the best love poems and romantic poems of all time

8/16/2019 The Best Love Poems and Romantic Poems of All Time

1/41


http://www.thehypertexts.com/Best%20Love%20Poems.htm

The HyperTexts

The Best Love Poems of All Time

The Best Romantic Poems Ever Written

The Best Valentine's Day Poems

Selecting the greatest love poems of all time was almost entirely a matter of personal taste and fancy. If yodisagree with my choices, please feel free to compile your own, but at the very least you may find poems

here that merit your consideration. Although most of the poems on this page are fairly recent, I haveincluded "modernized" translations of ancient classics such as "Wulf and Eadwacer" and William Dunbar'wonderful "Sweet Rose of Virtue" because many readers may not have read them, and that's a shame. Ihave also included translations of some of my favorite Urdu love poems.

Who were the greatest love poets of the English language? In my opinion, for whatever it's worth, the ten best love poets are: Louise Bogan, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Burns, Hart Crane, e. e. cummingsEmily Dickinson, John Donne, Ernest Dowson, John Keats, William Shakespeare and William Butler Yeats. High honorable mentions go to William Blake, Lord Byron, Robert Frost, Robert Herrick, BenJonson, Christopher Marlowe, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Sylvia Plath, Christina Rossetti, Dante Gabriel

Rossetti and Walt Whitman. Great love poets in other languages include Dante, Kahlil Gibran, CzeslawMilosz, Pablo Neruda, Ovid, Petrarch, Rumi, Sappho, King Solomon and Rabindranath Tagore. Who is thgreatest love poet of all time? My vote goes to the first great lyric poet we know by name, Sappho of Lesbos, whose erotic poems gave us the terms "sapphic" and "lesbian."

Now here, without further ado, are my top ten love poems of all time, recently expanded to the top 25 love poems, with a few ties, followed by a number of high honorable mentions:

#25 — Sappho, fragment 42

loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Eros harrows my heart:wild gales whipping desolate mountains,uprooting oaks.

http://www.thehypertexts.com/Michael_R_Burch_Poet_Poetry_Picture_Bio.htmhttp://www.thehypertexts.com/Michael_R_Burch_Poet_Poetry_Picture_Bio.htmhttp://www.thehypertexts.com/


2/41


3/41


4/41


http://www.thehypertexts.com/Best%20Love%20Poems.htm 4

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.

Elinor Wylie "was famous during her life almost as much for her ethereal beauty and personality as for he

melodious, sensuous poetry."

#23 — Valentine

by Elinor Wylie

Too high, too high to pluckMy heart shall swing.A fruit no bee shall suck,

No wasp shall sting.

If on some night of cold


5/41


6/41



Sylvia Plath was one of the first and best of the modern confessional poets. She won a Pulitzer Prize posthumously for her Collected Poems after committing suicide at the age of 31, something she seemed tohave been predicting in her writing and practicing for in real life.

#22 — Mystic

by Sylvia Plath

The air is a mill of hooks―Questions without answer,Glittering and drunk as fliesWhose kiss stings unbearablyIn the fetid wombs of black air under pines in summer.

I remember The dead smell of sun on wood cabins,The stiffness of sails, the long salt winding sheets.Once one has seen God, what is the remedy?Once one has been seized up

Without a part left over, Not a toe, not a finger, and used,Used utterly, in the sun's conflagration, the stainsThat lengthen from ancient cathedralsWhat is the remedy?

The pill of the Communion tablet,The walking beside still water? Memory?Or picking up the bright piecesOf Christ in the faces of rodents,The tame flower-nibblers, the ones

Whose hopes are so low they are comfortable―The humpback in his small, washed cottageUnder the spokes of the clematis.Is there no great love, only tenderness?Does the sea

Remember the walker upon it?Meaning leaks from the molecules.

The chimneys of the city breathe, the window sweats,The children leap in their cots.The sun blooms, it is a geranium.

The heart has not stopped.


7/41



Edna St. Vincent Millay was the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for poetry. She was openly bisexualand had affairs with other women and married men. When she finally married, hers was an open marriageHer 1920 poetry collection A Few Figs From Thistles drew controversy for its novel exploration of femalesexuality. She was one of the earliest and strongest voices for what became known as feminism. One of threcurring themes of her poetry was that men might use her body, but not possess her or have any claim oveher. (And perhaps that their desire for her body gave her the upper hand in relationships.)

#21 — I, Being Born a Woman, and Distressed

by Edna St. Vincent Millay

I, being born a woman, and distressedBy all the needs and notions of my kind,Am urged by your propinquity to findYour person fair, and feel a certain zestTo bear your body's weight upon my breast:So subtly is the fume of life designed,

To clarify the pulse and cloud the mind,And leave me once again undone, possessed.Think not for this, however, this poor treasonOf my stout blood against my staggering brain,I shall remember you with love, or seasonMy scorn with pity — let me make it plain:I find this frenzy insufficient reasonFor conversation when we meet again.


8/41



#20 —Requiescat

by Oscar Wilde

Tread lightly, she is near Under the snow,Speak gently, she can hear

The daisies grow.

All her bright golden hair Tarnished with rust,She that was young and fair Fallen to dust.

Lily-like, white as snow,She hardly knewShe was a woman, soSweetly she grew.

http://www.thehypertexts.com/Oscar%20Wilde%20Epigrams.htm


9/41



Coffin-board, heavy stone,Lie on her breast,I vex my heart alone,She is at rest.

