The Best Love Poems of All Time

[Niketa]

I may not get to see you often as i like Imay not get to hold you in my arms all through the night But deep in my heart I truly know you're the one that i love and i can't let you go I can't promise you the world but i can try too give you a happy life I can't promise you i'll never make mistakes But i can try the best i can I can't promise you that I'll catch you everytime you'll fall but i can try always be close by so that i can help youu get up I can't promise that our love will last forever like in storybooks but i can promise that no matter what i'll never forget the memories i made with you

[pballplaya101]

Im not able to express my love in that mannor because in that mannor there are no words that could express my love for you, there are no sentences that are made up of words that could express my love, there are no frases that could express this undying fire and passion that i have for one very beautiful girl, there are no paragraphs, essays, comics, books, novels, or dictionaries that could express this awe powerfull connection that i have with the one girl that truley has my heart....so you ask me why i love you and in depth and this is why i cant tell you.

[mazHur]

THE LOOK
anon

1. STEPHON kissed me in the spring,
2. Robin in the fall,
3. But Colin only looked at me
4. And never kissed at all.
   
5. Stephon's kiss was lost in jest,
6. Robin's lost in play,
7. But the kiss in Colin's eyes
8. Haunts me night and day.

[woodce]

Thomas Hood's Time, Hope, and Memory is pretty good. My favorite is the very beginning when he says, "Fly through the world, and I will follow thee,Only for looks that may turn back on me;"

and the end, "When thou art vext, then, turn again, and see Thou hast loved Hope, but Memory loved thee."

[mazHur]

What We Might Be, What We Are

by X. J. Kennedy

If you were a scoop of vanilla
And I were the cone where you sat,
If you were a slowly pitched baseball
And I were the swing of a bat,

If you were a shiny new fishhook
And I were a bucket of worms,
If we were a pin and a pincushion,
We might be on intimate terms.

If you were a plate of spaghetti
And I were your piping-hot sauce,
We'd not even need to write letters
To put our affection across,

But you're just a piece of red ribbon
In the beard of a Balinese goat
And I'm a New Jersey mosquito.
I guess we'll stay slightly remote.

[woodce]

Yeat's Never give all the heart was not what i expected. I expected more.

[learntodiscover]

Edgar Allen poe, LENORE

Ah, broken is the golden bowl! the spirit flown forever!
Let the bell toll! -a saintly soul floats on the Stygian river -
And, Guy De Vere, hast thou no tear? -weep now or never more!
See! on yon drear and rigid bier low lies thy love, Lenore!
Come! let the burial rite be read -the funeral song be sung! -
An anthem for the queenliest dead that ever died so young -
A dirge for her, the doubly dead in that she died so young.

"Wretches! ye loved her for her wealth and hated her for her pride,
And when she fell in feeble health, ye blessed her -that she died!
How shall the ritual, then, be read? -the requiem how be sung
By you -by yours, the evil eye, -by yours, the slanderous tongue
That did to death the innocence that died, and died so young?"

Peccavimus; but rave not thus! and let a Sabbath song
Go up to God so solemnly the dead may feel no wrong!
The sweet Lenore hath "gone before," with Hope, that flew beside,
Leaving thee wild for the dear child that should have been thy bride -
For her, the fair and debonnaire, that now so lowly lies,
The life upon her yellow hair but not within her eyes -
The life still there, upon her hair -the death upon her eyes.

Avaunt! tonight my heart is light. No dirge will I upraise,
But waft the angel on her flight with a paean of old days!
Let no bell toll! -lest her sweet soul, amid its hallowed mirth,
Should catch the note, as it doth float up from the damned Earth.
To friends above, from fiends below, the indignant ghost is riven -
From Hell unto a high estate far up within the Heaven -
From grief and groan to a golden throne beside the King of Heaven."

I know it might not look like a love poem but I keep coming back to it. The is the second poem I know from him that he mentions the name LENORE with sweet remembrance. I think H emight hae truly loved a lenore (or maybe the real woman has a different name) who died.
Look at his famous poem THE RAVEN and you'll see what I mean.

[mazHur]

Edgar Allen poe, LENORE

Ah, broken is the golden bowl! the spirit flown forever!
Let the bell toll! -a saintly soul floats on the Stygian river -
And, Guy De Vere, hast thou no tear? -weep now or never more!
See! on yon drear and rigid bier low lies thy love, Lenore!
Come! let the burial rite be read -the funeral song be sung! -
An anthem for the queenliest dead that ever died so young -
A dirge for her, the doubly dead in that she died so young.

