day,
Set a thousand guards upon her,
Love will find out the way.

Some think to lose him 25
By having him confined;
And some do suppose him,
Poor thing, to be blind;
But if ne’er so close ye wall him,
Do the best that you may, 30
Blind love, if so ye call him,
Will find out his way.

You may train the eagle
To stoop to your fist;
Or you may inveigle 35
The phoenix of the east;
The lioness, ye may move her
To give o’er her prey;
But you’ll ne’er stop a lover:
He will find out his way. 40

[Nisha]

He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven....
awwwww...That poem stunned me when I read it..I first saw it a novel I read.
The describtion is flawless & timeless...

This is an eye catching poem.
On Monsieur's Departure

I grieve and dare not show my discontent,
I love & yet am forced to seem to hate,
I do,yet dare not say I ever ment,
I seem stark mute but ijnward do prat.
I am & not,freeze & yet am burned.
Since from myself & another self I turned

My care is like my shadow in the sun,
Follows me flying,flies when I persue it,
Stands & lies by me,doth what I have done
His familiar care doth mke me rue it.
No means I find to rid him from my breast ,
Till by the end of things it be surprest.

Some gentler passion slide into my mind,
For I am soft & made of melting snow;
Or be more cruel,love and so be kind.
Let me or float or sink,be high or low.
Or let me live with some more sweet content,
Or die & so forget what love ere ment.

Itz not as passionate as the other poems..but it is attributed to Elizabeth I.
And after considering how passive women of that era was I think it is a very romantic gesture.. :D And besides I love a poem with a history attached to it.. :brow:

[Jannah]

I grieve and dare not show my discontent,
I love & yet am forced to seem to hate,
I do,yet dare not say I ever ment,
I seem stark mute but ijnward do prat.
I am & not,freeze & yet am burned.
Since from myself & another self I turned

I liked that first part alot... opposites, and all inside him, as if he's getting torn apart, almost.

[smilesad]

I guess the question lies within the mixtures of whats going on inside ourselves when the words came,
my favourite is by Miller Mair:
I ache silently toward what I can not reach
.....................

[1sweetkate]

I am new here and enjoyed everyone's posts. I too love Neruda, but my favorite love poem wasn't on here so thought I would share with you all...

TO ANTHEA, WHO MAY COMMAND HIM
ANYTHING.
by Robert Herrick

BID me to live, and I will live
Thy Protestant to be,
Or bid me love, and I will give
A loving heart to thee.

A heart as soft, a heart as kind,
A heart as sound and free
As in the whole world thou canst find,
That heart I'll give to thee.

Bid that heart stay, and it will stay
To honour thy decree :
Or bid it languish quite away,
And't shall do so for thee.

Bid me to weep, and I will weep
While I have eyes to see :
And, having none, yet I will keep
A heart to weep for thee.

Bid me despair, and I'll despair
Under that cypress-tree :
Or bid me die, and I will dare
E'en death to die for thee.

Thou art my life, my love, my heart,
The very eyes of me :
And hast command of every part
To live and die for thee.

[IrishCanadian]

Thats very romantic 1sweetkate. Excelent choice. I wish I was able to pic out a favorite.

[james duffy]

Hi, I've enjoyed all of this. My view; Its hard to beat Robert Burns' "A Red, Red Rose". Its simple but beautiful, especially set to music. (Maybe being a Scot I am biased). I won't quote it; You can find it anywhere.

Also, the notion of Bess sacrificing her life to warn her lover of impending danger in Alfred Noyes' "The Highwayman" always gets to me. On a more contemporary note, I'm sure Monica will agree "Love is Blindness".

JD

[ElizabethSewall]

My favorite love poem at the time: Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Indian Serenade.

I arise from dreams of thee
In the first sweet sleep of night,
When the winds are breathing low,
And the stars are shining bright.
I arise from dreams of thee,
And a spirit in my feet
Has led me -who knows how?
To thy chamber-window, Sweet!

The wandering airs they faint
On the dark, the silent stream -
The champak odours fail
Like sweet thoughts in a dream;
The nightingale's complaint,
It dies upon her heart,
As I must die on thine,
O beloved as thou art!

Oh lift me from the grass!
I die! I faint! I fail!
Let thy love in kisses rain
On my lips and eyelids pale.
My cheek is cold and white, alas!
My heart beats loud and fast;
Oh press it close to thine again,
Where it will break at last!

