The Best Love Poems of All Time

[mazHur]

I wish i were the little pendant encircling.....your neck.......the tip of which jostling.......over your your silky bosom......I wish i were the little piece of fabric...........touching your soft breast......I wish you were the energy which makes my heartthrob........at your thought........,..........I wish you always lived in my heart........and whenever I wanted to see you........I could just look down and......take a glimpse of your picture.

[peggynevers]

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.

[Number7]

My True-Love Hath My Heart

My true-love hath my heart, and I have his,
By just exchange one for the other given:
I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss;
There never was a bargain better driven.
His heart in me keeps me and him in one,
My heart in him his thoughts and senses guides;
He loves my heart for once it was his own;
I cherish his because in me it bides.
His heart his wound receivèd from my sight;
My heart was wounded with his wounded heart;
For as from me on him his hurt did light,
So still methought in me his hurt did smart:
Both equal hurt, in this change sought our bliss,
My true love hath my heart and I have his.

Sir Phillip Sidney.

The obvious implication of this poem would in our time be called 'gay', this poem seems to suggest that two men can have a relationship that is mutually beneficial and complimentary although reading this in such a way is to do so through the prism of Twenty First Century Western society. In the Elizabethan era on the other hand this poem could be about number of things, the most obvious being manly love in a religious sense, or even the political and cultural devotion of the poet to his sovereign in an era of widening social and sectarian allegiances.

This could be a poem about trust, a quality we in today;s cynical world have little appreciation of, the poem raises itself above the literal or the contractual, to admire a quality that is given because it comes from deep down and is generously bestowed. In doing this this raises the language of the verse into metaphor above the literal and into a quasi-religious marriage ceremony between the two subjects.

Of course the poem is suffused with the Italian Renaissance Platonism of the time, Sidney being heavily influenced by this philosophy, as were the manners of the aristocratic courtiers of the time.

[kelby_lake]

The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes

[SkyCetacean]

Someone's already posted it but I absolutely adore Shakepseare's Sonnet 116. To look on tempests and remain unshaken... I think that's a powerful image of the dedication necessary for long-term commitment.

[Irishcrusader95]

i've never really been one for poetry but i always keep coming back to this one, usually because of the loneliness that is in my heart. i love this one for the elequence and smootness of reading it as it ryames so well and speaks os true of lost love.

Do you remember some time ago?
I asked if you were perfect but you said no
Did you ever think that:
In my dreams you're the sweetest thing
In my life you are everything
Still you say you're not
So I ask, why is it so hard to let go?

Everyone thinks I'm strong
But tears were falling from my eyes
On the day you left us and said goodbye
Now I know my feelings I should no longer hide
I love you and I want you to stay by my side

Longing to hold you in my arms so tight that I'll never let go
Wishing to be with you forever, I hope now you know
That when I'm around you, it just feels like heaven
You're my angel and your heart is my safe haven

To live a life that's so incomplete
To live a life with nothing dear to keep
Is that how you want me to be?
You know without you I'm so weak
Because you're the only strength that I seek

So please... don't go, I'm being so bold
Just by saying i need your hand to hold
Don't leave me like this
so broken,so torn, so cold

So as I write this
You're somewhere so far away
A place i can only reach
By loving you this way

credit gos entirly to the author from this site
http://www.best-love-poems.com/poems.php?id=730779

[billysiv]

My Spell of Enchantment

I burn a blood red rose,
In flames divine.
Take Catherine’s heart
And make it mine.
I summon thee beloved one,
Love me more than anyone.
Bind body, heart and soul with mine
Together till the end of time.
These the things I need from you
Be thee loving, loyal, sweet and true.
I invoke the spirits from above
Make me your one and only love.
Sprites of Earth and Wind and Fire
Maketh me your heart’s desire.
Love me true and we shalt be
Entwined thro all eternity

My dreams are the product of my wandering soul, freed from the shackles of my body and conscious thoughts during sleep. These dreams are crucial indications of my secret thoughts and hearts desires. Dearest Catherine you are constantly in my daydreams and a presence in my nocturnal wanderings. You were there before I met you and there you will forever be.
I love you so very much
All my love Bill xxx

[Ser Nevarc]

All good poems are love poems

[Melanie]

My favorite parts by Paul Simon:
___________________________________
FOR EMILY, WHENEVER I MAY FIND HER (parts)

"What a dream I had
Pressed in organdy
Clothed in crinoline of smoky burgundy
Softer than the rain"

also...

