The Best Love Poems of All Time

[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]

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]