By the way, I've read somewhere (I think it was in the French newspaper Ouest France) that they couldn't maintain the Protestant Cemetery, Rome, because they lacked money.
What will become of Keats' and Shelley's graves then???

[IrishCanadian]

By the way, I've read somewhere (I think it was in the French newspaper Ouest France) that they couldn't maintain the Protestant Cemetery, Rome, because they lacked money.
What will become of Keats' and Shelley's graves then???
I think that both these men have an epitaph that will last eternity. They wrote it in their life ... history never forgets saints and artists.

nguyenngoctue, who wrote that poem? Its lovely. I really reaslly like the second stanza.

[rachel]

I was going to say the very same thing Irish. It almost seems Tolkien like the way that Beren loved his Luthien Tinuvial

[tn2743]

Hi,

I like the 3rd stanza too, just as much as I like the 2nd. :) . It was written by Oscar Wilde.

[tn2743]

You cried

In my dream I caught your tear
In reality I stumbled,
Letting it slip through my fingers
And down it fell,
Joyfully like your laugh,
Tenderly like your smile
And, violently, my heart writhed
As its beauty splattered on the dirty ground
And, violently, my heart writhed
As its last sparkle died
And my heart broke,
With the tear,
As you cried

T.N.

[IrishCanadian]

I'm glad you came to add to this thread ... this one is definitely one of my favorite places in the website ... keep posting (please).

[chmpman]

T.N.

And that would be...?

[tn2743]

Sorry, T.N. is for Tue Nguyen :)

chmpman, may I ask you this: Is it true that Montana mountain goats sometime, fighting over a female, would headbutt so hard that their hooves fall off? Just a rumour I heard from a friend. Thanks :)

[Virgil]

Hi T.N.

Welcome to lit net. I've enjoyed your posts in the poem of the week thread. I hope you stick around. I enjoy talking to people who enjoy peotry.

By the way, are you of Vietnamese ethnicity?

[chmpman]

chmpman, may I ask you this: Is it true that Montana mountain goats sometime, fighting over a female, would headbutt so hard that their hooves fall off? Just a rumour I heard from a friend. Thanks :)

I've heard of no such rumor. Also, I've lived in Montana all my life and have never seen a mountain goat, so I claim no expertise. Some people, though, have some pretty mistaken perceptions of residents of the Big Sky State.

[rachel]

Tue,
you are awesome. the last poem was like a glorious stab in my heart.
And wouldn't it seem more logical that they head butted so hard their heads cracked? If that caused their hooves to fall off, poor little things, the herd would greatly diminish in a quick way because this dueling for the ladies goes on for quite a while doesn't it?

[tn2743]

Virgil,

Thanks for the welcome. I certainly will stick around, it's very nice to be able to share my opinions and to hear others. It gives me more confidence. And I am indeed from Vietnam :). But I have been living in England for nearly 8 years now

Rachel,

Thanks so much for your compliment.
I think these mountain goats have a specially developed forehead for the purpose of headbutting...like a bone shield, so they are well-protected..I think.
In our cruel world, though, there isn't much point in dueling, because we have to wait for the ladies to make their choices first :)

[rachel]

Not in Vernon you don't. Guys rule here and they know it. There are I think three girls to each guy.

[Virgil]

Virgil,

Thanks for the welcome. I certainly will stick around, it's very nice to be able to share my opinions and to hear others. It gives me more confidence. And I am indeed from Vietnam :). But I have been living in England for nearly 8 years now

Well, nice to know you. I went to school with several vietnamese fellows, and I work with several too. That's why I recognize your name as Vietnamese. Here in New York, we get to meet a little of every ethnicity. The Vietnamese fellow I work with was one of the boat refugees many years ago, when he was an teenager. His father was a political prisoner, and to this day he hates the Communists with a passion. He refuses to go back until the communists are out of power.

[tn2743]

Do you think that a poem only remains beautiful until the feelings with which you wrote it fade away?

[Virgil]

Do you think that a poem only remains beautiful until the feelings with which you wrote it fade away?
No I don't think so. The poem is the poem, not the feelings. There is a separation even for the person who wrote it.

[tn2743]

...
Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven,
Having some business, do entreat her eyes
To twinkle in their spheres till they return.
What if her eyes were there, they in her head?
The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars,
As daylight doth a lamp; her eyes in heaven
Would through the airy region stream so bright
That birds would sing and think it were not night.
See, how she leans her cheek upon her hand!
O, that I were a glove upon that hand,
That I might touch that cheek!

