Love poems
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Sonnet V
© Mikolaj Sep Szarzynski
'Tis hard to love not, whilst to love
Be sad joy, if by lust misled,
Thoughts too sweetly gaze on things
That perforce must change and decay.
Night Flight by George Bilgere : American Life in Poetry #244 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-20
© Ted Kooser
Love predated the invention of language, but love poetry got its start as soon as we had words through which to express our feelings. Here’s a lovely example of a contemporary poem of love and longing by George Bilgere, who lives in Ohio.
Night Flight
I am doing laps at night, alone
Fragment of a Ballad
© Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal
Many a mile over land and sea
Unsummoned my love returned to me;
I remember not the words he said
But only the trees moaning overhead.
Taking Title
© Christopher Morley
TO make this little house my very own
Could not be done by law alone.
Though covenant and deed convey
Absolute fee, as lawyers say,
There are domestic rites beside
By which this house is sanctified.
A Haunted Room
© John Hay
In the dim chamber whence but yesterday
Passed my beloved, filled with awe I stand;
I Loved Thee, Atthis, In The Long Ago
© Bliss William Carman
(Sappho XXIII)
I loved thee, Atthis, in the long ago,
When the great oleanders were in flower
In the broad herded meadows full of sun.
When The Rain Is On The Roof
© Sydney Thompson Dobell
Lord, I am poor, and know not how to speak,
But since Thou art so great,
Thou needest not that I should speak to Thee well.
All angels speak unto Thee well.
The Old-Fashioned Pair
© Edgar Albert Guest
'Tis a little old house with a squeak in the stairs,
And a porch that seems made for just two easy chairs;
Christmas Day
© John Keble
What sudden blaze of song
Spreads o'er th' expanse of Heaven?
In waves of light it thrills along,
Th' angelic signal given -
"Glory to God!" from yonder central fire
Flows out the echoing lay beyond the starry choir;
The Staff and Scrip
© Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Who rules these lands? the Pilgrim said.
Stranger, Queen Blanchelys.
Folding the Flocks
© Beaumont and Fletcher
Shepherds all, and maidens fair,
Fold your flocks up; for the air
Excelsior
© Francis William Bourdillon
If one should strive to reach a star,
He would not build a ladder high,
Seek foot by foot to climb so far,
And step by step ascend the sky;
The Hall And The Wood
© William Morris
Twas in the water-dwindling tide
When July days were done,
Sir Rafe of Greenhowes, gan to ride
In the earliest of the sun.
A Christmas Letter From Australia
© Douglas Brooke Wheelton Sladen
T IS Christmas, and the North wind blows; t was two years yesterday
Since from the Lusitanias bows I looked oer Table Bay,
Idyll X. The Two Workmen
© Theocritus
What now, poor o'erworked drudge, is on thy mind?
No more in even swathe thou layest the corn:
Thy fellow-reapers leave thee far behind,
As flocks a ewe that's footsore from a thorn.
By noon and midday what will be thy plight
If now, so soon, thy sickle fails to bite?
It's Raining My Son
© Vahan Tekeyan
It's raining my son.... The autumn is wet,
Wet like the eyes of a poor beguiled love....
Go, close the window, and close the door,
Then come beside me, come, face me seated
Circus In Three Rings
© Sylvia Plath
In the circus tent of a hurricane
designed by a drunken god
my extravagant heart blows up again
in a rampage of champagne-colored rain
and the fragments whir like a weather vane
while the angels all applaud.
Loves Unity
© Alfred Austin
How can I tell thee when I love thee best?
In rapture or repose? how shall I say?
Willie's Question
© George MacDonald
I.
Willie speaks.
Is it wrong, the wish to be great,
For I do wish it so?
I have asked already my sister Kate;
She says she does not know.