Peace, Peace, she cannot hear Lyre or sonnet,

All my life's buried here,Heap earth upon it.

Oscar Wilde's exquisitely lovely "Requiescat" is a wonderfully moving poem, and one of the best elegies the English language.

William Butler Yeats was the most famous Irish poet of all time, and his unrequited love for the beautifuland dangerous revolutionary Maud Gonne helped make her almost as famous as he was in Ireland. The


10/41



moving poem below is Yeats' loose translation of a Ronsard poem, in which Yeats imagines the love of hilife in her later years, tending a fire that symbolizes the banked flames of a waning love.

#19 — When You Are Old

by William Butler Yeats

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 moments of glad grace,And 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 fledAnd paced upon the mountains overhead

And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.


11/41



Anne Sexton was a model who became a confessional poet, writing about intimate aspects of her life, afteher doctor suggested that she take up poetry as a form of therapy. She studied under Robert Lowell atBoston University, where Sylvia Plath was one of her classmates. Sexton won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetryin 1967, but later committed suicide via carbon monoxide poisoning. Topics she covered in her poemsincluded adultery, masturbation, menstruation, abortion, despair and suicide. The poem below is about thelove of the living for the dead, dedicated to her departed parents.

#18 — The Truth the Dead Know by Anne Sexton

For my Mother, born March 1902, died March 1959and my Father, born February 1900, died June 1959

Gone, I say and walk from church,refusing the stiff procession to the grave,letting the dead ride alone in the hearse.It is June. I am tired of being brave.

We drive to the Cape. I cultivatemyself where the sun gutters from the sky,where the sea swings in like an iron gateand we touch. In another country people die.

My darling, the wind falls in like stonesfrom the whitehearted water and when we touchwe enter touch entirely. No one's alone.Men kill for this, or for as much.

And what of the dead? They lie without shoesin the stone boats. They are more like stonethan the sea would be if it stopped. They refuseto be blessed, throat, eye and knucklebone.

#17 — Come Lord and Lift

by T. Merrill

Come Lord, and lift the fallen bird Abandoned on the ground;The soul bereft and longing so

To have the lost be found.

The heart that cries—let it but hear Its sweet love answering,Or out of ether one faint note Of living comfort wring.

"Come Lord and Lift" is one of my favorite poems by a contemporary poet. It's a wonderfully touching,moving poem about love and empathy for all life.

#16 — After Paradise

http://www.thehypertexts.com/T._Merrill_Poet_Poetry_Picture_Bio_Art_Photography.htm


12/41



by Czeslaw Milosz

Don't run any more. Quiet. How softly it rainsOn the roofs of the city. How perfectAll things are. Now, for the two of youWaking up in a royal bed by a garret window.For a man and a woman. For one plant dividedInto masculine and feminine which longed for each other.

Yes, this is my gift to you. Above ashesOn a bitter, bitter earth. Above the subterraneanEcho of clamorings and vows. So that now at dawnYou must be attentive: the tilt of a head,A hand with a comb, two faces in a mirror Are only forever once, even if unremembered,So that you watch what it is, though it fades away,And are grateful every moment for your being.Let that little park with greenish marble bustsIn the pearl-gray light, under a summer drizzle,Remain as it was when you opened the gate.

And the street of tall peeling porticosWhich this love of yours suddenly transformed.

#16 — Last Night

by Faiz Ahmed Faizloose translation by Michael R. Burch

Last night, your memory stole into my heart— as spring sweeps uninvited into barren gardens,as morning breezes reinvigorate dormant deserts,as a patient suddenly feels better, for no apparent reason ...

#16 — Strange Currents

by Amir Khusrowloose translation by Michael R. Burch

O Khusrow, the river of loveexhibits strange tides— the one who would swim in it invariably drowns,while the one who surrenders, survives.

Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley may have been the most notorious married coupleof their era. He was a dashing romantic poet and heretic who wrote a tract, "The Necessity of Atheism,"that got him expelled from Oxford. He also wrote in favor of nonviolence and against monarchies,imperialism and war. She was the daughter of one of the earliest feminist writers of note, MaryWollstonecraft, and the liberal philosopher William Godwin. In 1814, at age seventeen, she becameromantically involved with Percy Shelley, who was married at the time but threatened to commit suicide ishe spurned his advances. They spent time together in France and Switzerland; when they returned, Marywas pregnant. Percy's wife Harriet, who was also pregnant, committed suicide in 1816; Percy and Marymarried soon thereafter. The same year they spent the summer with Lord Byron. It was at this time thatMary conceived the story that became her famous gothic novel Frankenstein. In 1822, Percy drowned atsea at age thirty. Who knows what he would have accomplished if he had lived longer, but he is still

http://www.thehypertexts.com/Michael_R_Burch_Poet_Poetry_Picture_Bio.htmhttp://www.thehypertexts.com/Michael_R_Burch_Poet_Poetry_Picture_Bio.htm


13/41



considered to be one of the greatest English poets. Here is one especially lovely example of his wonderfultouch with rhythm and rhyme:

#15 — Music When Soft Voices Die (To — ) by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Music, when soft voices die,Vibrates in the memory—

Odours, when sweet violets sicken,Live within the sense they quicken.

Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,Are heaped for the belovèd's bed;And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,Love itself shall slumber on.

#14 —A Red, Red Rose

by Robert Burns

Oh my luve is like a red, red rose,That's newly sprung in June:Oh my luve is like the melodie,That's sweetly play'd in tune.