Romeo

[JCBookmonger]

Alicante

Une orange sur la table
Ta robe sur le tapis
Et toi dans mon lit
Doux présent du présent
Fraîcheur de la nuit
Chaleur de ma vie

--Jacques Prevert


Loose translation:

An orange on the table
Your dress on my rug
And you in my bed
Soft present of the present
Freshness of the night
Warmth of my life.

[Virgil]

Shakespeare is the best.



SONNET 29
When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

[rachel]

that sounds like the story of your life dear Virgil.

[ElizabethSewall]

You cried

In my dream I caught your tear
In reality I stumbled,
Letting it slip through my fingers
And down it fell,
Joyfully like your laugh,
Tenderly like your smile
And, violently, my heart writhed
As its beauty splattered on the dirty ground
And, violently, my heart writhed
As its last sparkle died
And my heart broke,
With the tear,
As you cried

T.N.


You asked if The Indian Serenade was still my favourite poem. I must confess I wonder now that I've read yours...
It really is beautiful. Thank you for sharing it...

[wodeucallme]

[IF]

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!


--Rudyard Kipling

[robw]

The fountains mingle with the river,
And the rivers with the ocean;
The winds of heaven mix forever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single;
All things by a law divine
In another's being mingle--
Why not I with thine?

See, the mountains kiss high heaven,
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister flower could be forgiven
If it disdained its brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth,
And the moonbeams kiss the sea;--
What is all this sweet work worth,
If thou kiss not me?
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

The sun has burst the sky
Because I love you
And the river its banks

The sea laps the great rocks
Because I love you
And takes no heed of the moon dragging it away
And saying coldly, 'constancy is not for you'.

The blackbird fills the air
Because I love you
With spring and lawn and shadows falling on lawns.

The people walk on the street and laugh
I love you
And far down the river ships sound their hooters
Crazy with joy because I love you
-Jenny Joseph

[Helga]

I love so many of the poems you have posted here, but I just wish you guys could read some of my favourite Icelandic love poems. Many of them are so beautiful that it makes me sad that so few can enjoy them. And by the way most people consider you weird if you read a lot and poems are often considered as a thing of the past or out dated...sad but true.

Maybe I will try to find a translation on some of the poems I love, or do it my self....

[Dark Lady]

I've only just started getting into poetry out of choice so I can't say I have a favourite love poem yet but this is one I really liked especially since I'm not normally into the really soppy stuff.

Poem Ended by a Death

They will wash all my kisses and fingerprints off you
and my tearstains - I was more inclined to weep
in those wild garlicky days - and our happier stains,
thin scales of papery silk...F*** that for a cheap
opener; and false too - any such traces
you pumiced away yourself, those years ago
when you sent my letters back, in the week I married
that anecdotal ape. So start again. So:

They will remove the tubes and drips and dressings
which I censor from my dreams. They will, it is true,
wash you; and they will put you into a box.
After which whatever else they may do
won't matter. This is my laconic style.
You praised it, as I praised your intricate pearled
embroideries; these links laced us together,
plain and purl across the ribs of the world...

Fleur Adcock

I wasn't sure if swearing is 'allowed' here hence the asterisks.

[lavendar1]

Come, my beloved,
let us go out into the fields
and lie all night among the flowering henna.

Let us go early to the vineyards
to see if the vine has budded,
if the blossoms have opened
and the pomegranate is in flower.

There I will give you my love.

The air is filled with the scent of the mandrakes
and at our doors
rare fruit of every kind, my love,
I have stored away for you.

-- From The Song of Songs
As translated by Ariel Bloch and Chana Bloch

[tn2743]

I know it's cliche and not really a love poem, but it is; and too beautiful not to be here:


To be, or not to be; that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous Fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die to sleep;
To sleep perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action. - Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember'd.

H.

[rachel]

i don't care how cliche it is , I have always loved it and it means a lot to me on several levels.

[lavendar1]

Pity me not because the light of day
At close of day no longer walks the sky;
Pity me not for beauties passed away
From field and thicket as the year goes by;
Pity me not the waning of the moon,
Nor that the ebbing tide goes out to sea,
Nor that a man's desire is hushed so soon,
And you no longer look with love on me.
This have I known always: Love is no more
Than the wide blossom which the wind assails,
Than the great tide that treads the shifting shore,
Strewing fresh wreckage gathered in the gales:
Pity me that the heart is slow to learn
What the swift mind beholds at every turn.

-- Edna St. Vincent Millay

[lavendar1]

Has this been posted yet? If 'yes,' it's an encore, if 'no,' it should have been:

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.



