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what is going on in this world? are you guys serious? do you really think that there can be love poems out there better,in any way, than those written by Lord Byron and Keats? the only exception can be Emily Dickinson in her seemingly homosexual poems like ;To have a Susan of my own.
Hey, I can't find that poem on the net, do you have a link for me tan man??
To own a Susan of my ownQuote:
Originally Posted by tinustijger
Emily Dickinson
To own a Susan of my own
Is of itself a Bliss—
Whatever Realm I forfeit, Lord,
Continue me in this!
hi,
i am a new member.
i think that Donne's," A Valediction: Forbidden Mourning" is the most beautiful love poem ever.
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints,—I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life!—and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Well I was just digging through the archives and I found this! If we're talking about the same song it's Loreena McKinnett!Quote:
Originally Posted by Stanislaw
And look someone else misspelled Shalott! And he likes Star Wars! I think Stanislaw and I must be soul mates. Or maybe we knew each other in a past life! (where has he been anyway?)
Seriously, though. This is a good poem about unrequited love. but I guess it counts as a love poem. although, it is better to read about it than to experience it.
Lola, by the Kinks
I met her in a club down in old soho
Where you drink champagne and it tastes just like Coca-cola
C-o-l-a cola
She walked up to me and she asked me to dance
I asked her her name and in a dark brown voice she said lola
L-o-l-a lola lo-lo-lo-lo lola
Well Im not the world's most physical guy
But when she squeezed me tight she nearly broke my spine
Oh my lola lo-lo-lo-lo lola
Well I'm not dumb but I cant understand
Why she walked like a woman and talked like a man
Oh my lola lo-lo-lo-lo lola lo-lo-lo-lo lola
.......
great tune il penser. reminded me of another oldie love poem...um, sorta.
------
I was tired of my lady, we'd been together too long.
Like a worn-out recording, of a favorite song.
So while she lay there sleeping, I read the paper in bed.
And in the personals column, there was this letter I read:
"If you like Pina Coladas, and getting caught in the rain.
If you're not into yoga, if you have half-a-brain.
If you like making love at midnight, in the dunes of the cape.
I'm the lady you've looked for, write to me, and escape."
.........
My Love Is Like To Ice
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 congeal's 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.
Edmund Spenser
annnnd
[ 130 ]
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks,
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go:
My mistress when she walks treads on the ground.
And yet by heaven I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.
Shakespeare
The Panther
His vision, from the constantly passing bars,
has grown so weary that it cannot hold
anything else. It seems to him there are
a thousand bars, and behind the bars, no world.
As he paces in cramped circles, over and over,
the movement of his powerful soft strides
is like a ritual dance around a center
in which a mighty will stands paralyzed.
........
-- Rainer Maria Rilke
We've been studying Shelley pretty extensively on English literature classes but I came across the following poem in one of the Twin Peaks episodes.
Love's Philosophy - Percy Shelley
The fountains mingle with the river
And the rivers with the ocean,
The winds of heaven mix for ever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single;
All things by a law divine
In one spirit meet and mingle -
Why not I with thine?
See the mountains kiss high heaven
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister-flower would be forgiven
If it disdained its brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth
And the moonbeams kiss the sea:
What are all these kissings worth
If thou kiss not me?
Weep, Lovers, sith Love's very self doth weep,
And sith the cause for weeping is so great:
when now so many dames, of such estate
In worth, show with their eyes a grief so deep:
For death the churl has laid his leaden sleep
Upon a damsel who was fair of late
Defacing all our earth should celebrate,-
Yea all save virtue, which the soul doth keep
Now hearken how much love did honor her.
I myself saw him in his proper form
Bending above motionless sweet dead,
And often Gazing into Heaven; for there
The south now sits which when her life was warm
Dwelt with the joyful beauty that is fled.
Dante Alighieri,La Vita Nuova, VIII
Translation by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
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.
........
-Pablo Neruda
LOVE, that word must rank as one, if not the, most misused, abused, and therefore, misunderstood, words in the English language ( and that applies to its equivalent in any language.)
There are 'love poems' that attempt to describe love, and there are those that express it in, often overly, romantic terms.
It is easy to see from the many posts here how varied the meaning can be, or at least, how the variations of its expression can touch the differing emotions of others.
There is also a clear distinction, and one which often causes confusion, between 'love', and being 'in love'.
Just having come to this website, I thought I had better skim through the many contributions to this long thread. I was pleased to find that, I believe, two contributors, one being Monica, or was it Miranda, had included what I feel strongly is the most definitive in describing what 'true' love is, and by so doing, what it isn't.
To understand, and therefore appreciate it, fully, one needs to understand the metaphors Shakespeare uses which relate more to the familiar of his day when
seafaring (wandering bark, and 'height be taken'), and land farming (hand sickle making a compass sweep) had a more closer relevance to daily life than it does today.
How often do we hear the cliched expression in teetering relationships - 'I don't love you anymore'. Well, according to Shakespeare, and I concur, that would be an impossibility. Why? Because love is not from a tap that can be turned on and off. Love, that is real love, is eternal - period! No 'ifs and buts'.
Probably, with but a few exceptions, its nearest example is found in a mother's love for her child. Yes,. there are one or two exceptions even here, but generally, that love is there rock solid, and undying.
I make no apologies for posting it once again.
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
As I have said, I find this clearly defines 'True Love'.
As an example of expressing the romantic, I would like to share with you one that you will not find on the internet, nor in any anthology. It was written by one of my Chinese students at Taiwan University. I had been introducing the class to poetry, with great trepidation I might add, and it sparked something
in one or two of my students. This one shook me with its simplicity, and I need not tell you the writer was female, just 21 - her only English was what had been learned in school.
Lovely Words
by Iris Lee
Lovely words flow from your mouth
into my ears
then gently swamp my heart.
Willingly, and unwillingly
I struggle.
Till my lonely heart
is drowned contentedly
in your lovely words.
My English teacher told me that this is the only good love poem she's ever read:
Tonight I Can Write
by Pablo Neruda
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
Write for example, 'The night is shattered
and the blue stars shiver in the distance.'
The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.
Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.
She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.
......
She said this because this poem isn't the typical "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways" romantic gibberish... (she's not very romantic, it seems). This poem is "real." I agree.