As fair art thou, my bonie lass,So deep in luve am I;And I will luve 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 luve thee still, my dear,While the sands o' life shall run.

And fare thee weel, my only luve!And fare thee weel a while!And I will come again, my luve,Tho' it were ten thousand mile!

Robert Burns was one of the great early Romantics, perhaps a forerunner of both Shelley and Clare.

Despite the fact that he wrote in a Scots-English dialect, he still reads well today. He is, of course, mostfamous for his nostalgic drinking song "Auld Lang Syne." When Bob Dylan was asked to name the work art that had the greatest impact on his own artistic life, he named the poem above.

Sir Thomas Wyatt has been credited with introducing the Petrarchan sonnet into the English language. Hisfather, Henry Wyatt, had been one of Henry VII's Privy Councilors, and remained a trusted adviser whenHenry VIII came to the throne in 1509. Thomas Wyatt followed his father to court. But it seems the young

poet may have fallen in love with the king’s mistress. Many legends and conjectures suggest that anunhappily married Wyatt had a relationship with Anne Boleyn. Their acquaintance is certain, but whether or not the two actually shared a romantic relationship remains unknown. But in his poetry, Wyatt called himistress Anna, and sometimes embedded pieces of information that seem to correspond with her life. For


14/41



instance, this poem might well have been written about the King’s claim on Anne Boleyn:

#13 — Whoso List to Hunt

by Sir Thomas Wyatt

Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind,But as for me, alas, I may no more.The vain travail hath wearied me so sore,

I am of them that farthest cometh behind.Yet may I by no means my wearied mindDraw from the deer, but as she fleeth aforeFainting I follow. I leave off therefore,Since in a net I seek to hold the wind.Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt,As well as I may spend his time in vain.And graven with diamonds in letters plainThere is written, her fair neck round about:

Noli me tangere, for Caesar's I am,And wild for to hold, though I seem tame.

Noli me tangere means "Touch me not." According to the Bible, this is what Jesus said to Mary Magdalenwhen she tried to embrace him after the resurrection. So perhaps after her betrothal to Henry, religiousvows also entered into the picture, and left Wyatt out.

#12 — They Flee from Me

by Sir Thomas Wyatt

They flee from me that sometime did me seek With naked foot stalking in my chamber.I have seen them gentle tame and meek That now are wild and do not remember That sometime they put themselves in danger To take bread at my hand; and now they rangeBusily seeking with a continual change.

Thanked be fortune, it hath been otherwiseTwenty times better; but once in special,In thin array after a pleasant guise,When her loose gown from her shoulders did fall,And she me caught in her arms long and small;

And therewithal sweetly did me kiss,And softly said, Dear heart, how like you this?

It was no dream, I lay broad waking.But all is turned thorough my gentlenessInto a strange fashion of forsaking;And I have leave to go of her goodnessAnd she also to use newfangleness.But since that I so kindly am served,I would fain know what she hath deserved.


15/41


16/41



I should have lost a gesture and a pose.Sometimes these cogitations still amazeThe troubled midnight, and the noon's repose.

Along with Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot helped create modern free verse. This poem demonstrates his hisremarkable talents. While Eliot was a sophisticated, urbane poet, his main theme was human love, and heoften comes across as a somewhat "nerdy," disillusioned romantic.

#9 — To Earthward by Robert Frost

Love at the lips was touchAs sweet as I could bear;And once that seemed too much;I lived on air

That crossed me from sweet things,The flow of — was it musk From hidden grapevine springs

Downhill at dusk?

I had the swirl and acheFrom sprays of honeysuckleThat when they’re gathered shakeDew on the knuckle.

I craved strong sweets, but thoseSeemed strong when I was young:The petal of the roseIt was that stung.

Now no joy but lacks salt,That is not dashed with painAnd weariness and fault;I crave the stain

Of tears, the aftermark Of almost too much love,The sweet of bitter bark And burning clove.

When stiff and sore and scarredI take away my handFrom leaning on it hardIn grass or sand,

The hurt is not enough:I long for weight and strengthTo feel the earth as roughTo all my length.


17/41



It's hard to imagine a better-written love poem than Robert Frost's "To Earthward," and yet we still havefive higher spots to go ...

#8 — Song For The Last Act

by Louise Bogan

Now that I have your face by heart, I look Less at its features than its darkening frame

Where quince and melon, yellow as young flame,Lie with quilled dahlias and the shepherd's crook.Beyond, a garden. There, in insolent easeThe lead and marble figures watch the showOf yet another summer loath to goAlthough the scythes hang in the apple trees.

Now that I have your face by heart, I look.

Now that I have your voice by heart, I readIn the black chords upon a dulling page

Music that is not meant for music's cage,Whose emblems mix with words that shake and bleed.The staves are shuttled over with a stark Unprinted silence. In a double dreamI must spell out the storm, the running stream.The beat's too swift. The notes shift in the dark.

Now that I have your voice by heart, I read.

Now that I have your heart by heart, I seeThe wharves with their great ships and architraves;The rigging and the cargo and the slavesOn a strange beach under a broken sky.O not departure, but a voyage done!The bales stand on the stone; the anchor weepsIts red rust downward, and the long vine creepsBeside the salt herb, in the lengthening sun.

Now that I have your heart by heart, I see.

Louise Bogan's magnificent "Song for the Last Act" is an absolutely wonderful poem about love toward th

end of one's life, or a couple's lives.