William Shakespeare

[tweety]

" She walks in beauty like the night of cloudless climes and starry skies, and all that's best of dark and bright meet in her aspect and her eyes...." Sigh!
One of my favorite poems of all time.
dont u find the poem anabelle a bit should i say creepy

[Hyacinth Girl]

For those of you debating the merit of Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress", I posit Lady Mary Wortley Montague's "The Lover: A Ballad". While I enjoy her tonge-in-cheek description of an ideal lover, she does paint a lovely picture of the ideal, as well as put Marvell and other "Carpe Diem" poets in their place. THE LOVER: A BALLAD

by: Lady Mary Wortley Montague (1689-1762)

I

T length, by so much importunity pressed,
Take, Congreve, at once, the inside of my breast:
This stupid indiff'rence so often you blame,
Is not owing to nature, to fear, or to shame.
I am not so cold as a virgin in lead,
Nor is Sunday's sermon so strong in my head:
I know but too well how time flies along,
That we live but few years, and yet fewer are young.

II

But I hate to be cheated, and never will buy
Long years of repentance for moments of joy.
Oh, was there a man (but where shall I find
Good-sense and good-nature so equally joined?)
Would value his pleasure, contribute to mine;
Not meanly would boast, nor would lewdly design,
Nor over severe, yet not stupidly vain,
For I would have the power, tho' not give the pain.

III

No pedant, yet learned; nor rake-helly gay,
Or laughing, because he has nothing to say;
To all my whole sex obliging and free,
Yet ne'er be he fond of any but me;
In public preserve the decorum that's just,
And shew in his eyes he is true to his trust;
Then rarely approach, and respectfully bow,
But not fulsomely pert, or foppishly low.

IV

But when the long hours of public are past,
And we meet with champagne and a chicken at last,
May ev'ry fond pleasure that moment endear;
Be banish'd afar both discretion and fear!
Forgetting or scorning the airs of the crowd,
He may cease to be formal, and I to be proud,
Till lost in the joy, we confess that we live,
And he may be rude, and yet I may forgive.

V

And that my delight may be solidly fixed,
Let the friend and the lover be handsomely mixed,
In whose tender bosom my soul may confide,
Whose kindness can soothe me, whose counsel can guide,
From such a dear lover as here I describe,
No danger should fright me, no millions should bribe;
But till this astonishing creature I know
As I long have liv'd chaste, I will keep myself so.

VI

I never will stare with the wanton coquet,
Or be caught by a vain affectation of wit.
The toasters and songsters may try all their art,
But never shall enter the pass of my heart.
I loathe the lewd rake, the dress'd fopling despise:
Before such pursuers the nice virgin flies:
And as Ovid has sweetly in parables told,
We harden like trees, and like rivers grow cold.

:lol:

[Alaskanteach]

well, I haven't read all 16 pages of this thread, but I really like


Kublai Kahn for its magical qualities.

My youngest son is named after Oscar Wilde, though, so he always has a soft spot for me..

[MarieAntoinette]

This is one of my favorites:


George Gordon, Lord Byron
She Walks in Beauty

1

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellow'd to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
2

One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impair'd the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o'er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling place.
3

And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!

[snowangel]

Pablo Neruda's I Do Not Love You

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

[Lycosparks]

I just read through the entire thread--thank you for sharing your favorites; I have added a few to mine! I noticed John Donne has been mentioned a number of times, but to my surprise, my very favorite has not been. So here it is:

The Good-Morrow

I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I
Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then?
But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?
Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers' den?
'Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be.
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desired, and got, 'twas but a dream of thee.

And now good-morrow to our waking souls,
Which watch not one another out of fear;
For love, all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room an everywhere.
Let sea-discoveres to new worlds have shown,
Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one.

My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
And true plain hearts do in the faces rest;
Where can we find two better hemispheres,
Without sharp north, without declining west?
Whatever dies was not mixed equally,
If our two loves be one, or, thou and I
Love so alike that none do slacken, none can die.

[thevintagepiper]

Has this been posted yet? If 'yes,' it's an encore, if 'no,' it should have been:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds



Indeed!! Sonnet 116 is my favorite sonnet, and definietly one of my favorite love poems...

My favorite is actually a song, For Always, from the movie A.I.


