The Best Love Poems of All Time

(Rainer Maria Rilke) Autumn Day (Translated by M. D. Herter Norton, 1938)
Lord, it is time. The summer was very big.
Lay thy shadow on the sundials,
and on the meadows let the winds go loose.
Command the last fruits that they shall be full;
give them another two more southerly days,
urge them on to fulfillment and drive
the last sweetness into heavy wine.
Who has no house now, will build him one no more.
Who is alone now, long will so remain,
will wake, read, write long letters
and will in the avenues to and fro
restlessly wander, when the leaves are blowing.

Robert Burns, Ae fond kiss

Ae fond kiss, and then we sever;
Ae fareweel, alas, for ever!
Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee,
Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee.
Who shall say that Fortune grieves him,
While the star of hope she leaves him?
Me, nae cheerful twinkle lights me;
Dark despair around benights me.

I'll ne'er blame my partial fancy,
Naething could resist my Nancy:
But to see her was to love her;
Love but her, and love for ever.
Had we never lov'd sae kindly,
Had we never lov'd sae blindly,
Never met-or never parted,
We had ne'er been broken-hearted.

Fare-thee-weel, thou first and fairest!
Fare-thee-weel, thou best and dearest!
Thine be ilka joy and treasure,
Peace, Enjoyment, Love and Pleasure!
Ae fond kiss, and then we sever!
Ae fareweeli alas, for ever!
Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee,
Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Guinivere

Robert Burns, Ae fond kiss

Ae fond kiss, and then we sever;
Ae fareweel, alas, for ever!
Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee,
Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee.
Who shall say that Fortune grieves him,
While the star of hope she leaves him?
Me, nae cheerful twinkle lights me;
Dark despair around benights me.

I'll ne'er blame my partial fancy,
Naething could resist my Nancy:
But to see her was to love her;
Love but her, and love for ever.
Had we never lov'd sae kindly,
Had we never lov'd sae blindly,
Never met-or never parted,
We had ne'er been broken-hearted.

Fare-thee-weel, thou first and fairest!
Fare-thee-weel, thou best and dearest!
Thine be ilka joy and treasure,
Peace, Enjoyment, Love and Pleasure!
Ae fond kiss, and then we sever!
Ae fareweeli alas, for ever!
Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee,
Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee.

---

enchanting poesy!
excellent!

Shakespeare's sonnet that starts:

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun ...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by byquist

Shakespeare's sonnet that starts:

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun ...

---

Sonnet 130.

Dear Members,
Really,amazing! I thought I had contributed here.Anyway it was pleasure again to read all over again.I am glad so many read with so much variety.So here is my contribution.

By Florence Earle Coates


IF love were but a little thing—
Strange love, which, more than all, is great—
One might not such devotion bring,
Early to serve and late.

If love were but a passing breath— 5
Wild love—which, as God knows, is sweet—
One might not make of life and death
A pillow for love’s feet.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by 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?

---

Cruised back four years (page 6) for this reference.

Dover Beach, by Mathew Arnold, is not only my favorite poem, but a great love poem.

The Industrial Revolution was on, and yet years before Charles Darwin sailed on the Beagle naturalists had noted that the incessant waves had eroded the face of the "White Cliffs of Dover" revealing 10,000 years of limestone. Upon examination the shellfish fossils that made up the lime had changed very little in that time.
Therefore, the world was a lot older than the 6,000 years interpreters of the Bible said.
"Tain't so!" - What the Bible said, was the conclusion. Thus England entered the "Post Christian" phase.

Poetry changed.

Arnold in "Dover Beach," cuts to the heart of the matter: if heretofore life's "meaning" had crashed like a dove on Dover beach, what would replace it?

Dover Beach
by Mathew Arnold

The sea is calm tonight.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair.
Upon the straights;-on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night air!

Only, from the long line of spray
Where sea meets the moon-blanched sand,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then begin again,
With tremendous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the AEgaean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like folds of a bright girdle furled.

But now I only hear
Its meloncholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night wild, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain,
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

-1848


It seems like a vision poem like The Seine Net, by Robinson Jeffers. But that vision is not addressed to a loved one, nor is it about the conclusion that only love has meaning now.

In any event it gets my vote for greatest love poem (with the background info anyway).
Or at least I tend to agree with Arnold's viewpoint: If; then...

And why do we neglect Donne?