#7 — Bread and Music

by Conrad Aiken

Music I heard with you was more than music,And bread I broke with you was more than bread;

Now that I am without you, all is desolate;All that was once so beautiful is dead.

Your hands once touched this table and this silver,


18/41



And I have seen your fingers hold this glass.These things do not remember you, belovèd,And yet your touch upon them will not pass.

For it was in my heart you moved among them,And blessed them with your hands and with your eyes;And in my heart they will remember always,— They knew you once, O beautiful and wise.

Conrad Aiken, in his best poems, rivals Wallace Stevens and Hart Crane as masters of modern English poetic meter. Aiken's "Bread and Music" is one of my very favorite poems, regardless of era.

#6 — Piano

by D. H. Lawrence

Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me;Taking me back down the vista of years, till I seeA child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling stringsAnd pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings.

In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of songBetrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belongTo the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outsideAnd hymns in the cozy parlor, the tinkling piano our guide.So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamor With the great black piano appassionato. The glamour Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is castDown in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past.

#5 — Non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno Cynarae

by Ernest Dowson

"I am not as I was under the reign of the good Cynara"—Horace

Last night, ah, yesternight, betwixt her lips and mineThere fell thy shadow, Cynara! thy breath was shedUpon my soul between the kisses and the wine;And I was desolate and sick of an old passion,Yea, I was desolate and bowed my head:I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.

All night upon mine heart I felt her warm heart beat, Night-long within mine arms in love and sleep she lay;Surely the kisses of her bought red mouth were sweet;But I was desolate and sick of an old passion,When I awoke and found the dawn was gray:I have been faithful to you, Cynara! in my fashion.

I have forgot much, Cynara! gone with the wind,Flung roses, roses riotously with the throng,Dancing, to put thy pale, lost lilies out of mind;But I was desolate and sick of an old passion,


19/41



Yea, all the time, because the dance was long;I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.

I cried for madder music and for stronger wine,But when the feast is finished and the lamps expire,Then falls thy shadow, Cynara! the night is thine;And I am desolate and sick of an old passion,Yea, hungry for the lips of my desire:

I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.

Ernest Dowson's influence on T. S. Eliot is obvious, and anyone who reads his best poems can easilyunderstand the attraction. Other writers unabashedly "borrowed" phrases from Dowson: "gone with thewind," "the days of wine and roses," "hollow lands," etc. The best poets write memorable lines, andDowson's best poems are full of memorable lines. Several of his poems can be found on the Masters pageof The HyperTexts.

#4 — Lullaby

by W. H. Auden

Lay your sleeping head, my love,Human on my faithless arm:Time and fevers burn awayIndividual beauty fromThoughtful children, and the graveProves the child ephemeral:But in my arms till break of dayLet the living creature lie,Mortal, guilty, but to meThe entirely beautiful.

Soul and body have no bounds:To lovers as they lie uponHer tolerant enchanted slopeIn their ordinary swoon,Grave the vision Venus sendsOf supernatural sympathy,Universal love and hope;While an abstract insight wakesAmong the glaciers and the rocksThe hermit's carnal ecstasy.

Certainty, fidelityOn the stroke of midnight passLike vibrations of a bellAnd fashionable madmen raiseTheir 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.

http://www.thehypertexts.com/Masters_of_English_Poetry_and_Literature.html


20/41



Beauty, midnight, vision dies:Let the winds of dawn that blowSoftly round your dreaming headSuch a day of welcome showEye and knocking heart may bless,Find our mortal world enough;

Noons of dryness find you fed

By the involuntary powers, Nights of insult let you passWatched by every human love.

Auden's "Lullaby" is one of the truly great poems in the English language. His elegy to William Butler Yeats is another.

#3 — Go, Lovely Rose

by Edmund Waller

Go, lovely Rose,—

Tell her that wastes her time and me, That now she knows,When I resemble her to thee,How sweet and fair she seems to be.

Tell her that's young,And shuns to have her graces spied, That hadst thou sprungIn deserts where no men abide,Thou must have uncommended died.

Small is the worthOf beauty from the light retir'd: Bid her come forth,Suffer herself to be desir'd,And not blush so to be admir'd.

Then die, that sheThe common fate of all things rare May read in thee;How small a part of time they share,

That are so wondrous sweet and fair.

"Go, Lovely Rose" is a picture-perfect carpe diem ("seize the day") poem. Other famous love poems that"advise" virgins to hop into bed with the poet include "To His Coy Mistress" by Andrew Marvell, "To theVirgins, to Make Much of Time" and "To Daffodils" by Robert Herrick, "Sweet Rose of Virtue" byWilliam Dunbar and "When I Was One-and-Twenty" by A. E. Housman. But in my opinion, this poem is

just as clever, and more beautiful than any of its competitors.

#2 — Cradle Song

by William Blake


21/41



Sleep, sleep, beauty bright,Dreaming in the joys of night;Sleep, sleep; in thy sleepLittle sorrows sit and weep.

Sweet babe, in thy faceSoft desires I can trace,Secret joys and secret smiles,

Little pretty infant wiles.

As thy softest limbs I feelSmiles as of the morning stealO'er thy cheek, and o'er thy breastWhere thy little heart doth rest.

O the cunning wiles that creepIn thy little heart asleep!When thy little heart doth wake,Then the dreadful night shall break.