I close my eyes
and there in the shadows I see your light
You come to me out of my dreams across
the night

You take my hand
though you may be so many stars away
I know that our spirits and souls are one
We've circled the moon and we've touched the sun
So here we'll stay

For always, forever
Beyond here and on to eternity
For always, forever

For us there's no time and no space
No barrier love won't erase
Wherever you go
I still know
In my heart you will be
With me

From this day on I'm certain that I'll never be alone
I know what my heart must have always known
That love has a power that's all its own

And for always, forever
Now we can fly
And for always and always
We will go on beyond goodbye

For always, forever
Beyond here and on to eternity
For always and ever
You'll be a part of me

And for always, forever
A thousand tomorrows may cross the sky
And for always and always
We will go on
beyond goodbye


I also love The Highwayman, Annabel Lee, and The Lady of Shalott (though the Lady's love is unrequited).

[relohi]

I Crave Your Mouth, Your Voice, Your Hair


DON'T GO FAR OFF, NOT EVEN FOR A DAY
Don't go far off, not even for a day, because --
because -- I don't know how to say it: a day is long
and I will be waiting for you, as in an empty station
when the trains are parked off somewhere else, asleep.

Don't leave me, even for an hour, because
then the little drops of anguish will all run together,
the smoke that roams looking for a home will drift
into me, choking my lost heart.

Oh, may your silhouette never dissolve on the beach;
may your eyelids never flutter into the empty distance.
Don't leave me for a second, my dearest,

because in that moment you'll have gone so far
I'll wander mazily over all the earth, asking,
Will you come back? Will you leave me here, dying?

Pablo Neruda

[mono]

Wow, I had never read this one until this morning - very, very nice . . .

-----

From 'The Book of a Monastic Life'

She who reconciles the ill-matched threads
of her life, and weaves them gratefully
into a single cloth--
it's she who drives the loudmouths from the hall
and clears it for a different celebration

where the one guest is you.
In the softness of evening
it's you she receives.

You are the partner of her loneliness,
the unspeaking center of her monologues.
With each disclosure you encompass more
and she stretches beyond what limits her,
to hold you.

Rainer Maria Rilke (translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy)

[Monica]

I Crave Your Mouth, Your Voice, Your Hair

Pablo Neruda

Neruda is a maestro :D Another one by him:

I Do Not Love You Except Because I Love You


I do not love you except because I love you;
I go from loving to not loving you,
From waiting to not waiting for you
My heart moves from cold to fire.

I love you only because it's you the one I love;
I hate you deeply, and hating you
Bend to you, and the measure of my changing love for you
Is that I do not see you but love you blindly.

Maybe January light will consume
My heart with its cruel
Ray, stealing my key to true calm.

In this part of the story I am the one who
Dies, the only one, and I will die of love because I love you,
Because I love you, Love, in fire and blood.

[MCAZEEZ]

Please Contact Me On My Private Mail Ill Join U In A Little While

[Anonymous Angel]

The Lady of Shallot is a good one. The song is also pretty good. Does anyone know who sang it?
Loreena McKennitt does a lovely version of The Lady of Shalott...it really is pretty.

[subterranean]

I Crave Your Mouth, Your Voice, Your Hair by Pablo Neruda

Wow..., this one really makes me blush :blush: :blush:

[aeroport]

This has always been a favorite of mine. It's brief and concise, and it's Pushkin. How can one go wrong?

Untitled
by Alexander Pushkin

I have loved you; even now I may confess
Some embers of my love their fire retain;
but do not let it cause you more distress-
I do not want to sadden you again.

Hopeless and tonguetied, yet I loved you dearly,
With pangs the jealous and the timid know;
So tenderly I loved you- so sincerely;
I pray God grant another love you so.

It is, of course, translated, but I like it just the same.

[Anonymous Angel]

There were a lot of lovely poems in this thread! One can definitely never go wrong with Pablo Neruda, he has been among my favorites for a while now...even though I can only understand it in English. A tragedy, I'm certain, as I do wonder what it must be like to understand it in Spanish.

Sara Teasdale is another of those poets whose attention to love I've found to be precious. I think she is severely overlooked in modern times and would love to see more people read her. She has an immense passion that shows through in all of her poetry, not just those written about love. I would highly recommend her to anyone.


*********

These are all Sara's...


TO-NIGHT

The moon is a curving flower of gold,
The sky is still and blue;
The mood was made for the sky to hold,
And I for you.

The moon is a flower without a stem,
The sky is luminous;
Eternity was made for them,
To-night for us.



ENOUGH

It is enough for me by day
To walk the same bright earth with him;
Enough that over us by night
The same great roof of stars is dim.

