The 100 Best Love Poems of All Time Read online

The Avenue

  Frances Cornford

  Frances Cornford, a grand daughter of Charles Darwin, wrote often of the everyday life in and around Cambridge, England. Here she takes an ordinary street scene and turns it into a romantic epiphany.

  Who has not seen their lover

  Walking at ease,

  Walking like any other

  A pavement under trees,

  Not singular, apart,

  But footed, featured, dressed,

  Approaching like the rest

  In the same dapple of the summer caught;

  Who has not suddenly thought

  With swift surprise:

  There walks in cool disguise,

  There comes, my heart.

  The Bargain

  Sir Philip Sidney

  Sir Philip Sidney was perhaps the ideal Renaissance man of England’s Elizabethan Age. A soldier, statesman, and scholar, he was also a gifted lyric poet. “The Bargain” is a playful examination of a more-than-fair exchange in which both parties—and lovers—profit.

  My true love hath my heart, and I have his,

  By just exchange one for another given:

  I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss,

  There never was a better bargain driven:

  My true love hath my heart, and I have his.

  His heart in me keeps him and me 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:

  My true love hath my heart, and I have his.

  The Mirabeau Bridge

  Guillaume Apollinaire

  The great French symbolist poet watches with his lover as the River Seine flows beneath them, representing love, longing, passion, and time itself. Yet time has no power while the lovers are bound within each other’s shadow. The translation is by Quentin Stevenson .

  Under the Mirabeau bridge the Seine

  Flows with our loves;

  Must I remember once again

  Joy followed always after pain?

  Night may come and clock may sound,

  Within your shadow I am bound.

  Clasp hand in hand, keep face to face,

  Whilst here below

  The bridge formed by our arms’ embrace

  The waters of our endless longing pass.

  Night may come and clock may sound,

  Within your shadow I am bound.

  And like this stream our passions flow,

  Our love goes by;

  The violence hope dare not show

  Follows time’s beat which now falls slow.

  Night may come and clock may sound,

  Within your shadow I am bound.

  The days move on; but still we strain

  Back towards time past;

  Still to waters of the Seine

  We bend to catch the echo gone.

  Night may come and clock may sound,

  Within your shadow I am bound.

  To the Bridge of Love

  Juan Ramon Jimenez

  As in Apollinaire’s “The Mirabeau Bridge,” this poem finds a metaphor for love in the water passing beneath, passing but never changing. The translation is by James Wright.

  To the bridge of love,

  old stone between tall cliffs

  —eternal meeting place, red evening—,

  I come with my heart,

  —My beloved is only water,

  that always passes away, and does not deceive,

  that always passes away, and does not change,

  that always passes away, and does not end.

  She Walks in Beauty

  Lord Byron

  Byron was said to have written this poem as an elaborate compliment the morning after meeting a beautiful woman.

  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 mellow’d to that tender light

  Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

  One shade the more, one ray the less,

  Had half impair’d 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!

  The Ragged Wood

  William Butler Yeats

  This ballad-like lyric sings forth the unshakeable belief of all lovers since the beginning of time: “No one has ever loved but you and I.”

  O, hurry, where by water, among the trees,

  The delicate-stepping stag and his lady sigh,

  When they have looked upon their images

  Would none had ever loved but you and I!

  Or have you heard that sliding silver-shoed

  Pale silver-proud queen-woman of the sky,

  When the sun looked out of his golden hood?

  O, that none ever loved but you and I!

  O hurry to the ragged wood, for there

  I will drive all those lovers out and cry

  O, my share of the world, O, yellow hair!

  No one has ever loved but you and I.

  Night Thoughts

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  In “Night Thoughts” Goethe, a natural scientist as well as a poet, celebrates love’s transcendence of the material universe. Indeed, gazing at the most beautiful stars in the heavens pales in comparison to “lingering in the arms” of the one you adore and love.

  Stars, you are unfortunate, I pity you,

  Beautiful as you are, shining in your glory,

  Who guide seafaring men through stress and peril

  And have no recompense from gods or mortals,

  Love you do not, nor do you know what love is.

  Hours that are aeons urgently conducting

  Your figures in a dance through the vast heaven,

  What journey have you ended in this moment,

  Since lingering in the arms of my beloved

  I lost all memory of you and midnight.

  The Gardener

  Rabindranath Tagore

  Tagore himself translated this poem into English from its original Bengali version. Its highly metaphorical and almost reverent exploration of the essence of love is both redolent of its origins and universal in its impact.

