58 BEAUTIFUL LOVE POEMS TO READ RIGHT NOW

 

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58 BEAUTIFUL LOVE POEMS TO READ RIGHT NOW

Alison Doherty | 1 year ago

58 Beautiful Love Poems to Read Right Now

Roses are red, Violets are…I guess I should leave the love poems to the experts. And there are so many experts to choose from. Since there’s been poetry, there’s been love poems. Whether it’s the love of friendship described between Gilgamesh and Enkidu or the romantic love Homer describes between Penelope and Odysseus or Paris and…himself, poets have been writing about love for a long time. Since the days of epic poetry, poets have used sonnets, free verse, villanelles, slam poetry, short poems, and even instagram poetry to describe love.

These love poems I’ve collected vary widely. Some are classic love poems. Some love poems were posted on social media this year. Some rhyme. Others don’t. Most are romantic. A few are sad or angry. All of them are beautiful. All of them are about love.

58 Absolutely Beautiful Love Poems You Should Read Right Now | BookRiot.com | Love Poetry | Love Poems | Romantic Poetry | #romance #love #poetry #poems #romantic

1. “ANY LIT” BY HARRYETTE MULLEN

You are a ukulele beyond my microphone

You are a Yukon beyond my Micronesia

You are a union beyond my meiosis

You are a unicycle beyond my migration

You are a universe beyond my mitochondria

You are a Eucharist beyond my Miles Davis

You are a euphony beyond my myocardiogram

You are a unicorn beyond my Minotaur

You are a eureka beyond my maitai

You are a Yuletide beyond my minesweeper

You are a euphemism beyond my myna bird

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2. “TO THE GIRL WHO WORKS AT STARBUCKS” BY RUDY FRANCISCO

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3. “ATLAS” BY U.A. FANTHORPE

There is a kind of love called maintenance

Which stores the WD40 and knows when to use it

Which checks the insurance, and doesnt forget

The milkman; which remembers to plant bulbs;

Which answers letters; which knows the way

The money goes; which deals with dentists

And Road Fund Tax and meeting trains,

And postcards to the lonely; which upholds

The permanently rickety elaborate

Structures of living, which is Atlas.

And maintenance is the sensible side of love,

Which knows what time and weather are doing

To my brickwork; insulates my faulty wiring;

Laughs at my dryrotten jokes; remembers

My need for gloss and grouting; which keeps

My suspect edifice upright in air,

As Atlas did the sky.

4. “WHEN A BOY TELLS YOU HE LOVES YOU” BY EDWIN BODNEY

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5. “WHEN YOU COME” BY MAYA ANGELOU

When you come to me, unbidden,

Beckoning me

To long-ago rooms,

Where memories lie.

Offering me, as to a child, an attic,

Gatherings of days too few.

Baubles of stolen kisses.

Trinkets of borrowed loves.

Trunks of secret words,

I CRY.

6. “SONNET 29” BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,

I all alone beweep my outcast state,

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,

And look upon myself and curse my fate,

Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,

Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,

Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope

With what I most enjoy contented least;

Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,

Haply I think on thee, and then my state,

(Like to the lark at break of day arising

From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate;

For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings

That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

7. “SONNET 116” BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

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8. “UNTITLED” BY CHRISTOPHER POINDEXTER

9. “IT IS HERE” BY HAROLD PINTER

(for A)

What sound was that?

I turn away, into the shaking room.

What was that sound that came in on the dark?

What is this maze of light it leaves us in?

What is this stance we take,

To turn away and then turn back?

What did we hear?

It was the breath we took when we first met.

Listen. It is here.

10. “VALENTINE” BY JOHN FULLER

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11. “ECHO” BY CAROL ANN DUFFY

I think I was searching for treasures or stones

in the clearest of pools

when your face…

when your face,

like the moon in a well

where I might wish…

might well wish

for the iced fire of your kiss;

only on water my lips, where your face…

where your face was reflected, lovely,

not really there when I turned

to look behind at the emptying air…

the emptying air.

