17 poems about Love

Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art— Not
in lone splendour hung aloft the night,
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like Nature’s patient sleepless Eremite, The
moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores, Or
gazing on the new soft fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors—
No—yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever—or else swoon to death.

Some celebrate the beauty
of knights, or infantry,
or billowing flotillas
at battle on the sea.
Warfare has its glory,
but I place far above
these military splendors
the one thing that you love.
For proof of this contention
examine history:
we all remember Helen,
who left her family,
her child, and royal husband,
to take a stranger's hand:
her beauty had no equal,
but bowed to love's command.
As love then is the power
that none can disobey,
so too my thoughts must follow
my darling far away:
the sparkle of her laughter
would give me greater joy
than all the bronze-clad heroes

This love
So violent
So fragile
So tender
So hopeless
This love
Beautiful as the day
And bad as the weather
When the weather is bad
This love so true
This love so beautiful
So happy
So joyous
And so pathetic
Trembling with fear like a child in the dark
And so sure of itself
Like a tranquil man in the middle of the night
This love that made others afraid
That made them speak
That made them go pale
This love intently watched
Because we intently watch it
Run down hurt trampled finished denied forgotten
Because we ran it down hurt it trampled
it finished it denied it forgot it
This whole entire love
Still so lively
And so sunny
It's yours
It's mine
That which has been
This always new thing
And which hasn't changed
As true as a plant
As trembling as a bird
As warm as live as summer
We can both of us
Come and go
We can forget
And then go back to sleep
Wake up suffer grow old
Go back to sleep again
Awake smile and laugh
And feel younger
Our love stays there
Stubborn as an ass
Lively as desire
Cruel as memory
Foolish as regrets
Tender as remembrance
Cold as marble
Beautiful as day
Fragile as a child
It watches us, smiling
And it speaks to us without saying a word
And me I listen to it, trembling
And I cry out
I cry out for you
I cry out for me
I beg you
For you for me for all who love each other
And who loved each other
Yes I cry out to it
For you for me and for all the others
That I don't know
Stay there
There where you are
There where you were in the past
Stay there
Don't move
Don't go away
We who loved each other
We've forgotten you
Don't forget us
We had only you on the earth
Don't let us become cold
Always so much farther away
And anywhere
Give us a sign of life
Much later on a dark night
In the forest of memory
Appear suddenly

Love is not all:
it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof
against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar
to men that sink
And rise and sink
and rise and sink again;
Love cannot fill the thickened lung
with breath,
Nor clean the blood,
nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends
with death
Even as I speak,
for lack of love alone.
It well may be that
in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by pain
and moaning for release,
Or nagged by want past
resolution’s power,
I might be driven to sell your love
for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night
for food.
It well may be.
I do not think I would.

Before you came,
things were just as they should be:
the sky was simply the limit of what I could see,
the road was just a road, wine was simply wine.

Now everything feels like my heart,
a color somewhere between life and blood:
the gray of your absence, the color of poison, of thorns,
the gold when we meet, a season bursting into flame,
the yellow of autumn, the red of flowers, of fire,
and the black when you cover the earth
with the ashes of dead fires.

And the sky, the road, the glass of wine?
The sky is a shirt soaked in tears,
the road a vein ready to burst,
and the glass of wine a mirror in which
the sky, the road, the whole world keep changing.

Don't leave now that you're here—
stay, so the world can become itself again:
so the sky can be the sky,
the road a road,
and the glass of wine not a mirror,
but simply a glass of wine.

i carry your heart with me
(i carry it in
my heart)
i am never without it
(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)
i want no world
(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root
and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree
called life; which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder
that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart
(i carry it in my heart)

He’s equal with the Gods, that man
Who sits across from you,
Face to face, close enough, to sip
Your voice’s sweetness,
And what excites my mind,
Your laughter, glittering. So,
When I see you, for a moment,
My voice goes,
My tongue freezes. Fire,
Delicate fire, in the flesh.
Blind, stunned, the sound
Of thunder, in my ears.
Shivering with sweat, cold
Tremors over the skin,
I turn the colour of dead grass,
And I’m an inch from dying.

Glittering-Minded deathless Aphrodite,
I beg you, Zeus’s daughter, weaver of snares,
Don’t shatter my heart with fierce
Pain, goddess,
But come now, if ever before
You heard my voice, far off, and listened,
And left your father’s golden house,
And came,
Yoking your chariot.
Lovely the swift
Sparrows that brought you over black earth
A whirring of wings through mid-air
Down the sky.
They came. And you, sacred one,
Smiling with deathless face, asking
What now, while I suffer: why now
I cry out to you, again:
What now I desire above all in my mad heart.
‘Whom now, shall I persuade
To admit you again to her love,
Sappho, who wrongs you now?
If she runs now she’ll follow later,
If she refuses gifts she’ll give them.
If she loves not, now, she’ll soon
Love against her will.’
Come to me now, then, free me
From aching care, and win me
All my heart longs to win. You,
Be my friend.

For you, my love
I went to a bird market
And I bought a bird
For you
My love
I went to a flower market
And I bought a flower
For you
My love
I went to a junk market
And I bought a chain
A heavey chain
For you
My love
And I went to a slave market
And I searched for you
But I couldn't find you anywhere
My love

Behold what the symphonic song of Love is made of.

There is the song of love from ages past,
the sound of frantic kisses shared by legendary lovers,
the cries of mortal women
ravished by the gods.

There is the valor of mythical heroes,
rising like weapons
lifted against the sky.
There is Jason's precious cry,
the swan's final, fatal song,
and the triumphant hymn
that the first rays of dawn
draw from the silent Memnon.

There is the cry of the Sabine women
at the moment of their abduction.
There are the mating calls of the great cats
deep within the jungle.
There is the deep murmur of sap
climbing through tropical trees,
the thunder of artillery
bringing to its end
the terrible love of nations,
and the waves of the sea,
where life and beauty are born.

Within all these
resounds the song
of all the love in the world.

(revised literary translation)

Should I fall upon the battlefield,
You would mourn me, dearest Lou, for just one day;
Then my memory would fade away
Like a shell bursting over the front,
A radiant shell, blossoming like mimosa in bloom.

And that memory, scattered through the sky,
Would wash the whole world with my blood:
The mountains and valleys, the seas and the stars,
The wondrous suns ripening in distant space,
Like golden fruit around General Baratier.

Forgotten, yet alive in everything,
I would redden the rosy buds of your breasts,
Bring color to your lips, and crimson to your hair.
You would never truly grow old;
These gifts would keep you forever young.

The fatal outpouring of my blood upon the world
Would lend a brighter fire to the sun,
Deeper colors to flowers, swifter motion to the waves.
A marvelous love would descend upon the earth...

Our tale is noble as it is tragic,
stern as the grimace of a tyrant.
No twist of fate, no fleeting chance,
no smallest detail can diminish
the greatness of our love.

And Thomas De Quincey,
drinking the sweet, chaste poison of opium,
kept dreaming of his poor Anne.

We pass away—for everything must pass.
Yet I shall return again and again.
Memories are hunting horns
whose echoes fade upon the wind.