THE CANONIZATION.
by John Donne


FOR God's sake hold your tongue, and let me love ;
Or chide my palsy, or my gout ;
My five gray hairs, or ruin'd fortune flout ;
With wealth your state, your mind with arts improve ;
Take you a course, get you a place,
Observe his Honour, or his Grace ;
Or the king's real, or his stamp'd face
Contemplate ; what you will, approve,
So you will let me love.

Alas ! alas ! who's injured by my love?
What merchant's ships have my sighs drown'd?
Who says my tears have overflow'd his ground?
When did my colds a forward spring remove?
When did the heats which my veins fill
Add one more to the plaguy bill?
Soldiers find wars, and lawyers find out still
Litigious men, which quarrels move,
Though she and I do love.

Call's what you will, we are made such by love ;
Call her one, me another fly,
We're tapers too, and at our own cost die,
And we in us find th' eagle and the dove.
The phoenix riddle hath more wit
By us ; we two being one, are it ;
So, to one neutral thing both sexes fit.
We die and rise the same, and prove
Mysterious by this love.

We can die by it, if not live by love,
And if unfit for tomb or hearse
Our legend be, it will be fit for verse ;
And if no piece of chronicle we prove,
We'll build in sonnets pretty rooms ;
As well a well-wrought urn becomes
The greatest ashes, as half-acre tombs,
And by these hymns, all shall approve
Us canonized for love ;

And thus invoke us, "You, whom reverend love
Made one another's hermitage ;
You, to whom love was peace, that now is rage ;
Who did the whole world's soul contract, and drove
Into the glasses of your eyes ;
So made such mirrors, and such spies,
That they did all to you epitomize—
Countries, towns, courts beg from above
A pattern of your love."


As it is late for me, I will return to say something about Donne and his illumination on love tomorrow, possibly.

My name will be up in your list one day. I'll do whatever it takes to be as famous as Bob Dylan or Shakespeare.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jozanny

And why do we neglect Donne?


Call's what you will, we are made such by love ;
Call her one, me another fly,
We're tapers too, and at our own cost die,
And we in us find th' eagle and the dove.
The phoenix riddle hath more wit
By us ; we two being one, are it ;
So, to one neutral thing both sexes fit.
We die and rise the same, and prove
Mysterious by this love.

We can die by it, if not live by love,
And if unfit for tomb or hearse
Our legend be, it will be fit for verse ;
And if no piece of chronicle we prove,
We'll build in sonnets pretty rooms ;
As well a well-wrought urn becomes
The greatest ashes, as half-acre tombs,
And by these hymns, all shall approve
Us canonized for love ;



As it is late for me, I will return to say something about Donne and his illumination on love tomorrow, possibly.

---

For someone who can sometimes scoff at great poets with impatience, I am seemingly most lenient when it comes to continued appreciation of Donne; he is my favorite Elizabethan, and The Canonization is one of my favorite poems, and the verses I single out here is what elevates the piece to metaphysical mastery.

Jacobean, not Elizabethan.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by JBI

Jacobean, not Elizabethan.

---

For a quibble, my friend, that is a stretch. Kermode counts him among the Elizabethan, but with a little quell-time, perhaps, I can offer a little more analysis. Not this morning tho.

I love Cummings love poems. Hard to beat them.
Cat

The Ecstacy, John Donne

Here is my favorite love poem , which is by Lord Byron


When we two parted
In silence and tears,
Half broken-hearted
To sever for years,
Pale grew thy cheek and cold,
Colder thy kiss;
Truly that hour foretold
Sorrow to this.

The dew of the morning
Sunk chill on my brow-
It felt like the warning
Of what I feel now.
Thy vows are all broken,
And light is thy fame:
I hear thy name spoken,
And share in its shame.

They name thee before me,
A knell to mine ear;
A shudder comes o'er me-
Why were thou so dear?
They know not I knew thee,
Who knew thee too well:-
Long, long shall I rue thee,
Too deeply to tell.

In secret we met-
In silence I grieve,
That thy heart could forget,
Thy spirit deceive.
If I should meet thee
After long years,
How should I greet thee?-
With silence and tears.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Cat_Brenners

I love Cummings love poems. Hard to beat them.
Cat

---

I could not agree more.

My favorite love poem... by A. Pushkin (of course, it is only translation)

To ***
The wondrous moment of our meeting...
I well remember you appear
Before me like a vision fleeting,
A beauty's angel pure and clear.