"Wretches! ye loved her for her wealth and hated her for her pride,
And when she fell in feeble health, ye blessed her -that she died!
How shall the ritual, then, be read? -the requiem how be sung
By you -by yours, the evil eye, -by yours, the slanderous tongue
That did to death the innocence that died, and died so young?"

Peccavimus; but rave not thus! and let a Sabbath song
Go up to God so solemnly the dead may feel no wrong!
The sweet Lenore hath "gone before," with Hope, that flew beside,
Leaving thee wild for the dear child that should have been thy bride -
For her, the fair and debonnaire, that now so lowly lies,
The life upon her yellow hair but not within her eyes -
The life still there, upon her hair -the death upon her eyes.

Avaunt! tonight my heart is light. No dirge will I upraise,
But waft the angel on her flight with a paean of old days!
Let no bell toll! -lest her sweet soul, amid its hallowed mirth,
Should catch the note, as it doth float up from the damned Earth.
To friends above, from fiends below, the indignant ghost is riven -
From Hell unto a high estate far up within the Heaven -
From grief and groan to a golden throne beside the King of Heaven."

I know it might not look like a love poem but I keep coming back to it. The is the second poem I know from him that he mentions the name LENORE with sweet remembrance. I think H emight hae truly loved a lenore (or maybe the real woman has a different name) who died.
Look at his famous poem THE RAVEN and you'll see what I mean.

Beautiful poem by Poe,,, wonder how many young wives died before his eyes other than Annabel Lee or all are the one and the same?

[heisenheim]

hello,

the poem is really cool. I try to find the song of that poem..

Thanks...

[traytray]

Hmm..indeed i'm quite torn..i hold so many close to my heart. Some that come to mind are..William Wordsworth..Emily Dickinson..Elizabeth Barrett Browning..Lord Byron..John Keats..William Shakespeare..Pablo Neruda.

[carino]

Don't go far off, not even for a day
Don't go far off, not even for a day,
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

[Cellar Door]

NO SECOND TROY

by: W. B. Yeats (1865-1939)

WHY should I blame her that she filled my days
With misery, or that she would of late
Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,
Or hurled the little streets upon the great,
Had they but courage equal to desire?
What could have made her peaceful with a mind
That nobleness made simple as a fire,
With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind
That is not natural in an age like this,
Being high and solitary and most stern?
Why, what could she have done, being what she is?
Was there another Troy for her to burn?

"No Second Troy" is reprinted from The Green Helmet and Other Poems. W.B. Yeats. Dundrum: Cuala Press, 1910.

I know "No Second Troy" is not a typical love poem, but the story behind it is amazing; Yeats, Maude Gonne, her husband McBride- I love it... She was violence, he detested violence, but loved her. I find it to be captivating.

[Jozanny]

I know "No Second Troy" is not a typical love poem, but the story behind it is amazing; Yeats, Maude Gonne, her husband McBride- I love it... She was violence, he detested violence, but loved her. I find it to be captivating.

Could you explain this a little better? Maude Gonne had a violent temperment; her husband McBride did not and loved her? Where does Yeats fit into this?

[JBI]

Could you explain this a little better? Maude Gonne had a violent temperment; her husband McBride did not and loved her? Where does Yeats fit into this?

Both Gonne and Husband had violent temperaments. Their marriage failed due to domestic violence, as it is told, and I highly doubt it was her hitting him.

This from Yeats on the subject;

from Easter 1916

"This other man I had dreamed
A drunken, vain-glorious lout.
He had done most bitter wrong
To some who are near my heart,
Yet I number him in the song;
He, too, has resigned his part
In the casual comedy;
He, too, has been changed in his turn,
Transformed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born."

[Jozanny]

Both Gonne and Husband had violent temperaments. Their marriage failed due to domestic violence, as it is told, and I highly doubt it was her hitting him.

This from Yeats on the subject;

from Easter 1916

"This other man I had dreamed
A drunken, vain-glorious lout.

Hmm. Yeats was something of an elision in my formative years such as yours. I never really took to him, but I never really had much enthusiasm for Irish literary traditions, and that despite Joyce. I did enjoy listening to old Celtic mythology "untainted" by Anglican penetration, and there were some interesting poems in Kinsella's anthology that used Celtic to interesting advantage, but nothing I've read of Irish authors to date has ever really won my empathy, except Swift, but to me he is about as British as they come.