Auden's "Lullaby" was written from one adult to another. Blake's "Cradle Song" is a lullaby written by anadult to a sleeping baby. Blake was married but never had children, as far as we know, yet his love andcompassion for the nameless sleeping baby are wonderfully evident in this very moving poem.

#1 — Voyages

by Hart Crane

I

Above the fresh ruffles of the surf Bright striped urchins flay each other with sand.They have contrived a conquest for shell shucks,And their fingers crumble fragments of baked weedGaily digging and scattering.

And in answer to their treble interjectionsThe sun beats lightning on the waves,The waves fold thunder on the sand;And could they hear me I would tell them:

O brilliant kids, frisk with your dog,Fondle your shells and sticks, bleachedBy time and the elements; but there is a lineYou must not cross nor ever trust beyond itSpry cordage of your bodies to caressesToo lichen-faithful from too wide a breast.The bottom of the sea is cruel.

II

—And yet this great wink of eternity,


22/41



Of rimless floods, unfettered leewardings,Samite sheeted and processioned whereHer undinal vast belly moonward bends,Laughing the wrapt inflections of our love;

Take this Sea, whose diapason knellsOn scrolls of silver snowy sentences,The sceptred terror of whose sessions rends

As her demeanors motion well or ill,All but the pieties of lovers’ hands.

And onward, as bells off San Salvador Salute the crocus lustres of the stars,In these poinsettia meadows of her tides,—Adagios of islands, O my Prodigal,Complete the dark confessions her veins spell.

Mark how her turning shoulders wind the hours,And hasten while her penniless rich palms

Pass superscription of bent foam and wave,—Hasten, while they are true,—sleep, death, desire,Close round one instant in one floating flower.

Bind us in time, O Seasons clear, and awe.O minstrel galleons of Carib fire,Bequeath us to no earthly shore untilIs answered in the vortex of our graveThe seal’s wide spindrift gaze toward paradise.

III

Infinite consanguinity it bears— This tendered theme of you that lightRetrieves from sea plains where the skyResigns a breast that every wave enthrones;While ribboned water lanes I windAre laved and scattered with no strokeWide from your side, whereto this hour The sea lifts, also, reliquary hands.

And so, admitted through black swollen gatesThat must arrest all distance otherwise,— Past whirling pillars and lithe pediments,Light wrestling there incessantly with light,Star kissing star through wave on wave untoYour body rocking!and where death, if shed,Presumes no carnage, but this single change,— Upon the steep floor flung from dawn to dawnThe silken skilled transmemberment of song;


23/41



Permit me voyage, love, into your hands ...

IV

Whose counted smile of hours and days, supposeI know as spectrum of the sea and pledgeVastly now parting gulf on gulf of wingsWhose circles bridge, I know, (from palms to the severe

Chilled albatross’s white immutability) No stream of greater love advancing nowThan, singing, this mortality aloneThrough clay aflow immortally to you.

All fragrance irrefragably, and claimMadly meeting logically in this hour And region that is ours to wreathe again,Portending eyes and lips and making toldThe chancel port and portion of our June—

Shall they not stem and close in our own stepsBright staves of flowers and quills today as IMust first be lost in fatal tides to tell?

In signature of the incarnate wordThe harbor shoulders to resign in minglingMutual blood, transpiring as foreknownAnd widening noon within your breast for gatheringAll bright insinuations that my years have caughtFor islands where must lead inviolablyBlue latitudes and levels of your eyes,—

In this expectant, still exclaim receiveThe secret oar and petals of all love.

V

Meticulous, past midnight in clear rime,Infrangible and lonely, smooth as though castTogether in one merciless white blade— The bay estuaries fleck the hard sky limits.

—As if too brittle or too clear to touch!The cables of our sleep so swiftly filed,Already hang, shred ends from remembered stars.One frozen trackless smile ... What wordsCan strangle this deaf moonlight? For we

Are overtaken. Now no cry, no swordCan fasten or deflect this tidal wedge,Slow tyranny of moonlight, moonlight lovedAnd changed ... “There’s


24/41



Nothing like this in the world,” you say,Knowing I cannot touch your hand and look Too, into that godless cleft of skyWhere nothing turns but dead sands flashing.

“—And never to quite understand!” No,In all the argosy of your bright hair I dreamed

Nothing so flagless as this piracy.

But nowDraw in your head, alone and too tall here.Your eyes already in the slant of drifting foam;Your breath sealed by the ghosts I do not know:Draw in your head and sleep the long way home.

VI

Where icy and bright dungeons lift

Of swimmers their lost morning eyes,And ocean rivers, churning, shiftGreen borders under stranger skies,

Steadily as a shell secretesIts beating leagues of monotone,Or as many waters trough the sun’sRed kelson past the cape’s wet stone;

O rivers mingling toward the skyAnd harbor of the phoenix’ breast— My eyes pressed black against the prow,

—Thy derelict and blinded guest

Waiting, afire, what name, unspoke,I cannot claim: let thy waves rear More savage than the death of kings,Some splintered garland for the seer.

Beyond siroccos harvestingThe solstice thunders, crept away,

Like a cliff swinging or a sailFlung into April’s inmost day—

Creation’s blithe and petalled wordTo the lounged goddess when she roseConceding dialogue with eyesThat smile unsearchable repose—

Still fervid covenant, Belle Isle, —Unfolded floating dais beforeWhich rainbows twine continual hair—


25/41



Belle Isle, white echo of the oar!