12. “IT’S ALL I HAVE TO BRING TODAY” BY EMILY DICKINSON

It’s all I have to bring today—

This, and my heart beside—

This, and my heart, and all the fields—

And all the meadows wide—

Be sure you count—should I forget

Some one the sum could tell—

This, and my heart, and all the Bees

Which in the Clover dwell.

13. “UNTITLED” BY PAVANA

14. “TO THE DESERT” BY BENJAMIN ALIRE SÁENZ

I came to you one rainless August night.

You taught me how to live without the rain.

You are thirst and thirst is all I know.

You are sand, wind, sun, and burning sky,

The hottest blue. You blow a breeze and brand

Your breath into my mouth. You reach—then bend

Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.

You wrap your name tight around my ribs

And keep me warm. I was born for you.

Above, below, by you, by you surrounded.

I wake to you at dawn. Never break your

Knot. Reach, rise, blow, Sálvame, mi dios,

Trágame, mi tierra. Salva, traga, Break me,

I am bread. I will be the water for your thirst.

15. “A GLIMPSE” BY WALT WHITMAN

A glimpse through an interstice caught,

Of a crowd of workmen and drivers in a bar-room around the stove late of a winter night, and I unremark’d seated in a corner,

Of a youth who loves me and whom I love, silently approaching and seating himself near, that he may hold me by the hand,

A long while amid the noises of coming and going, of drinking and oath and smutty jest,

There we two, content, happy in being together, speaking little, perhaps not a word.

16. “I WANNA BE YOURS” BY JOHN COOPER CLARKE

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17. “I WANTED TO MAKE MYSELF LIKE THE RAVINE” BY HANNAH GAMBLE

I wanted to make myself like the ravine

so that all good things

would flow into me.

Because the ravine is lowly,

it receives an abundance.

This sounds wonderful

to everyone

who suffers from lacking,

but consider, too, that a ravine

keeps nothing out:

in flows a peach

with only one bite taken out of it,

but in flows, too,

the body of a stiff mouse

half cooked by the heat of the stove

it was toughening under.

I have an easygoing way about me.

I’ve been an inviting host —

meaning to, not meaning to.

Oops — he’s approaching with his tongue

already out

and moving.

Analyze the risks

of becoming a ravine.

Compare those with the risks

of becoming a well

with a well-bolted lid.

Which I’d prefer

depends largely on which kinds

of animals were inside me

when the lid went on

and how likely they’d be

to enjoy the water,

vs. drown, freeze, or starve.

The lesson: close yourself off

at exactly the right time.

On the day that you wake up

under some yellow curtains

with a smile on your face,

lock the door.

Live out your days

untroubled like that.

18. “QUEEN ANNE’S LACE” BY WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS

Her body is not so white as

anemone petals nor so smooth—nor

so remote a thing. It is a field

of the wild carrot taking

thefield by force; the grass

does not raise above it.

Here is no question of whiteness,

white as can be, with a purple mole

at the center of each flower.

Each flower is a hand’s span

of her whiteness. Wherever

his hand has lain there is

a tiny purple blossom under his touch

to which the fibres of her being

stem one by one, each to its end,

until the whole field is a

white desire, empty, a single stem,

a cluster, flower by flower,

a pious wish to whiteness gone over—

or nothing.

