What's your fav love poem?

Question

Mine? Eliz. Browning's famous sonnet:

"How do I love thee? Let me count the ways..."


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 everyday'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 a 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.


- Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)

Answer 1

Annabelle Lee by Edgar Allen Poe

Answer 2

My favorite love poem is Shakespeare's Sonnet 130 because it's about TRUE love and not just lust or temporary infatuation.

Sonnet 130 - William Shakespeare

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.

Answer 3

My favourite is likewise Sonnet 116 by way of Shakespeare: enable me to no longer the marriage of genuine minds Admit impediments. Love isn't love Which alters whilst it alteration reveals, Or bends with the remover to do away with: O no! that's an ever-mounted mark that looks on tempests and is on no account shaken; it fairly is the super call to each wandering bark, Whose properly worth's unknown, in spite of the undeniable fact that his top be taken. Love's no longer Time's fool, however rosy lips and cheeks interior his bending sickle's compass come: Love alters no longer together with his short hours and weeks, yet bears it out even to the fringe of doom. If this be errors and upon me proved, I on no account writ, nor no guy ever enjoyed.

Answer 4

Rather than a poem, it's a lyric from a song titled "I Didn't Know What Time It Was". Here's the lyrics:

I Didn't Know What Time It Was
Words and Music by Lorenz Hart and Richard Rodgers

(Verse)
Once I was young--
Yesterday, perhaps--
Danced with Jim and Paul
And kissed some other chaps.

Once I was young,
But never was naive.
I thought I had a trick or two
Up my imaginary sleeve.

And now I know I was naive.

(Refrain)

I didn't know what time it was,
Then I met you.
Oh, what a lovely time it was,
How sublime it was too!

I didn't know what day it was,
You held my hand.
Warm like the month of May it was,
And I'll say it was grand.

Grand to be alive, to be young,
To be mad, to be yours alone!
Grand to see your face, feel your touch,
Hear your voice say I'm all your own.

I didn't know what year it was,
Life was no prize.
I wanted love and here it was
Shining out of your eyes.

I'm wise,
And I know what time it is now.

Answer 5

Since "To His Coy Mistress" has already been mentioned, another one of my favorites is William Wordsworth's A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal...which is rather morbid as a love poem, actually:

A SLUMBER did my spirit seal;
I had no human fears:
She seem'd a thing that could not feel
The touch of earthly years.

No motion has she now, no force;
She neither hears nor sees;
Roll'd round in earth's diurnal course
With rocks, and stones, and trees.

Answer 6

OMG Actually mine is also "To his Coy Mistress" by Andrew Marvel. But this one is also cute (and shorter)

The Constant Lover


Out upon it, I have lov'd
Three whole days together;
And am like to love three more,
If it prove fair weather.

Time shall molt away his wings
Ere he shall discover
In such whole wide world again
Such a constant lover.

But the spite on't is, no praise
Is due at all to me:
Love with me had made no stays
Had it any been but she.

Had it any been but she
And that very face,
There had been at least ere this
A dozen dozen in her place.

Sir John Suckling

Answer 7

Woman

she wanted to be a blade
of grass amid the fields
but he wouldn’t agree
to be the dandelion

she wanted to be a robin singing
through the leaves
but he refused to be
her tree

she spun herself into a web
and looking for a place to rest
turned to him
but he stood straight
declining to be her corner

she tried to be a book
but he wouldn’t read

she turned herself into a bulb
but he wouldn’t let her grow

she decided to become
a woman
and though he still refused
to be a man
she decided it was all
right

Nikki Giovanni

Answer 8

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Answer 9

W.B. Yeats "When You Are Old"

WHEN you are old and gray 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 fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead,
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

Answer 10

This one:


My reason depends on your every daily moment of breath.
For each second of a breath, I birth my existence.
You create a need of survival as long as you live.
In your playful and inspiring smiles, I engrave my most powerful emotion.
Your movements leave me speechless.
There is no need for variety in your arms.
You are my world.
And in your eyes, only god can reside.
For I have never seen such purity as this in any form of life.
From the first birth of your cry
to the last time I ever imagine again.
I eternally, will love you.