Love poems: 20 classics

From Christina Rossetti to Lord Byron, poets throughout history have penned some of the most romantic verses of all time. 

Whatever the occasion or impulse, there's no end of literary inspiration to be sought from the classics. William Shakespeare's sonnets offer a bounty of musings on love, while Walt Whitman at times wrote less effusively, but no less poignantly, on the subject. 

So if you're looking for a message to send to a loved one, this selection of classic poems may offer inspiration. 

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A Red, Red Rose 

Robert Burns

My love is like a red, red rose

That's newly sprung in June;

My love is like the melody

That's sweetly played in tune.

As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,

So deep in love am I;

And I will love thee still, my dear,

Till a' the seas gang dry.

Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear,

And the rocks melt wi' the sun;

And I will love thee still, my dear,

While the sands o' life shall run.

And fare thee weel,my only love!

And fare thee weel a while!

And I will come again, my love,

Thou' it were ten thousand mile.

Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art

John Keats

BRIGHT star! would I were steadfast as thou art—

Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night,

And watching, with eternal lids apart,

Like Nature's patient sleepless Eremite,

The moving waters at their priestlike task

Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,

Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask

Of snow upon the mountains and the moors—

No—yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,

Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,

To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,

Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,

Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,

And so live ever—or else swoon to death.

Sonnet 43

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

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 every day'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.

She Walks in Beauty

Lord Byron

She walks in beauty, like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies;

And all that's best of dark and bright

Meet in her aspect and her eyes;

Thus mellowed to that tender light

Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,

Had half impaired the nameless grace 

Which waves in every raven tress,

Or softly lightens o'er her face;

Where thoughts serenely sweet express,

How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,

So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,

The smiles that win, the tints that glow,

But tell of days in goodness spent,

A mind at peace with all below,

A heart whose love is innocent!

At Last

Elizabeth Akers Allen

At last, when all the summer shine

That warmed life's early hours is past,

Your loving fingers seek for mine

And hold them close - at last - at last!

Not oft the robin comes to build

Its nest upon the leafless bough

By autumn robbed, by winter chilled,

But you, dear heart, you love me now.

Though there are shadows on my brow

And furrows on my cheek, in truth,

The marks where Time's remorseless plough

Broke up the blooming sward of Youth,

Though fled is every girlish grace

Might win or hold a lover's vow,

Despite my sad and faded face,

And darkened heart, you love me now!

I count no more my wasted tears;

They left no echo of their fall;

I mourn no more my lonesome years;

This blessed hour atones for all.

I fear not all that Time or Fate

May bring to burden heart or brow,

Strong in the love that came so late,

Our souls shall keep it always now!

Sonnet XLIX, 'Cien sonetos de amor'

Pablo Neruda

It's today: all of yesterday dropped away

among the fingers of the light and the sleeping eyes.

Tomorrow will come on its green footsteps;

no one can stop the river of the dawn.

No one can stop the river of your hands,

your eyes and their sleepiness, my dearest.

You are the trembling of time, which passes

between the vertical light and the darkening sky.

The sky folds its wings over you,

lifting you, carrying you to my arms

with its punctual, mysterious courtesy.

That is why I sing to the day and to the moon,

to the sea, to time, to all the planets,

to your daily voice, to your nocturnal skin.

It's today: all of yesterday dropped away

among the fingers of the light and the sleeping eyes.

Tomorrow will come on its green footsteps;

no one can stop the river of the dawn.

It's today, it's today...

That I did always love

Emily Dickinson

That I did always love

I bring thee Proof

That till I loved

I never lived—Enough—

That I shall love alway—

I argue theeThat love is life—

And life hath Immortality—

This—dost thou doubt—Sweet—

Then have I

Nothing to show

But Calvary—

Sonnet 116 

William Shakespeare

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove.

O no! it is an ever-fixed mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wand'ring 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 even to the edge of doom.

If this be error and upon me prov'd,

I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.

I Love You

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

I love your lips when they're wet with wine

And red with a wild desire;

I love your eyes when the lovelight lies

Lit with a passionate fire.

I love your arms when the warm white flesh

Touches mine in a fond embrace;

I love your hair when the strands enmesh

Your kisses against my face.

Not for me the cold, calm kiss

Of a virgin's bloodless love;

Not for me the saint's white bliss,

Nor the heart of a spotless dove.

But give me the love that so freely gives

And laughs at the whole world's blame,

With your body so young and warm in my arms,

It sets my poor heart aflame.

So kiss me sweet with your warm wet mouth,

Still fragrant with ruby wine,

And say with a fervor born of the South

That your body and soul are mine.

Clasp me close in your warm young arms,

While the pale stars shine above,

And we'll live our whole young lives away

In the joys of a living love.

