Which is the most beautiful love poem ever written in English?

Question

i don't really care if the author is English, it can be also American, Australian...

Answer 1

Mrs. Browning did OK with "How do I love thee, let me count the ways..."

Answer 2

I think I have to agree with Big Mamarica. Neruda may not have written that poem in English--but it's still better as a translation than any english love poem I can think of.

Answer 3

When you talk about love, things can get very wordy.
So, I present to you something short, sweet and to the point of what the story was trying to conveying. Which was LOVE.

"Jesus wept"

Gospel of John, Chapter 11, verse 35.

It doesn't matter if you beleive in God or not. The bible our oldest books in print. It contains some of the most beautiful writing I have ever read.

If you like your love poems a little more wordy just read "The Songs of Solomon"

Answer 4

well---i dont know if its a love poem---but i certainly love it---by pablo neruda

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write for example, 'The night is shattered
and the blue stars shiver in the distance.'

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to a pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is shattered and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight searches for her as though to go to her.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. Like my kisses before.
Her voice. Her bright body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.

bugger off with your thumbs down!!!!!!!!!sod off!!

Answer 5

I'm with Pablo Neruda and Song of Solomon

Answer 6

Shall I compare thee to a Summer's day- William Shakespeare

Answer 7

'Evolution'

When you were a tadpole and I was a fish
In the Paleozoic time,
And side by side on the ebbing tide
We sprawled through the ooze and slime,
Or skittered with many a caudal flip
Through the depths of the Cambrian fen,
My heart was rife with the joy of life,
For I loved you even then.

Mindless we lived and mindless we loved
And mindless at last we died;
And deep in the rift of the Caradoc drift
We slumbered side by side.
The world turned on in the lathe of time,
The hot lands heaved amain,
Till we caught our breath from the womb of death
And crept into light again.

We were amphibians, scaled and tailed,
And drab as a dead man's hand;
We coiled at ease 'neath the dripping trees
Or trailed through the mud and sand.
Croaking and blind, with our three-clawed feet
Writing a language dumb,
With never a spark in the empty dark
To hint at a life to come.

Yet happy we lived and happy we loved,
And happy we died once more;
Our forms were rolled in the clinging mold
Of a Neocomian shore.
The eons came and the eons fled
And the sleep that wrapped us fast
Was riven away in a newer day
And the night of death was past.

Then light and swift through the jungle trees
We swung in our airy flights,
Or breathed in the balms of the fronded palms
In the hush of the moonless nights;
And, oh! what beautiful years were there
When our hearts clung each to each;
When life was filled and our senses thrilled
In the first faint dawn of speech.

Thus life by life and love by love
We passed through the cycles strange,
And breath by breath and death by death
We followed the chain of change.
Till there came a time in the law of life
When over the nursing sod
The shadows broke and soul awoke
In a strange, dim dream of God.

I was thewed like an Auruch bull
And tusked like the great cave bear;
And you, my sweet, from head to feet
Were gowned in your glorious hair.
Deep in the gloom of a fireless cave,
When the night fell o'er the plain
And the moon hung red o'er the river bed
We mumbled the bones of the slain.

I flaked a flint to a cutting edge
And shaped it with brutish craft;
I broke a shank from the woodland lank
And fitted it, head and haft;
Then I hid me close to the reedy tarn,
Where the mammoth came to drink;
Through the brawn and bone I drove the stone
And slew him upon the brink.

Loud I howled through the moonlit wastes,
Loud answered our kith and kin;
From west and east to the crimson feast
The clan came tramping in.
O'er joint and gristle and padded hoof
We fought and clawed and tore,
And check by jowl with many a growl
We talked the marvel o'er.

I carved that fight on a reindeer bone
With rude and hairy hand;
I pictured his fall on the cavern wall
That men might understand.
For we lived by blood and the right of might
Ere human laws were drawn,
And the age of sin did not begin
Till our brutal tush were gone.

And that was a million years ago
In a time that no man knows;
Yet here tonight in the mellow light
We sit at Delmonico's.
Your eyes are deep as the Devon springs,
Your hair is dark as jet,
Your years are few, your life is new,
Your soul untried, and yet -

Our trail is on the Kimmeridge clay
And the scarp of the Purbeck flags;
We have left our bones in the Bagshot stones
And deep in the Coralline crags;
Our love is old, our lives are old,
And death shall come amain;
Should it come today, what man may say
We shall not live again?

God wrought our souls from the Tremadoc beds
And furnished them wings to fly;
We sowed our spawn in the world's dim dawn,
And I know that it shall not die,
Though cities have sprung above the graves
Where the crook-bone men make war
And the oxwain creaks o'er the buried caves
Where the mummied mammoths are.

Then as we linger at luncheon here
O'er many a dainty dish,
Let us drink anew to the time when you
Were a tadpole and I was a fish.

-- Langdon Smith

Answer 8

not precisely a poem, yet a music (a spoken music) of Jacques Brel. "Je m'en remets à toi" Pour ce qui est de vivre, Ou de ne pas vivre, Pour ce qui est de rire, Ou de ne rire plus, Je m'en remets à toi. approximately residing or not residing, i will go away it as much as you approximately guffawing or not greater guffawing, i will go away it as much as you Pour ce qui est d'aimer, Pour une section de possibility, Pour ce qui est d'espérer, Ou de désespérance, Je m'en remets à toi. approximately loving, a pair of component of possibility approximately hoping Or approximately despairing i will go away it as much as you Oui mais, Pour ce qui est des pleurs, Comme autant de cerises, Pour ce qui est du coeur, Qui se tord et se brise, Je m'en remets encore, Je m'en remets à toi. specific yet with regard to the tears Like as plenty cherries with regard to the midsection Who writhes and is broken i will go away it up back i will go away it as much as you Pour que ce soit demain, Plutôt que le passé, Pour que ce soit l'airain, Plutôt que le laurier, Je m'en remets à toi. approximately being day after today particularly of in the previous with regard to the time of bronze particularly of the laurels i will go away it as much as you Pour que ce soit l. a. vie, Plutôt qu'une saison, Pour qu'elle soit symphonie, Plutôt qu'une chanson, Je m'en remets à toi. approximately perpetually of life particularly of a season a pair of symphony particularly of in basic terms a music i will go away it as much as you Oui mais, Pour accrocher aux branches, Notre amour qui vacille, Pour briser l. a. faucille, Du temps qui se revanche, Je m'en remets encore, Je m'en remets à toi. specific yet to hold up on the branches Our wavering love, And to break the sickle Of the Time who takes his revenge i will go away it up back i will go away it as much as you Tu vois, tu peux faire l'été, Tu vois, je peux porter l'hiver, Tu vois, on peut appareiller, Tu vois, on peut croquer l. a. Terre you spot, you will possibly be able to make the summer you spot, i'm able to hold the iciness you spot, we are able to get below way you spot, we are able to crunch the Earth