20 Most Romantic Love Poems ...

by Robert Browning
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Escape me?
Never—
Beloved!
While I am I, and you are you,
So long as the world contains us both,
Me the loving and you the loth,
While the one eludes, must the other pursue.
My life is a fault at last, I fear:
It seems too much like a fate, indeed!
Though I do my best I shall scarce succeed.
But what if I fail of my purpose here?
It is but to keep the nerves at strain,
To dry one's eyes and laugh at a fall,
And baffled, get up to begin again,—
So the chase takes up one's life, that's all.
While, look but once from your farthest bound,
At me so deep in the dust and dark,
No sooner the old hope drops to ground
Than a new one, straight to the selfsame mark,
I shape me—
Ever
Removed!

by Christopher Marlowe
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Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That valleys, groves, hills, and fields,
Woods or steepy mountain yields.
And we will sit upon the rocks,
Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks,
By shallow rivers to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.
And I will make thee beds of roses
And a thousand fragrant posies,
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle;
A gown made of the finest wool
Which from our pretty lambs we pull;
Fair lined slippers for the cold,
With buckles of the purest gold;
A belt of straw and ivy buds,
With coral clasps and amber studs:
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me and be my love.
The shepherds' swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May morning:
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me and be my love.

by William Shakespeare
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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 wandering 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 proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

by Robert Burns
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O my Luve's like a red, red rose
That's newly sprung in June;
O my Luve's like the melodie
That's sweetly played in tune.
As fair art thou, my bonnie 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;
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 awhile!
And I will come again, my Luve,
Tho' it ware ten thousand mile.

by Bernard de Ventadour

Alas, I thought I knew so much
Of love, and yet I know so little!
For I cannot stop myself loving her
From whom I shall never have joy.
My whole heart, and all of me from myself
She has taken, and her own self,
and all the world,
For when she took herself from me,
she left me nothing
But desire and a yearning heart.

by Nicholas Gordon

Whenever you love, it's too good to be true.
Even so, it's truer than you believe,
Nor will you know till it vanishes again.
Time is a sea which opens where you cleave
Yet roils over what you leave behind.
For now, my love sings in the stars,
Or hisses against rocks like the sea,
Unraveling your life when you pause to grieve,
Returning with the sunlight, with the rain.

by Guiraut de Bornelh

And if my homage she'd receive,
My wooing and my service true--
The sleepless nights I have been through,
The grief I bear from morn till eve,
Could never take me from her sight;
I'd be a slave unto delight,
All burdens I would gladly bear
And for my heart's grief I'd not care.

by Gary R. Hess

The sacred fruit of your soul was lost
Taken unrightfully, stolen
It hurt immensely
You shared the holiness with others
To rid the raunch treachery
Then met a man who treated you horribly
Abused you, hit you, took control of you
I came and pleased you
Treated you well, made you happy
Shared our thoughts
Entered each others minds
We talked about memories
Things we had
Things we want
What we need
We laughed
Cried
Smiled
The love we had
The love we have
I want to be with you till the end
I want to give you my fruit
And share my wine

by Mahatma Gandhi
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Infinite Love is a weapon of matchless potency.
It is the "summum bonum" of Life.
It is an attribute of the brave, in fact it is their all.
It does not come within the reach of the coward.
It is no wooden or lifeless dogma but a living and life-giving force.
It is the special attribute of the heart.

by Fakhruddin Iraqi, translated by J. Star

Love courses through everything,
No, Love is everything.
How can you say, there is no love,
when nothing but Love exists?
All that you see has appeared because of Love.
All shines from Love,
All pulses with Love,
All flows from Love--
No, once again all is Love!

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
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If thou must love me, let it be for naught
Except for love's sake only. Do not say
"I love her for her smile...her look...her way of speaking
gently-
For a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
A sense of pleasant ease on such a day."
For these things in themselves, beloved, may be changed, or changed for thee--and love so wrought may be unwrought so.
Neither love me for thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry-
A creature might forget to weep, who bore their comfort long, and lose
their love thereby
But love me for love's sake, that evermore thou mayst love on,
Through love's eternity.

by Geoffrey Chaucer
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Do not sing for a bird or a flower,
Nor for snow nor for ice,
Nor even for cold or warmth,
Nor for the return of the green to the meadows;
Nor for any other pleasure
Do I sing, nor have I ever sung,
But for my lady for whom I long,
For she is the fairest in the world.

by William Butler Yates
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I had this thought a while ago,
"My darling cannot understand
What I have done, or what would do
In this blind bitter land."
And I grew weary of the sun
Until my thoughts cleared up again,
Remembering that the best I have done
Was done to make it plain;
That every year I have cried, "At length
My darling understands it all,
Because I have come into my strength,
And words obey my call;"
That had she done so who can say
What would have shaken from the sieve?
I might have thrown poor words away
And been content to live.

from The Essential Rumi, translation by C. Barks

In the early morning hour,
just before dawn, lover and beloved wake
and take a drink of water.
She asks, "Do you love me or yourself more?
Really, tell the absolute truth."
He says, "There's nothing left of me.
I'm like a ruby held up to the sunrise,
Is it still a stone, or a world made of redness? It has no resistance
to sunlight."

by 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 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 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
breadth, smiles, tears, of all my life! - and
If God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

by 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 give life to thee.

by Emily Dickinson
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A charm invests a face
Imperfectly beheld.
The lady dare not lift her veil
For fear it be dispelled.
But peers beyond her mesh,
And wishes, and denies,
Lest interview annul a want
That image satisfies.

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
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Art thou pale for weariness
Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth,
Wandering companionless
Among the stars that have a different birth,
And ever changing, like a joyless eye
That finds no object worth its constancy?

by John Masefield
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Have seen dawn and sunset on moors and windy hills
Coming in solemn beauty like slow old tunes of Spain:
I have seen the lady April bringing in the daffodils,
Bringing the springing grass and the soft warm April rain.
I have heard the song of the blossoms and the old chant of the sea,
And seen strange lands from under the arched white sails of ships;
But the loveliest things of beauty God ever has showed to me
Are her voice, and her hair, and eyes, and the dear red curve of her lips.

by Christopher Brennan

If questioning would make us wise
No eyes would ever gaze in eyes;
If all our tale were told in speech
No mouths would wander each to each.
Were spirits free from mortal mesh
And love not bound in hearts of flesh
No aching breasts would yearn to meet
And find their ecstasy complete.
For who is there that lives and knows
The secret powers by which he grows?
Were knowledge all, what were our need
To thrill and faint and sweetly bleed?.
Then seek not, sweet, the "If" and "Why"
I love you now until I die.
For I must love because I live
And life in me is what you give.
Did these poems inspire a romantic mood in you? I hope so! Share them with someone special in your life by reading them aloud or sending them in a written note. Do you have other great love poems that I skipped over? Post titles, links, or the actual poem below... I'd love to read them!
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