I Am Not Yours

Sara Teasdale

I am not yours, not lost in you,

Not lost, although I long to be

Lost as a candle lit at noon,

Lost as a snowflake in the sea.

You love me, and I find you still

A spirit beautiful and bright,

Yet I am I, who long to be

Lost as a light is lost in light.

Oh plunge me deep in love - put out

My senses, leave me deaf and blind,

Swept by the tempest of your love,

A taper in a rushing wind.

Sonnet 18

William Shakespeare

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer's lease hath all too short a date:

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimm'd;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;

Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st;

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

The Good-Morrow

John Donne

I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I

Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then?

But sucked 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 mixed equally;

If our two loves be one, or, thou and I

Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die.

Rondel of Merciless Beauty

Geoffrey Chaucer

Your two great eyes will slay me suddenly;

Their beauty shakes me who was once serene;

Straight through my heart the wound is quick and keen.

Only your word will heal the injury

To my hurt heart, while yet the wound is clean—

Your two great eyes will slay me suddenly;

Their beauty shakes me who was once serene.

Upon my word, I tell you faithfully

Through life and after death you are my queen;

For with my death the whole truth shall be seen.

Your two great eyes will slay me suddenly;

Their beauty shakes me who was once serene;

Straight through my heart the wound is quick and keen.

A Glimpse

Walt Whitman

A glimpse through an interstice caught,

Of a crowd of workmen and drivers in a bar-room around the stove late of a winter night,

and I unremark'd seated in a corner,

Of a youth who loves me and whom I love, silently approaching and seating himself near,

that he may hold me by the hand,

A long while amid the noises of coming and going, of drinking and oath and smutty jest,

There we two, content, happy in being together, speaking little, perhaps not a word.

All love letters are

Fernando Pessoa

All love letters are

Ridiculous.

They wouldn't be love letters if they weren't

Ridiculous.

In my time I also wrote love letters

Equally, inevitably

Ridiculous.

Love letters, if there's love

Must be

Ridiculous.

But in fact

Only those who've never written

Love letters

Are

Ridiculous.

If only I could go back

To when I wrote love letters

Without thinking how

Ridiculous.

The truth is that today

My memories

Of those love letters

Are what is

Ridiculous.

(All more-than-three-syllable words,

Along with unaccountable feelings,

Are naturally

Ridiculous.)

When We Are Old And These Rejoicing Veins

Edna St. Vincent Millay

When we are old and these rejoicing veins

Are frosty channels to a muted stream,

And out of all our burning their remains

No feeblest spark to fire us, even in dream,

This be our solace: that it was not said

When we were young and warm and in our prime,

Upon our couch we lay as lie the dead,

Sleeping away the unreturning time.

O sweet, O heavy-lidded, O my love,

When morning strikes her spear upon the land,

And we must rise and arm us and reprove

The insolent daylight with a steady hand,

Be not discountenanced if the knowing know

We rose from rapture but an hour ago.

He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven

W.B. Yeats

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.

I loved you first: but afterwards your love

Christina Rossetti

            Poca favilla gran fiamma seconda. – Dante
           
            Ogni altra cosa, ogni pensier va fore,
            E sol ivi con voi rimansi amore. – Petrarca

I loved you first: but afterwards your love

Outsoaring mine, sang such a loftier song

As drowned the friendly cooings of my dove.

Which owes the other most? my love was long,

And yours one moment seemed to wax more strong;

I loved and guessed at you, you construed me

And loved me for what might or might not be –

Nay, weights and measures do us both a wrong.

For verily love knows not 'mine' or 'thine;'

With separate 'I' and 'thou' free love has done,

For one is both and both are one in love:

Rich love knows nought of 'thine that is not mine;'

Both have the strength and both the length thereof,

Both of us, of the love which makes us one.

To My Dear and Loving Husband

Anne Bradstreet

If ever two were one, then surely we.

If ever man were loved by wife, then thee.

If ever wife was happy in a man,

Compare with me, ye women, if you can.

I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold,

Or all the riches that the East doth hold.

My love is such that rivers cannot quench,

Nor ought but love from thee give recompense.

Thy love is such I can no way repay;

The heavens reward thee manifold, I pray.

Then while we live, in love let's so persever,

That when we live no more, we may live ever.

The Presence of Love

Samuel Coleridge

And in Life's noisiest hour, 

There whispers still the ceaseless Love of Thee, 

The heart's Self-solace and soliloquy.

You mould my Hopes, you fashion me within ; 

And to the leading Love-throb in the Heart 

Thro' all my Being, thro' my pulses beat ; 

You lie in all my many Thoughts, like Light, 

Like the fair light of Dawn, or summer Eve 

On rippling Stream, or cloud-reflecting Lake. 

And looking to the Heaven, that bends above you, 

How oft ! I bless the Lot, that made me love you.