In hopeless ennui surrounding
The worldly bustle, to my ear
For long your tender voice kept sounding,
For long in dreams came features dear.

Time passed. Unruly storms confounded
Old dreams, and I >from year to year
Forgot how tender you had sounded,
Your heavenly features once so dear.

My backwoods days dragged slow and quiet --
Dull fence around, dark vault above --
Devoid of God and uninspired,
Devoid of tears, of fire, of love.

Sleep from my soul began retreating,
And here you once again appear
Before me like a vision fleeting,
A beauty's angel pure and clear.

In ecstasy the heart is beating,
Old joys for it anew revive;
Inspired and God-filled, it is greeting
The fire, and tears, and love alive.

And other Pushkin's poems such as "Confession", Tatyana's letter from Eugeni Onegin and so on

Ah, I love that Byron poem, Alan... I have it posted on one of my blogs.... though in a sense it isn't really a love poem. More of a lament... perhaps with a tinge of bitterness and disdain.

Any love poem by Pablo Neruda is so passionate... so beautiful.

Letter - (Leonard Cohen from Let Us Compare Mythologies)

How you murdered your family
means nothing to me
as your mouth moves across my body

And I know your dreams
of crumbling cities and galloping horses
of the sun coming too close
and the night never ending

but these mean nothing to me
beside your body

I know that outside a war is raging
That you issue orders
That babies are smothered and generals beheaded

But blood means nothing to me
It does not disturb your flesh

tasting blood on your tongue
does not shock me
as my arms grow into your hair

Do not think I do not understand
what happens
after the troops have been massacred
and the harlots put to the sword

And I write this only to rob you

that when one morning my head
hangs dripping with the other generals
from your house gate

that all this was anticipated
and so you will know that it meant nothing to me.

Quote:

---

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.

---

Nothing more need be said before Senor Neruda.

distant eyes

distant eyes! you were birds
and seemed treasuries of sorrow
you've been quiet since the final death
you stopped
and toward
that profound conclusion from within
an amber worm, advanced
beyond carrying its reasons around
like a shell, with its stones
more ruby than a mystery,
more diamond...
distant eyes!
and flocks of pain...

distant eyes! you were birds
or the metaphors of birds...
or else resembled a bit of prose
and those
who came you took one by one:
and the prophet of a storm; of death
it was the spring, skipping
over the spoor of roses
you came... distant eyes!
you! autumn angels...

distant eyes! you were birds,
and seemed treasuries of sorrow


Hilmi Yavuz
Translation by Walter Andrews

was a favorite poem of Audrey Hepburn.

I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times…
In life after life, in age after age, forever.
My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs,
That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms,
In life after life, in age after age, forever.

Whenever I hear old chronicles of love, it's age-old pain,
It's ancient tale of being apart or together.
As I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge,
Clad in the light of a pole-star piercing the darkness of time:
You become an image of what is remembered forever.

You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount.
At the heart of time, love of one for another.
We have played along side millions of lovers, shared in the same
Shy sweetness of meeting, the same distressful tears of farewell-
Old love but in shapes that renew and renew forever.

Today it is heaped at your feet, it has found its end in you
The love of all man’s days both past and forever:
Universal joy, universal sorrow, universal life.
The memories of all loves merging with this one love of ours –
And the songs of every poet past and forever.

I did a bit of editing to this love letter from Tarzan in 'Tarzan of the Apes', Chapter 18, by Edgar Rice Burroughs:

I am Tarzan of the Apes.
I want you. I am yours. You are mine.
We live here together always in my house.
I will bring you the best of fruits, the tenderest deer, the finest meats that roam the jungle.
I will hunt for you. I am the greatest of the jungle fighters.
I will fight for you. I am the mightiest of the jungle fighters.
You are Jane Porter, I saw it in your letter.
When you see this you will know that it is for you and that Tarzan of the Apes loves you.

:lol: Will this work?;)

Ah, this is by Peter S. Beagle from his book 'The Last Unicorn'. It's... nothing crazily elegant, but ... love isn't always crazily elegant. Anyway:

http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/show/2531

There are so many great poems on this thread. My little piece of Love poem.