  Your questioning eyes are sad.

  They seek to know my meaning

  as the moon would fathom the sea.

  I have bared my life before your eyes from end to end,

  with nothing hidden or held back.

  That is why you know me not.

  If it were only a gem,

  I could break it into a hundred pieces

  and string them into a chain to put on your neck.

  If it were only a flower, round and small and sweet,

  I could pluck it from its stem to set it in your hair.

  But it is a heart, my beloved.

  Where are its shores and its bottom?

  You know not the limits of this kingdom,

  still you are its queen.

  If it were only a moment of pleasure

  it would flower in an easy smile,

  and you could see it and read it in a moment.

  If it were merely a pain it would melt in limpid tears,

  reflecting its inmost secret without a word.

  But it is love, my beloved.

  Its pleasure and pain are boundless,

  and endless its wants and wealth.

  It is as near to you as your life,

  but you can never wholly
know it.

  To the Harbormaster

  Frank O’Hara

  Love is not mentioned in this allusive poem, but the ship driven through “terrible channels” is clearly sailing with great difficulty toward a safe harbor it wants very much to reach. The calmness of the poem’s conversational voice, so typical of O’Hara’s work, is belied by the evident desperation of the ship’s struggle toward home.

  I wanted to be sure to reach you;

  though my ship was on the way it got caught

  in some moorings. I am always tying up

  and then deciding to depart. In storms and

  at sunset, with the metallic coils of the tide

  around my fathomless arms, I am unable

  to understand the forms of my vanity

  or I am hard alee with my Polish rudder

  in my hand and the sun sinking. To

  you I offer my hull and the tattered cordage

  of my will. The terrible channels where

  the wind drives me against the brown lips

  of the reeds are not all behind me. Yet

  I trust the sanity of my vessel; and

  if it sinks it may well be in answer

  to the reasoning of the eternal voices,

  the waves which have kept me from reaching you.

  To a Stranger

  Walt Whitman

  In “To a Stranger,” Whitman expresses a general sense of longing directed at the world in general. Nostalgic for past relationships and conscious of having his feelings of affection reciprocated by everyone he walks past, he knows he’ll ultimately find love.

  Passing stranger! you do not know

  How longingly I look upon you,

  You must be he I was seeking,

  Or she I was seeking

  (It comes to me as a dream)

  I have somewhere surely

  Lived a life of joy with you,

  All is recall’d as we flit by each other,

  Fluid, affectionate, chaste, matured,

  You grew up with me,

  Were a boy with me or a girl with me,

  I ate with you and slept with you, your body has become

  not yours only nor left my body mine only,

  You give me the pleasure of your eyes,

  face, flesh as we pass,

  You take of my beard, breast, hands,

  in return,

  I am not to speak to you, I am to think of you

  when I sit alone or wake at night, alone

  I am to wait, I do not doubt I am to meet you again

  I am to see to it that I do not lose you.

  True Love

  Judith Viorst

  This lilting, colloquial verse takes the style of Walt Whitman and infuses it with the spirit of a married woman of a certain age, celebrating the song of herself, her husband, and their still vital relationship.

  It is true love because

  I put on eyeliner and a concerto and make pungent

  observations about the great issues of the day

  Even when there’s no one here but him,

  And because

  I do not resent watching the Green Bay Packers

  Even though I am philosophically opposed to

  football,

  And because

  When he is late for dinner and I know he must be

  either having an affair or lying dead in the

  middle of the street,

  I always hope he’s dead.

  It’s true love because

  If he said quit drinking martinis but I kept drinking

  them and the next morning I couldn’t get out of

  bed,

  He wouldn’t tell me he told me,

  And because

  He is willing to wear unironed undershorts

  Out of respect for the fact that I am philosophically

  opposed to ironing,

  And because

  If his mother was drowning and I was drowning and

  he had to choose one of us to save,

  He says he’d save me.

  It’s true love because

  When he went to San Francisco on business while I

  had to stay home with the painters and the

  exterminator and the baby who was getting the

  chicken pox,

  He understood why I hated him,

  And because

  When I said that playing the stock market was

  juvenile and irresponsible and then the stock I

  wouldn’t let him buy went up twenty-six points,

  I understood why he hated me,

  And because

  Despite cigarette cough, tooth decay, acid

  indigestion, dandruff, and other features of

  married life that tend to dampen the fires of

  passion,

  We still feel something

  We can call

  True love.

