Love poems
/ page 654 of 1285 /
W.h.
© Louise Imogen Guiney
1778-1830
Between the wet trees and the sorry steeple,
Keep, Time, in dark Soho, what once was Hazlitt,
Seeker of Truth, and finder oft of Beauty;
from To Alexis In Answer to His Poem Against Fruition
© Aphra Behn
Since man with that inconstancy was born,
To love the absent, and the present scorn
Why do we deck, why do we dress
For such short-lived happiness?
Why do we put attraction on,
Since either way tis we must be undone?
Laodamia
© André Breton
"With sacrifice before the rising morn
Vows have I made by fruitless hope inspired;
And from the infernal Gods, 'mid shades forlorn
Of night, my slaughtered Lord have I required:
Celestial pity I again implore;—
Restore him to my sight—great Jove, restore!"
from The Task, Book IV: The Winter Evening
© William Cowper
(excerpt)
Hark! ’tis the twanging horn! o’er yonder bridge,
The Errancy
© Jorie Graham
Then the cicadas again like kindling that won’t take.
The struck match of some utopia we no longer remember
Saving Minutes
© Jonathan Galassi
to this,
and put it away
to be lived on another night,
your wedding night or some other night
that needed all the luck,
all the saved-up minutes you could bring it.
Nick and the Candlestick
© Sylvia Plath
I am a miner. The light burns blue.
Waxy stalactites
Drip and thicken, tears
After the Pleasure Party: Lines Traced Under an Image of Amor Threatening
© Arvind Krishna Mehrotra
Fear me, virgin whosoever
Taking pride from love exempt,
Fear me, slighted. Never, never
Brave me, nor my fury tempt:
Downy wings, but wroth they beat
Tempest even in reason's seat.
Sonnet XXXV: No more be grieved at that which thou hast done
© William Shakespeare
No more be grieved at that which thou hast done:
Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud,
Daddy
© Sylvia Plath
You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.
Open the Gates
© Pierre Reverdy
Open the gates—the gates of the Temple,
Swift to Thy sons, who Thy truths have displayed.
Yarrow Visited. September, 1814
© André Breton
And is this—Yarrow?—This the stream
Of which my fancy cherished,
The Tongues We Speak
© Patricia Goedicke
I have arrived here after taking many steps
Over the kitchen floors of friends and through their lives.
from Totem Poem [If every step taken is a step well-lived]
© Luke Davies
And if every step taken is a step well-lived but a foot
towards death, every pilgrimage a circle, every flight-path
Sweet Machine
© Mark Doty
hanging his head between his knees,
spent, before he jerks himself up
and starts all over again.