I have no care to bind the wind
Or set a fetter on the sea--
It is enough to feel his love
Blow like music over me.



TO ONE AWAY

I heard a cry in the night,
A thousand miles it came,
Sharp as a flash of light,
My name, my name!

It was your voice I heard,
You waked and loved me so--
I send you back this word,,
I know, I know!



THE KISS

Before you kissed me only the winds of heaven
Had kissed me, and the tenderness of rain--
Now you have come, how can I care for kisses
Like theirs again?

I sought the sea, she sent her winds to meet me,
They surged about me singing of the south--
I turned my head away to keep still holy
Your kiss upon my mouth.

And swift sweet rains of shining April weather
Found not my lips where living kisses are;
I bowed my head lest they put out my glory
As rain puts out a star.

I am my love's and he is mine forever,
Sealed with a seal and safe forevermore--
Think you that I could let a beggar enter
Where a king stood before?



BECAUSE

Oh, because you never tried
To bow my will or break my pride,
And nothing of the cave-man made
You want to keep me half afraid,
Nor ever with a conquering air
You thought to take me unaware--
Take me, for I love you more
Than I ever loved before.

And since the body's maidenhood
Alone were neither rare nor good
Unless with it I gave to you
A spirit still untrammeled, too,
Take my dreams and take my mind
That were masterless as wind;
And "Master!" I shall say to you
Since you never asked me to.



OFF ALGIERS

Oh give me neither love nor tears,
Nor dreams that sear the night with fire,
Go lightly on your pilgrimage
Unburdened by desire.

Forget me for a month, a year,
But, oh, beloved, think of me
When unexpected beauty burns
Like sudden sunlight on the sea.



I AM NOT YOURS

I am not yours, not lost in you,
Not lost, although I long to be
Lost as a candle lit at noon,
Lost as a snowflake in the sea.

You love me, and I find you still
A spirit beautiful and bright,
Yet I am I, who long to be
Lost as a light is lost in light.

Oh plunge me deep in love-put out
My senses, leave me deaf and blind,
Swept by the tempest of your love,
A taper in the rushing wind.



SHE WHO COULD BIND YOU

She who could bind you
Could bind fire to a wall;
She who could hold you
Could hold a waterfall;
She who could keep you
Could keep the wind from blowing
On a warm spring night
With a low moon glowing.



THOSE WHO LOVE

Those who love the most,
Do not talk of their love,
Francesca, Guinevere,
Deirdre, Iseult, Heloise,
In the fragrant gardens of heaven
Are silent, or speak if at all
Of fragile, inconsequent things.

And a woman I used to know
Who loved one man from her youth,
Against the strength of the fates
Fighting in somber pride,
Never spoke of this thing,
But hearing his name by chance,
A light would pass over her face.

*********

I've always thought this poem rather pretty, too.


THE DANGERS OF METAPHOR

Metaphors are not to be trifled with.
A single metaphor can give birth to love.-Milan Kundera

The day when the rainbows came,
I was running up a steep hill toward you,
and, looking up to find you there, said:
That rainbow looks like a halo
around your head. These
were my first words to you
and, ever since, I have held you
against the sky, the way a man holds
a closed letter to the light without opening it,
and what I have seen there is something
I might want to open, carefully,
as if it were addressed to me. But
there are dangers in this, this beginning
with something as heavenly
as a rainbow. So I wait,
holding you up again each day
against a bleaker sky
and you become, this way,
less transparent, less embellished
by the numinous, but more real.
Last night there were no stars anywhere
and, today, desire's prism
held against the sky
yields only a pure white. In fact,
each day now the sky falls
a bit closer to you, merciful
as a guillotine,
keeping you earthbound, flawed--
a human thing only another human thing could love.

-Michael Blumenthal

[thevintagepiper]

Loreena McKennitt does a lovely version of The Lady of Shalott...it really is pretty.



I love that one-also her Highwayman.

[Turk]

Fahriye Abla (*)

The air filled with a pungent charcoal smell
And the doors closed before sunset;
From that neighborhood as languid as a laudanum
You are the only surviving trace in my memory, you
Who smiled at the vast light of her own dreams.
With your eyes, your teeth, and your white neck
What a sweet neighbor you were, Fahriye abla!

Your house was as small as a neat box;
Its balcony thickly intertwined and the shades
Of ivies at the tiny hours of the sunset
Washed over in a nearby hidden brook.
A green flowerpot stood in your window all year round
And in spring acacias blossomed in your garden
What a charming neighbor you were, Fahriye abla!