"And when you ran to me
Your cheeks flushed with the night
We walked on frosted fields
Of juniper and lamplight"

and...

"...when I awoke
And felt you warm and near
I kissed your honey hair
With my grateful tears"
___________________________________

DANGLING CONVERSATION (parts)

"...And we note our places with bookmarkers
That measure what we’ve lost
Like a poem poorly written
We are verses out of rhythm
Couplets out of rhyme
In syncopated time"

and...

"You’re a stranger now unto me
Lost in the dangling conversation
And the superficial sighs
In the borders of our lives"

[cafolini]

Nice parts.

[Darcy88]

They were probably posted somewhere in the preceding 30 pages, but if they weren't here are two of the greatest love poems:

Love's Philosophy

"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 one another's being 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 it's brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth,
And the moonbeams kiss the sea;--
What are all these kissings worth,
If thou kiss not me?

- Shelley


THE GOOD-MORROW.
by John Donne

"I wonder by my troth, what thou and I
Did, till we loved ? were we not wean'd till then ?
But suck'd 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-discoverers to new worlds have gone ;
Let maps to other, worlds on 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 mix'd equally ;
If our two loves be one, or thou and I
Love so alike that none can slacken, none can die."

[Nick Capozzoli]

I cannot chose the "best," but I think that The Exequy by Henry King (1592-1669) is a very great love poem. It's an elegy to his dead wife, so it's not a "happy" poem...and some may find it maudlin. I find it to be both profoundly touching and beautiful. It's too long to quote here entire, but I'll quote a particularly fine passage. To set the scene, King is addressing both his dead wife and Nature, which has claimed her body. It begins:

Accept thou Shrine of my dead Saint,
Instead of dirges, this complaint;
And for sweet flowers to crown they hearse,
Receive a strew of weeping verse
From thy grieved friend, whom thou might's see
Quite melted into tears for thee.

The 6th stanza is particularly fine:

Mean time, thou hast her, earth: much good
May my harm do thee. Since it stood
With heaven's will I might not call
Her longer mine, I give thee all
My short-lived right and interest
In her, whom living, I loved best:
With a most free and bounteous grief,
I give thee what I could not keep.
Be kind to her, and prithee look
Thou write into thy Dooms-day book
Each parcel of this Rarity
Which in thy Casket shrined doth lie:
See that thou make thy reckoning straight,
And yield her back again by weight;
For thou must audit on thy trust
Each grain and atom of this dust,
As thou wilt answer Him that lent,
Not gave thee, my dear Monument.

The iambic tetrameter of the whole poem, and this passage in particular, is brilliantly modulated. Modern readers may find it inappropriately strange and perhaps silly when King starts demanding that the earth keep track of his dead wife's body and render it back, by weight, on Dooms-day.

I do not find that part of Stanza 6 at all silly. King is taking a tragically heroic stance. A mere mortal, he challenges Nature, which had the power to take his wife, and which will eventually take him. He does this brilliantly, by reminding Nature that it just as subservient to God and God's laws as we are subject to the laws of Nature now and until Dooms-day. He's lost his wife...for now...and he must accept that. He remains, however, unbowed.

The Exequy is not as widely known as it should be. I first encountered it in a college course that used the anthology, Quest For Reality by Winters and Fields.

[veganpoet]

My personal favorite for a very long time has been Pablo Neruda's I Do Not Love You, closely followed by Shakespeare's Sonnet 116 and Elizabeth Barrett Browning's How Do I Love Thee?

[papillondemai]

Elizabeth Barrett Browning's How Do I Love Thee?

Let me count the ways ...
I love thee for the heighth
and depth and breadth
that my soul can feel
when feeling out of sight...

[quidoftullamore]

[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in] by ee cummings.


i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you


here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart


i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)