The 100 Best Love Poems of All Time

La Vita Nuova

Dante Alighieri

This is a brief excerpt from a larger work blending prose and poetry, in which Dante celebrates his idealized love for Beatrice. Even after seven hundred years it is easy to understand how a new life can seem to begin when lovers meet for the first time.

In that book which is

My memory . . .

On the first page

That is the chapter when

I first met you

Appear the words . . .

Here begins a new life.

Shakespeare is the only poet to receive double recognition in this collection, in this case to supply a reference to Howard Moss's delightful contemporary version of his classic sonnet. Moss, for many years poetry editor of the New Yorker magazine, casts off traditional meter and rhyme in exchange for a colloquial style that expresses a heartfelt exuberance.

Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day?

William Shakespeare

Shall I compare thee to a Summer's day?

Thou are 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 gives life to thee.

Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day?

Howard Moss

Who says you're like one of the dog days?

You're nicer. And better.

Even in May, the weather can be gray,

And a summer sub-let doesn't last forever.

Sometimes the sun's too hot;

Sometimes it is not.

Who can stay young forever?

People break their necks or just drop dead!

But you? Never!

If there's just one condensed reader left

Who can figure out the abridged alphabet,

    After you're dead and gone,

    In this poem you'll live on!

Who Ever Loved

Christopher Marlowe

Marlowe, Shakespeare's only real contemporary rival, is mostly remembered for his powerful verse dramas, such as Dr. Faustus. This perceptive verse shows that he was also an eloquent poet and a keen psychologist of desire.

It lies not in our power to love or hate,

For will in us is overruled by fate.

When two are stripped, long ere the course begin,

We wish that one should lose, the other win;

And one especially do we affect

Of two gold ingots, like in each respect:

The reason no man knows; let it suffice

What we behold is censored by our eyes.

Where both deliberate, the love is slight:

Who ever loved, that loved not at first sight?

From Paradise Lost (Book IV)

John Milton

In this tender monologue Eve tells Adam how none of the beauties and wonders of nature mean anything to her without him. Milton's gorgeous evocation of the pleasures of love in paradise makes the coming temptation and fall of the first man and woman seem all the more poignant.

With thee conversing I forget all time,

All seasons and their change, all please alike.

Sweet is the breath of morn, her rising sweet,

With charm of earliest birds; pleasant the sun

When first on this delightful land he spreads

His orient beams, on herb, tree, fruit, and flower,

Glistring with dew; fragrant the fertile earth

After soft showers; and sweet the coming on

Of grateful evening mild, then silent night

With this her solemn bird and this fair moon,

And these the gems of heav'n, her starry train:

But neither breath of morn when she ascends

With charm of earliest birds, nor rising sun

On this delightful land, nor herb, fruit, flower,

Glistring with dew, nor fragrance after showers,

Nor grateful evening mild, nor silent night

With this her solemn bird, nor walk by moon,

Or glittering starlight without thee is sweet.

To Helen

Edgar Allan Poe

Poe softens his customary pounding rhythms and repetitive rhymes in this delicately romantic evocation of classicism. The poem is an almost prayer-like adoration of a beloved figure, viewed from afar.

Helen, thy beauty is to me

  Like those Nicéan barks of yore,

That gently, o'er a perfumed sea,

  The weary, way-worn wanderer bore

  To his own native shore.

On desperate seas long wont to roam,

  Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,

Thy Naiad airs have brought me home

  To the glory that was Greece,

  And the grandeur that was Rome.

Lo! in yon brilliant window-niche

  How statue-like I see thee stand,

The agate lamp within thy hand!

  Ah, Psyche, from the regions which

  Are Holy-Land!

A Red, Red Rose

Robert Burns

This lyric by Scotland's greatest poet breathes life into a series of similes that sound as natural as a song, and as sincere as a prayer.

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:

O I will love 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,

  Though it were ten thousand mile.

She Tells Her Love while Half Asleep

Robert Graves