  Love 20 Cents the First Quarter Mile

  Kenneth Fearing

  It’s been a long time since the initial charge for a New York taxi was twenty cents, but the hardboiled yet tender, bantering tone of this plea for reconciliation is completely imbued with the spirit of the City that Never Sleeps.

  All right. I may have lied to you and about you, and made a

  few pronouncements a bit too

  sweeping,

  perhaps, and possibly forgotten to tag the bases here or there,

  And damned your extravagance, and maligned your tastes,

  and libeled your relatives,

  and slandered a few of your friends,

  O.K.,

  Nevertheless, come back.

  Come home. I will agree to forget the statements that you

  issued so copiously to the neighbors and the press,

  And you will forget that figment of your imagination, the

  blonde from Detroit;

  I will agree that your lady friend who lives above us is not

  crazy, bats, nutty as they

  come,

  but on the contrary rather bright,

  And you will concede that poor Steinberg is neither a drunk,

  nor a swindler, but

  simply a guy, on the

  eccentric side, trying to get along.

  (Are you listening, you b . . . , and have you got this straight?)

  Because I forgive you, yes, for everything.

  I forgive you for being beautiful and generous and wise,

  I forgive you, to put it simply, for being alive, and pardon

  you, in short, for being you.

  Because tonight you are in my hair and eyes,

  And every street light that our taxi passes shows me you

  again, still you,

  And because tonight all other nights are black, all other

  hours are cold and far away,

  and now,

  this minute, the stars are very near and bright.

  Come back. We will have a celebration to end all celebrations. We will invite the undertaker who lives beneath us, and acouple of boys from the office, and some other friends. And Steinberg, who is off the wagon, and that insane woman who lives upstairs, and a few reporters, if anything should break.

  Jenny Kiss’d Me

  Leigh Hunt

  Leigh Hunt was a nineteenth-century British poet and critic who counted many notable figures among his friends. The Jenny of this poem was the wife of the historian and essayist Thomas Carlyle.

  Jenny kiss’d me when we met,

  Jumping from the chair she sat in;

  Time, you thief, who love to get

  Sweets into your list, put that in!

  Say I’m weary, say I’m sad,

  Say that health and wealth have miss’d me,

  Say I’m growing old, but add,

  Jenny kiss’d me.

  Juliet

  Hilaire Belloc

  Belloc was famous for his epigrammatic wit. Here he concisely conveys a sense of complete, head-over-heels i
nfatuation.

  How did the party go in Portman Square?

  I cannot tell you: Juliet was not there.

  And how did Lady Gaster’s party go?

  Juliet was next to me and I do not know.

  Song to Celia

  Ben Jonson

  Jonson was Shakespeare’s contemporary and in his lifetime was ranked nearly as high as a poet and playwright. This familiar poem also provides the words to a well-known love song.

  Drink to me, only, with thine eyes,

  And I will pledge with mine;

  Or leave a kiss but in the cup,

  And I’ll not look for wine.

  The thirst that from the soul doth rise,

  Doth ask a drink divine:

  But might I of Jove’s nectar sup,

  I would not change for thine.

  I sent thee, late, a rosy wreath,

  Not so much honoring thee,

  As giving it a hope, that there

  It could not wither’d be.

  But thou thereon didst only breathe,

  And sent’st it back to me:

  Since when it grows, and smells, I swear,

  Not of itself, but thee.

  Your Catfish Friend

  Richard Brautigan

  It’s been said, “Brautigan is good for you.” His wit and sensitivity encourage the catfish in all of us who love or have loved from afar to gain confidence and take a chance on the one who stands at the edge of our affection .

  If I were to live my life

  in catfish forms

  in scaffolds of skin and whiskers

  at the bottom of a pond

  and you were to come by

  one evening

  when the moon was shining

  down into my dark home

  and stand there at the edge

  of my affection

  and think, “It’s beautiful

  here by this pond. I wish

  somebody loved me,”

  I’d love you and be your catfish

  friend and drive such lonely

  thoughts from your mind

  and suddenly you would be

  at peace,

  and ask yourself, “I wonder

  if there are any catfish

  in this pond? It seems like

  a perfect place for them.”

  The Owl and the Pussy-Cat

  Edward Lear

  “The Owl and the Pussy-Cat” exemplifies nonsense poetry. Lear, in delightfully musical versification, shows us a topsy-turvy world where even the most unlikely of couples is lucky in love.