Celestial Love

Higher far,
Upward, into the pure realm,
Over sun or star,
Over the flickering D?on film,
Thou must mount for love,?br> Into vision which all form
In one only form dissolves;
In a region where the wheel,
On which all beings ride,
Visibly revolves;
Where the starred eternal worm
Girds the world with bound and term;
Where unlike things are like,
When good and ill,
And joy and moan,
Melt into one.
There Past, Present, Future, shoot
Triple blossoms from one root
Substances at base divided
In their summits are united,
There the holy Essence rolls,
One through separated souls,
And the sunny ?n sleeps
Folding nature in its deeps,
And every fair and every good
Known in part or known impure
To men below,
In their archetypes endure.

The race of gods,
Or those we erring own,
Are shadows flitting up and down
In the still abodes.
The circles of that sea are laws,
Which publish and which hide the Cause.
Pray for a beam
Out of that sphere
Thee to guide and to redeem.
O what a load
Of care and toil
By lying Use bestowed,
From his shoulders falls, who sees
The true astronomy,
The period of peace!
Counsel which the ages kept,
Shall the well-born soul accept.
As the overhanging trees
Fill the lake with images,
As garment draws the garment's hem
Men their fortunes bring with them;
By right or wrong,
Lands and goods go to the strong;
Property will brutely draw
Still to the proprietor,
Silver to silver creep and wind,
And kind to kind,
Nor less the eternal poles
Of tendency distribute souls.
There need no vows to bind
Whom not each other seek but find.
They give and take no pledge or oath,
Nature is the bond of both.
No prayer persuades, no flattery fawns,
Their noble meanings are their pawns.
Plain and cold is their address,
Power have they for tenderness,
And so thoroughly is known
Each others' purpose by his own,
They can parley without meeting,
Need is none of forms of greeting,
They can well communicate
In their innermost estate;
When each the other shall avoid,
Shall each by each be most enjoyed.
Not with scarfs or perfumed gloves
Do these celebrate their loves,
Not by jewels, feasts, and savors,
Not by ribbons or by favors,
But by the sun-spark on the sea,
And the cloud-shadow on the lea,
The soothing lapse of morn to mirk,
And the cheerful round of work.
Their cords of love so public are,
They intertwine the farthest star.
The throbbing sea, the quaking earth,
Yield sympathy and signs of mirth;
Is none so high, so mean is none,
But feels and seals this union.
Even the tell Furies are appeased,
The good applaud, the lost are eased.

Love's hearts are faithful, but not fond,
Bound for the just, but not beyond;
Not glad, as the low-loving herd,
Of self in others still preferred,
But they have heartily designed
The benefit of broad mankind.
And they serve men austerely,
After their own genius, clearly,
Without a false humility;
For this is love's nobility,
Not to scatter bread and gold,
Goods and raiment bought and sold,
But to hold fast his simple sense,
And speak the speech of innocence,
And with hand, and body, and blood,
To make his bosom-counsel good:
For he that feeds men, serveth few,
He serves all, who dares be true.

~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Favourite poem of all time is a difficult one! I don't know what criteria you could use to determine that. I might plump for Milton's Paradise Lost, Blake's Tyger or Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere (original spelling).

However, I have always loved Louis Macneice's Bagpipe Music.

I'm going to have to get better reading glasses as I have posted this in the wrong forum. Doh!

I will say my favourite love poem would be Yeat's No Second Troy, as it is predominantly about his unrequited love for Maud Gonne.

It is the hour

It is the hour when from the boughs
The nightingale's high note is heard;
It is the hour -- when lover's vows
Seem sweet in every whisper'd word;
And gentle winds and waters near,
Make music to the lonely ear.
Each flower the dews have lightly wet,
And in the sky the stars are met,
And on the wave is deeper blue,
And on the leaf a browner hue,
And in the Heaven that clear obscure
So softly dark, and darkly pure,
That follows the decline of day
As twilight melts beneath the moon away.

My favourite love poem has to be:

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.

He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven by W.B.Yeats

A beautiful sentiment, beautifully written.

I really love these two poems by Robert Browning!
They're both bitter-sweet!



Meeting at Night

The gray sea and the long black land;
And the yellow half-moon large and low
And the startled little waves that leap
In fiery ringlets from their sleep,
As I gain the cove with pushing prow,
And quench its speed i' the slushy sand.

Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;
Three fields to cross till a farm appears;
A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch
And blue spurt of a lighted match,
And a voice less loud, through its joys and fears,
Than the two hearts beating each to each!

Parting at Morning

Round the cape of a sudden came the sea,
And the sun looked over the mountain's rim:
And straight was a path of gold for him,
And the need of a world of men for me.

