Love poems

A White Night

© Mathilde Blind

THE land lay deluged by the Moon;
  The molten silver of the lake
Shimmered in many a broad lagoon
  Between grey isles, whose copse and brake
Lay folded on the water's breast
Like halcyons in a floating nest.

On Memphis Station

© Johannes Vilhelm Jensen

Half awake and half dozing,
Struck by a drear reality, but still lost
In an inner sea fog of Danaidean dreams
I stand teeth chattering
On Memphis Station, Tennessee.
It is raining.

Hyperion. Book I

© John Keats

Deep in the shady sadness of a vale

Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn,

An Hour

© Henry Van Dyke

You only promised me a single hour:

  But in that hour I journeyed through a year

Twenty-One Love Poems II

© Adrienne Rich

Songs Written to Welsh Airs

© Amelia Opie

How fondly I gaze on the fast falling-leaves,
That mark, as I wander, the summer's decline;
And then I exclaim, while my conscious heart heaves,
"Thus early to droop and to perish be mine!"

The Tears of the Poplars

© Edith Matilda Thomas

HATH not the dark stream closed above thy head,
With envy of thy light, thou shining one?
Hast thou not, murmuring, made thy dreamless bed
Where blooms the asphodel, far from all sun?
But thou—thou dost obtain oblivious ease,  
While here we rock and moan—thy funeral trees.

When Last We Parted

© James Thomson

When last we parted, thou wert young and fair,

How beautiful let fond remembrance say!

A Hymn for Noon

© Thomas Parnell

The sun is swiftly mounted high;

It glitters in the southern sky;

Shall I Go Bound And You Go Free?

© Padraic Colum

SHALL I go bound and you go free,
And love one so removed from me?
Not so; the falcon o'er my brow
Hath better quest, I dare avow!

Children's Anthem (Kinderhymne)

© Bertolt Brecht

Grace spare not and spare no labour

My Verses

© Kostas Karyotakis

My verses, children of my blood.
They speak, but I supply the words
like fragments of my heart,
I offer them like tears from my eyes.

Negligent Mary

© Ann Taylor

AH, Mary! what, do you for dolly not care?
And why is she left on the floor?
Forsaken, and cover'd with dust, I declare;
With you I must trust her no more.

It's no use

© Sappho

It's no use
Mother dear, I
can't finish my
weaving
You may
blame Aphrodite

Cock-Crowing

© Henry Vaughan

Father of lights! what sunny seed,
What glance of day hast Thou confined
Into this bird? To all the breed
This busy ray Thou hast assigned;
Their magnetism works all night,
And dreams of paradise and light.

The Cock And The Bull

© Charles Stuart Calverley

Now Law steps in, bigwigg’d, voluminous-jaw’d;
Investigates and re-investigates.
Was the transaction illegal? Law shakes head.
Perpend, sir, all the bearings of the case.

War Profits

© Katharine Lee Bates

THE horns of the moon are tipped

With pearl. Her lover, wooed

Satyr I. A Letter To A Friend. On Poets.

© Thomas Parnell

Poets are bound by ye severest rules,

the great ones must be mad, ye little all are fools,

The Wife Of All Ages

© Edith Nesbit

I DO not catch these subtle shades of feeling,
  Your fine distinctions are too fine for me;
This meeting, scheming, longing, trembling, dreaming,
  To me mean love, and only love, you see;
In me at least 'tis love, you will admit,
And you the only man who wakens it.

July

© John Le Gay Brereton

  ’Twas Jack-o’-Winter hailed it first,
  But now more timid angels sing,
  For what dull ear can fail to hear
  Afar the fluting of the Spring?