The imaged Word, it is, that holdsHushed willows anchored in its glow.It is the unbetrayable replyWhose accent no farewell can know.

In my opinion, Hart Crane's "Voyages" is the best love poem of all time, and the second-best love poem

isn't even close. Hart Crane was an "uneven" poet who sometimes borders on being unreadable, but in his best poems, he is a wonder. Other poems of his such as "To Brooklyn Bridge" and "The Broken Tower"rank with the best poems in the English language.

These are my high honorable mentions ...

Excerpt from The Song of Songs attributed to King Solomon

I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys.As the lily among thorns, so is my love among the daughters.

As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons.I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste.He brought me to the banqueting house, and his banner over me was love.Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples: for I am sick of love.His left hand is under my head, and his right hand doth embrace me.I charge you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, by the roes,and by the hinds of the field, that ye stir not up, nor wake my love, till he please.

Who'd have thought to look for erotic poetry in the Bible? But the "Song of Songs" (also known as the"Song of Solomon") remains one of the sexiest poems of all time.

Do not stand at my grave and weep

by Mary Elizabeth Frye

Do not stand at my grave and weep:I am not there; I do not sleep.I am a thousand winds that blow,I am the diamond glints on snow,I am the sun on ripened grain,I am the gentle autumn rain.When you awaken in the morning’s hush

I am the swift uplifting rushOf quiet birds in circling flight.I am the soft starshine at night.Do not stand at my grave and cry:I am not there; I did not die.

This consoling elegy had a very mysterious genesis, as it was written by Mary Elizabeth Frye, a Baltimorehousewife who lacked a formal education, having been orphaned at age three. She had never written poetr

before. Frye wrote the poem on a ripped-off piece of a brown grocery bag, in a burst of compassion for aJewish girl who had fled the Holocaust only to receive news that her mother had died in Germany. The girwas weeping inconsolably because she couldn't visit her mother's grave to share her tears of love and


26/41



bereavement. When the poem was named Britain's most popular poem in a 1996 Bookworm poll, with mothan 30,000 call-in votes despite not having been one of the critics' nominations, an unlettered orphan girlhad seemingly surpassed all England's many cultured and degreed ivory towerists in the public's estimationAlthough the poem's origin was disputed for some time (it had been attributed to Native American andother sources), Frye's authorship was confirmed in 1998 after investigative research by Abigail Van Burenthe newspaper columnist better known as "Dear Abby." The poem has also been called "I Am" due to itsrather biblical repetitions of the phrase. Frye never formally published or copyrighted the poem, so we

believe it is in the public domain and can be shared, although we recommend that it not be used for

commercial purposes, since Frye never tried to profit from it herself.

Friday

by Ann Drysdale

The print of a bare foot, the second toeA little longer than the one which isTraditionally designated "great".Praxiteles would have admired it.

You must have left in haste; your last wet step

Before boarding your suit and setting sail,Outlined in talcum on the bathroom floor Mocks your habitual fastidiousness.

There is no tide here to obliterateYour oversight. Unless I wipe or sweepOr suck it up, it will not go away.The thought delights me. I will keep the footprint.

Too slight, too simply human to be calledToken or promise; I am keeping itBecause it is a precious evidenceThat on this island I am not alone.

Ann Drysdale is one of our better contemporary poets, in my opinion.

Valentine

by Carol Ann Duffy

Not a red rose or a satin heart.

I give you an onion.It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.It promises lightlike the careful undressing of love.

Here.It will blind you with tearslike a lover.It will make your reflectiona wobbling photo of grief.


27/41


28/41



It could not withered be.But thou thereon didst only breathe,And sent'st back to me:Since when it grows, and smells, I swear,

Not of itself, but thee.

Ben Jonson

Wulf and Eadwacer (Anonymous Ballad, circa 960-990 AD)loose translation by Michael R. Burch

The outlanders pursue him as if he were game.They will kill him if he comes in force.It is otherwise with us.

Wulf is on one island; I, on another.That island is fast, surrounded by fens.There are fierce men on this island.They will kill him if he comes in force.

It is otherwise with us.

My thoughts pursued Wulf like a panting hound.Whenever it rained and I woke disconsolatethe bold warrior came: he took me in his arms.For me, there was pleasure, but its end was loathsome.Wulf, O, my Wulf, my ache for youhas made me sick; your infrequent visitshave left me famished, but why should I eat?Do you hear, Eadwacer? A she-wolf has borneour wretched whelp to the woods.One can easily sunder what was never one:our song together.

"Wulf and Eadwacer" has been one of my favorite poems since the first time I read it. In fact, I liked the poem so much that I ended up translating it myself! This is one of the oldest poems in the Englishlanguage, and in all likelihood the first extant poem by an English female poet. It is also one of the firstEnglish poems to employ a refrain, and the closing metaphor of a loveless relationship being like a song inwhich two voices never harmonized remains one of the strongest in all literature.

Distant light

by Walid Khazindar

Harsh and coldautumn holds to it our naked trees:If only you would free, at least, the sparrowsfrom the tips of your fingersand release a smile, a small smilefrom the imprisoned cry I see.Sing! Can we singas if we were light, hand in handsheltered in shade, under a strong sun?

http://www.thehypertexts.com/Michael_R_Burch_Poet_Poetry_Picture_Bio.htm


29/41


30/41



Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sightBlind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

Do not go gentle into that good night.Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Dover Beach

by Matthew Arnold

The sea is calm to-night,The tide is full, the moon lies fair Upon the straits; on the French coast the lightGleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.

Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!Only, from the long line of sprayWhere the sea meets the moon-blanched land,Listen! you hear the grating roar Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,At their return, up the high strand,Begin, and cease, and then again begin,With tremulous cadence slow, and bringThe eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long agoHeard it on the Aegean, and it broughtInto his mind the turbid ebb and flowOf human misery; weFind also in the sound a thought,Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The sea of faithWas once, too, at the full, and round earth's shoreLay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.But now I only hear

Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,Retreating, to the breathOf the night-wind, down the vast edges drear And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be trueTo one another! for the world which seemsTo lie before us like a land of dreams,So various, so beautiful, so new,Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;


31/41



And we are here as on a darkling plainSwept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,Where ignorant armies clash by night.

"Dover Beach" may be the first modern English poem. When Arnold speaks of the "Sea of Faith"retreating, he seems to be setting the stage for Modernism, which to some degree was a movement of skeptics who doubted that the "wisdom" contained in the Bible was the revelation of an all-knowing God.

Song by Christina Rossetti

When I am dead, my dearest, Sing no sad songs for me;Plant thou no roses at my head, Nor shady cypress tree:Be the green grass above me With showers and dewdrops wet;And if thou wilt, remember, And if thou wilt, forget.

I shall not see the shadows, I shall not feel the rain;I shall not hear the nightingale Sing on, as if in pain:And dreaming through the twilight That doth not rise nor set,Haply I may remember, And haply may forget.

Christina Rossetti wrote a handful of immortal poems, and that makes her an immortal poet. Two of her poems can be found on the Masters page of The HyperTexts.

For Her Surgery

by Jack Butler

IOver the city the moon rides in mist,scrim scarred with faint rainbow.Two days till Easter. The thin clouds run slow, slow,the wind bells bleed the quietest

of possible musics to the dark lawn.All possibility we will have children is gone.

III raise a glass half water, half alcohol,to that light come full again.Inside, you sleep, somewhere below the pain.Down at the river, there is a tallghost tossing flowers to dark water—

jessamine, rose, and daisy, salvia lyrata . . .



32/41



IIIOh goodbye, goodbye to bloom in the white blazeof moon on the river, goodbyeto creek joining the creek joining the river, the axil, the Y,goodbye to the Yes of two Ifs in one phrase . . .Children bear children. We are grown,and time has thrown us free under the timeless moon.

Jack Butler is one of my favorite contemporary poets.

One Art

by Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn't hard to master;so many things seem filled with the intentto be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.

The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster: places, and names, and where it was you meantto travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or next-to-last, of three loved houses went.The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gestureI love) I shan't have lied. It's evidentthe art of losing's not too hard to master though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Elizabeth Bishop wrote a small handful of truly great poems such as "One Art," "The Fish" and "TheArmadillo," and can probably be considered a major poet as a result.

Sometimes Mysteriously by Luis Omar Salinas

Sometimes in the evening when lovetunes its harp and the cricketscelebrate life, I am like a troubadour in search of friends, loved ones,anyone who will share with mea bit of conversation. My lonelinessarrives ghostlike and pretentious,

http://www.thehypertexts.com/Luis_Omar_Salinas_Poetry_Picture_Bio.htm


33/41


34/41



And so the sun itself Has perished too,And with it, every dream of mineBut one.

Tom Merrill is one of my favorite contemporary poets.

In My Craft Or Sullen Art

by Dylan Thomas

In my craft or sullen artExercised in the still nightWhen only the moon ragesAnd the lovers lie abedWith all their griefs in their arms,I labour by singing light

Not for ambition or breadOr the strut and trade of charmsOn the ivory stages

But for the common wagesOf their most secret heart.

Not for the proud man apartFrom the raging moon I writeOn these spindrift pages

Nor for the towering deadWith their nightingales and psalmsBut for the lovers, their armsRound the griefs of the ages,Who pay no praise or wages

Nor heed my craft or art.

In poems like "Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night," "In My Craft or Sullen Art" and "Fern Hill" theWelsh poet Dylan Thomas ranks with any poet who ever wrote in English. Several of his poems can befound on the Masters page of The HyperTexts.

Sonnet 147

by William Shakespeare

My love is as a fever, longing stillFor that which longer nurseth the disease,

Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,The uncertain sickly appetite to please.My reason, the physician to my love,Angry that his prescriptions are not kept,Hath left me, and I desperate now approveDesire is death, which physic did except.Past cure I am, now reason is past care,And frantic-mad with evermore unrest.My thoughts and my discourse as madmen's are,At random from the truth vainly expressed, For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,



35/41



Who art as black as Hell, as dark as night.

Come slowly, Eden

by Emily Dickinson

Come slowly, EdenLips unused to thee.Bashful, sip thy jasmines,

As the fainting bee,Reaching late his flower,Round her chamber hums,Counts his nectars—alights,And is lost in balms!

it may not always be so; and i say

by e.e. cummings

it may not always be so;and i saythat if your lips,which i have loved,should touch

another's,and your dear strong fingers clutchhis heart,as mine in time not far away;if on another's face your sweet hair layin such a silence as i know,or suchgreat writhing words as,uttering overmuch,stand helplessly before the spirit at bay;

if this should be,i say if this should be— you of my heart,send me a little word;that i may go unto him,and take his hands,saying,Accept all happiness from me.Then shall i turn my face,and hear one birdsing terribly afar in the lost lands.