My Love Is Like to Ice by Edmund Spenser

My love is like to ice, and I to fire:
How comes it then that this her cold so great
Is not dissolved through my so hot desire,
But harder grows the more I her entreat?
Or how comes it that my exceeding heat
Is not allayed by her heart-frozen cold,
But that I burn much more in boiling sweat,
And feel my flames augmented manifold?
What more miraculous thing may be told,
That fire, which all things melts, should harden ice,
And ice, which is congealed with senseless cold,
Should kindle fire by wonderful device?
Such is the power of love in gentle mind,
That it can alter all the course of kind.

'The Mistress: A Song'
by John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester

An age in her embraces passed
Would seem a winter's day;
When life and light, with envious haste,
Are torn and snatched away.

But, oh! how slowly minutes roll.
When absent from her eyes
That feed my love, which is my soul,
It languishes and dies.


For then no more a soul but shade
It mournfully does move
And haunts my breast, by absence made
The living tomb of love.


You wiser men despise me not,
Whose love-sick fancy raves
On shades of souls and Heaven knows what;
Short ages live in graves.


Whene'er those woundng eyes, so full
Of sweetness, you did see,
Had you not been profoundly dull,
You had gone mad like me.


Nor censure us, you who perceive
My best beloved and me
Sign and lament, complain and grieve;
You think we disagree.


Alas, 'tis sacred jealousy,
Love raised to an extreme;
The only proof 'twixt her and me,
We love, and do not dream.


Fantastic fancies fondly move
And in frail joys believe,
Taking false pleasure for true love;
But pain can ne'er deceive.


Kind jealous doubts, tormenting fears,
And anxious cares when past,
Prove our heart's treasure fixed and dear,
And make us blessed at last.

My favourite love poem is probably Matthew Arnorld's

'Dover Beach'

The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand;
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the A gaean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.


Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.



The 'Ah, love, let us be true to one another!' fragment is intensely memorable.

If You Forget Me

User Rating:

8.6 /10
(656 votes)


- vote - 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10





E-mail this poem to e friend

Send this poem as eCard

Add this poem to MyPoemList

Print friendly version


I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.

That's lovely, forever bloom. Who wrote it?

On a much lighter note...
Here by Grace Paley
Here

Here I am in the garden laughing
an old woman with heavy breasts
and a nicely mapped face.

How did this happen?
well that's who I wanted to be
at last a woman
in the old style of sitting,

stout thighs apart under
a big skirt grandchild sliding
on off my lap a pleasant
summer perspiration.

that's my old man across the yard
he's talking to the meter reader
he's telling him the world's a sad story
how electricity is oil or uranium and so forth.

I tell my grandson
run over to your grandpa and ask him
to sit beside me for a minute.

I am suddenly exhausted by my desire
to kiss his sweet explaining lips.

The Exequy by Henry King...

This is a superb lament to the poet's dead wife. I won't quote this long poem, but I direct your attention to the passage beginning with:

Mean time, thou hast her, earth: much good
May my harm do thee...

There are so many beautiful love poems on this thread, many of them favourites of mine. I couldn't just pick one from the greats of Shakespeare, Donne, Neruda, Barrett Browning, Yeats, Byron.......

I didn't see Christina Rossetti on here though, (apologies if I've missed her).

Christina Rossetti
Remember

REMEMBER me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go, yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you plann'd:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.

On Love

Kahlil Gibran
1923

When love beckons to you, follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep,
And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you believe in him,
Though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden.

For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you.
Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.

Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself.
He threshes you to make you naked.
He sifts you to free you from your husks.
He grinds you to whiteness.
He kneads you until you are pliant;
And then he assigns you to his sacred fire,
that you may become sacred bread for God's sacred feast.

All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart,
and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life's heart.

But if in your fear you would seek only love's peace and love's pleasure,
Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing floor,
Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.

Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.
Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;
For love is sufficient unto love.

When you love you should not say,
'God is in my heart,' but rather,
'I am in the heart of God.'
And think not you can direct the course of love,
for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.

Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself.
But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:
To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night,
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love's ecstasy;
To return home at eventide with gratitude;
And to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.

This poem may not be popular to some of you guys..but i do hope that you get to read this and get to understand the message it conveys. it's really lovely guys , trust me..!

________________

"When the hired gets tired, the tired gets fired."
from dress up games and hair games community, Phil

It's beautiful.

I really like The Highway Man by Alfred Noyes
so romantic!