Earlier you had long hair, then short and styled;
Light-complexioned, you were as tall as an ear of corn,
Your wrists laden with ample golden bracelets
Tickled the heart of all men
And occasionally your short skirt swayed in the wind.
You sang mostly obscene love songs
What a sexy neighbor you were, Fahriye Abla!

Rumors had it that you were in love with that lad
And finally you were married to a man from Erzincan
I don't know whether you still live with your first husband
Or whether you are in Erzincan of snowy mountaintops.
Let my heart recollect the long-forgotten days
Things that live in memory do not change by time
What a nice neighbor you were, Fahriye Abla!


Ahmet Muhip Dranas

Translated by Osman Turkay (1982)

(*) Literally, ``elder sister''; often used as a term of affection or
respect for a somewhat older girl or woman.

This poem telling a kid's platonic love to their young and beatiful neighbour. It's good but not my favorite. Although this is one of most famous poems of poet Ahmet Muhip Dranas.

[Dry_Snail]

Blue Bird

There is a blue bird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I am too tough for him,
I say, stay in there,
I am not going to let anybody see you.

Charles Bukowski

[fidelio]

I like this one:
Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe

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
Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she 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, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsman 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 by night,
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 feel 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 the sepulchre there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.

[Mrs Dickens]

My favourite love poem is Sonnet 116. I think that is amazing!

[Sweet-Annie]

This one is considered the best love poem in Spanish, it was written by Francisco de Quevedo y villegas

"Cerrar podrá mis ojos la postrera
sombra que me llevare el blanco día,
y podrá desatar esta alma mía
hora a su afán ansioso lisonjear;

mas no, de esotra parte, en la ribera
dejare la memoria, en donde ardía;
nadar sabe mi llama el agua fría
y perder el respeto a ley severa

Alma a quien todo un día prisión ha sido,
venas que humor a tanto fuego han dado,
medulas que han gloriosamente ardido,

su cuerpo dejara, no su cuidado;
serán ceniza, mas tendrán sentido;
polvo serán, mas polvo enamorado"

This one was written by Garcilaso de la Vega. Personally, I consider this one much better than the first one.

"Escrito está en mi alma vuestro gesto,
y cuanto yo escribir de vos deseo;
vos sola lo escribisteis, yo lo leo
tan solo, que aun de vos me guardo en esto.

En esto estoy y estaré siempre puesto;
que aunque no cabe en mí cuanto en vos veo,
de tanto bien lo que no entiendo creo,
tomando ya la fe por presupuesto.

Yo no nací sino para quereros;
mi alma os ha cortado a su medida;
por hábito del alma mismo os quiero.

Cuando tengo confieso yo deberos;
por vos nací, por vos tengo la vida,
por vos he de morir, y por vos muero."


The last two verses are specially sweet.

[OZEED]

lyrics from Christian Rock group Tree63....
not a poem but poetic none the less, speaks about an agaphe love.
I love you perfectly
I hung my love upon a tree
If freedom is for free
what will it take to make you see,
you're perfectly made,imperfect in every way, you have been saved......

[pandora]

Shaespeare's sonnets have a special place for me.But sonnets 18 and 19 are my favorites.

SONNET 18
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:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.

[whitetree]

i love all the poems of tagore
especially "the crescent moom"

[BIGDANNY]

There's a mountain and a hundred miles
between me and the jazz station, but sometimes
I can live with the static, a kind of extra-tempo
air-drum percussion, the dead singer's voice
tanged by smokes and too much gin. Some days,
all I want is no news, none of the time.

On the other hand, this afternoon it wasn't music
pulled me up, but what the field guide calls
the black-chinned hummingbird's "thin, excited chippering."
It had got itself trapped in the garage, and though
the big door was open, it stayed in the window
through which it could clearly see a world.

By the time I heard it, it was so exhausted
it let itself be cupped in my slow man's hands,
and emitted, as I closed it in, a single chip then silence.
At the edge of the woods I knelt and opened my hands.
Not even thumb-thick, its body pulsed with breath,
its wings spread across my palm, its eyelash legs

sprawled left and right, indecorously. I stroked it
as lightly as I could, as I might not my lover's breast
but the down made seemingly of air thereon, and twice.
Then it flew, a slow lilt into the distance. For a while,
even peace seemed possible, in the background
Billie Holiday singing "Strange Fruit."