Wild Nights

by Emily Dickinson

Wild nights! Wild nights!Were I with thee,Wild nights should beOur luxury!

Futile the windsTo a heart in port,—Done with the compass,Done with the chart.

Rowing in Eden!Ah! the sea!Might I but moorTo-night in thee!


36/41



She Walks In Beauty

by Lord Bryon

She walks in beauty, like the nightOf cloudless climes and starry skies;And all that's best of dark and brightMeet 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 graceWhich waves in every raven tress,Or softly lightens o'er her face;Where thoughts serenely sweet expressHow 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!

Meeting at Night

by Robert Browning

The grey sea and the long black land;And the yellow half-moon large and low;And the startled little waves that leapIn fiery ringlets from their sleep,As I gain the cove with pushing prow,And quench its speed i' the slushy sand.

Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;Three fields to cross till a farm appears;A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratchAnd blue spurt of a lighted match,And a voice less loud, through its joys and fears,Than the two hearts beating each to each!

Mad Girl's Love Song

by Sylvia Plath

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;I lift my lids and all is born again.(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,And arbitrary blackness gallops in:I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.


37/41


38/41



Bright Star

by 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.

Heart, we will forget him by Emily Dickinson

Heart, we will forget him,You and I, tonight!You must forget the warmth he gave,I will forget the light.

When you have done pray tell me,Then I, my thoughts, will dim.Haste! 'lest while you’re laggingI may remember him!

Song

by John Donne

Go and catch a falling star,Get with child a mandrake root,Tell me where all past years are,Or who cleft the devils foot;Teach me to hear mermaids singing,

Or to keep off envy's stinging,And findWhat windServes to advance an honest mind.

If thou be'st born to strange sights,Things invisible to see,Ride ten thousand days and nightsTill Age snow white hairs on thee;Thou, when thou return'st wilt tell meAll strange wonders that befell thee,


39/41



And swear No whereLives a woman true and fair.

If thou find'st one let me know;Such a pilgrimage were sweet.Yet do not; I would not go,Though at next door we might meet.

Though she were true when you met her,And last, till you write your letter,Yet sheWill beFalse, ere I come, to two or three.

John Donne wrote some of the sexiest poems in the English language, and some of the best devotional poems as well. Talk about range!

One of their Gods

by Constantine P. Cavafy

When one of them moved through the centre of Selefkia just as it was getting dark―moved like a young man, tall, extremely handsome,the joy of being immortal in his eyes,his hair black and perfumed―the people going by would gaze at him,and one would ask the other if he knew him,if he was a Greek from Syria, or a stranger.But some who looked more carefullywould understand and step aside;and as he disappeared under the arcades,among the shadows and the evening lights,going toward the quarter that livesonly at night, with orgies and debauchery,with every kind of intoxication and desire,they would wonder which of Them it could be,and for what suspicious pleasurehe'd come down into the streets of Selefkiafrom the August Celestial Mansions.

Love Letter by Sylvia Plath

Not easy to state the change you made.If I'm alive now, then I was dead,Though, like a stone, unbothered by it,Staying put according to habit.You didn't just tow me an inch, no

Nor leave me to set my small bald eyeSkyward again, without hope, of course,


40/41


41/41


Wild nights by Emily Dickinsonit is at moments after i have dreamed by e.e. cummingssomewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond by e.e. cummings

I Knew A Woman by Theodore Roethke Luke Havergal by Edward Arlington RobinsonWord Made Flesh by Ann Drysdale

So there you have them ... the best love poems of all time, according to me. Everyone's list will be

different, but if one or two of mine is now on yours, hopefully your time here was well spent.

Related pages: The Most Beautiful Sonnets in the English Language, The Most Beautiful Lines in theEnglish Language, The Best Anglo-Saxon Riddles and Kennings; Ancient Greek Epigrams and Epitaphs,The Best Poems Ever Written, The Best Love Poems, The Best Erotic Poems, The Best Love Songs Ever ,The Best Urdu Love Poetry, Visions of Beauty, The Best Thanksgiving Poems, The Best Autumnal Poem

The HyperTexts
http://www.thehypertexts.com/http://www.thehypertexts.com/Best%20Autumn%20Poems%20Fall%20Poetry.htmhttp://www.thehypertexts.com/Best%20Thanksgiving%20Poems%20and%20Poems%20of%20Gratitude.htmhttp://www.thehypertexts.com/Visions%20of%20Beauty.htmhttp://www.thehypertexts.com/Best%20Urdu%20Love%20Poetry%20English%20Translations.htmhttp://www.thehypertexts.com/The%20Best%20Love%20Songs%20Ever.htmhttp://www.thehypertexts.com/The%20Best%20Erotic%20Poems.htmlhttp://www.thehypertexts.com/Best%20Love%20Poems.htmhttp://www.thehypertexts.com/Best%20Poems%20Ever%20Greatest%20Poetry%20of%20All%20Time.htmhttp://www.thehypertexts.com/Ancient%20Greek%20Epitaphs%20Epigrams%20Translations.htmhttp://www.thehypertexts.com/The%20Best%20Anglo-Saxon%20Riddles%20and%20Kennings.htmhttp://www.thehypertexts.com/The%20Most%20Beautiful%20Lines%20in%20the%20English%20Language.htmhttp://www.thehypertexts.com/The%20Most%20Beautiful%20Sonnets%20in%20the%20English%20Language.htm

the best love poems and romantic poems of all time

Documents