[abirpal]

Wonderful..loved this. Still nothing to meet the Irish when it comes to a love poem.

[malwethien]

This is one of my favorites: By Robert Graves

She tells her love while half asleep;
In the dark hours,
With half-words whispered low:

As Earth stirs in her winter sleep
And puts out grass and flowers
Despite the snow
Despite the falling snow

[cUbik]

We know that one times one is one,
but an unicorn times a pear
have no idea what it is.
We know that five minus four is one
but a cloud minus a sailboat
have no idea what it is.
We know that eight
divided by eight is one,
but a mountain divided by a goat
have no idea what it is.
We know that one plus one is two,
but me and you, oh,
we have no idea what it is.

Oh, but a comforter
times a rabbit
is a red-headed one of course,
a cabbage divided by a flag
is a pig,
a horse minus a street-car
is an angel,
a cauliflower plus an egg
is an astragalus.

Only you and me
multiplied and divided
added and subtracted
remain the same...

Vanish from my mind!
Come back in my heart!

[Eulalia]

There&#180;s a wonderful one, but it&#180;s in Spanish. It&#180;s called C&#225;ntico Espiritual, by San Juan de la Cruz.

I&#180;ve found a very nice translation on this site, http://www.amancioprada.com/cant_i_texto.htm , there goes an extract:

Why piercedst thou this heart
And heal'dst it not upon the selfsame day?
Why usedst robbers'art
Yet leavest thus thy prey
And tak'st it not eternally away?
End thou my torments here,
Since none but thou can remedy my plight;
And to these eyes appear,
For thou art all their light
And save for thee I value not their sight.

but if any of you understands Spanish, please do read the original (http://users.ipfw.edu/JEHLE/poesia/canticoe.htm), it&#180;s just incomparable, specially if you hear it sung by Spanish singer Amancio Prada.

[Magdalene]

Hello everyone! Just signed here. I hope to meet friends and mates here. Please do write me, i want to make acquaintance of as many people here as possible

[Magdalene]

Don’t Let Them See You Cry

Don’t let them see you cry;
Be it in good or in bad,
Whether you’re staying or starving,
Whether in pinch or punch,
Don’t let them see you cry
Laugh and smile as though you’ve lots.

Don’t let them see you cry;
Be it in sorrow or in shame,
Be it in scarcity or in plenty,
Whether in sighing or shouting,
Don’t let them see you cry;
Laugh and smile as though you’ve lots.

Don’t let them see you cry;
Be it in pain OR in pang,
Be it in downs or ups; be it
Rain or shine, don’t let them see you cry
Laugh and smile as though you’ve lots

[adboy316]

This is my favorite love poem, it's by Elizabeth Browning - greatest love poet.

If thou must love me, let it be for nought
Except for love's sake only. Do not say
"I love her for her smile--her look--her way
Of speaking gently,--for a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
A sense of pleasant ease on such a day" -
For these things in themselves, Beloved, may
Be changed, or change for thee,--and love, so wrought,
May be unwrought so. Neither love me for
Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry, -
A creature might forget to weep, who bore
Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!
But love me for love's sake, that evermore
Thou may'st love on, through love's eternity.

[JeaninGreen]

I'm fond of Catullus and his love poems concerning his amica, Lesbia. Translations are by Guy Lee.

Nulli se dicit mulier mea nubere malle
quam mihi, non si se Iuppiter ipse petat.
dicit - sed mulier cupido quod dicit amanti
in uento et rapida scribere oportet aqua.

My woman says there's no one she would rather wed
Than me, not even if asked by Jove himself.
Says - but what a woman says to an eager lover
One should write on the wind and the running water.

Odi et amo. quare id faciam fortasse requiris?
nescio sed fieri sentio et excrucior.

I hate and I love. Perhaps you're asking why I do that?
I don't know, but I feel it happening, and am racked.


And a fragment, translated by Andrew Miller, probably by Sappho:

The moon has set,
and the Pleiades; it is
midnight, and time is passing;
and I lie alone.

[macg1]

That's a tough question. "What do you think is the best love poem?" There
are so many, and that is what I call a super-genre of poetry.
There are many sub-genres under the topic of love.
If you break it down into two smaller categories:
Love Gone Right and Love Gone Wrong.
The two can be broken down into even smaller sub-categories.

I probably have a favorite from each of them, but for just "Love" in general;
I don't particularly have a favorite out of them all.

[Niamh]

John Millington Synges ' Is it a month' is a beautiful love poem and should be recognised for its romantic content.