19. “WHEN LOVE ARRIVES” BY SARAH KAY & PHIL KAYE

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20. “TO YOU” BY KENNETH KOCH

I love you as a sheriff searches for a walnut

That will solve a murder case unsolved for years

Because the murderer left it in the snow beside a window

Through which he saw her head, connecting with

Her shoulders by a neck, and laid a red

Roof in her heart. For this we live a thousand years;

For this we love, and we live because we love, we are not

Inside a bottle, thank goodness! I love you as a

Kid searches for a goat; I am crazier than shirttails

In the wind, when you’re near, a wind that blows from

The big blue sea, so shiny so deep and so unlike us;

I think I am bicycling across an Africa of green and white fields

Always, to be near you, even in my heart

When I’m awake, which swims, and also I believe that you

Are trustworthy as the sidewalk which leads me to

The place where I again think of you, a new

Harmony of thoughts! I love you as the sunlight leads the prow

Of a ship which sails

From Hartford to Miami, and I love you

Best at dawn, when even before I am awake the sun

Receives me in the questions which you always pose.

21. “POLARITIES” BY KENNETH SIESSOR

Sometimes she is like sherry, like the sun through a vessel of glass,

Like light through an oriel window in a room of yellow wood;

Sometimes she is the colour of lions, of sand in the fire of noon,

Sometimes as bruised with shadows as the afternoon.

Sometimes she moves like rivers, sometimes like trees;

Or tranced and fixed like South Pole silences;

Sometimes she is beauty, sometimes fury, sometimes neither,

Sometimes nothing, drained of meaning, null as water.

Sometimes, when she makes me pea-soup or plays me Schumann,

I love her one way; sometimes I love her another

More disturbing way when she opens her mouth in the dark;

Sometimes I like her with camellias, sometimes with a parsley-stalk,

Sometimes I like her swimming in a mirror on the wall;

Sometimes I don’t like her at all.

22. “UNTITLED” BY AMANDA LOVELACE

23. “WHEN WE ARE OLD AND THESE REJOICING VEINS” BY EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY

When we are old and these rejoicing veins

Are frosty channels to a muted stream,

And out of all our burning their remains

No feeblest spark to fire us, even in dream,

This be our solace: that it was not said

When we were young and warm and in our prime,

Upon our couch we lay as lie the dead,

Sleeping away the unreturning time.

O sweet, O heavy-lidded, O my love,

When morning strikes her spear upon the land,

And we must rise and arm us and reprove

The insolent daylight with a steady hand,

Be not discountenanced if the knowing know

We rose from rapture but an hour ago.

24. “WITCH WIFE” BY EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY

She is neither pink nor pale,

And she never will be all mine;

She learned her hands in a fairy-tale,

And her mouth on a valentine.

She has more hair than she needs;

In the sun ’tis a woe to me!

And her voice is a string of coloured beads,

Or steps leading into the sea.

She loves me all that she can,

And her ways to my ways resign;

But she was not made for any man,

And she never will be all mine.

25. “TYPEWRITER SERIES #2091” BY TYLER KNOTT GREGSON

26. “RONDEL OF MERCILESS BEAUTY” BY GEOFFREY CHAUCER

Your two great eyes will slay me suddenly;

Their beauty shakes me who was once serene;

Straight through my heart the wound is quick and keen.Only your word will heal the injury

To my hurt heart, while yet the wound is clean—

Your two great eyes will slay me suddenly;

Their beauty shakes me who was once serene.Upon my word, I tell you faithfully

Through life and after death you are my queen;

For with my death the whole truth shall be seen.

Your two great eyes will slay me suddenly;

Their beauty shakes me who was once serene;

Straight through my heart the wound is quick and keen.

27. “TO AN ARMY WIFE IN SARDIS” FROM SAPPHO TRANSLATED BY MARY BARNARD

To an army wife, in Sardis:

Some say a cavalry corps,

some infantry, some, again,

will maintain that the swift oars

of our fleet are the finest

sight on dark earth; but I say

that whatever one loves, is.

This is easily proved: did

not Helen—she who had scanned

the flower of the world’s manhood—

choose as first among men one

who laid Troy’s honor in ruin?

warped to his will, forgetting

love due her own blood, her own

child, she wandered far with him.

So Anactoria, although you

being far away forget us,

the dear sound of your footstep

and light glancing in your eyes

would move me more than glitter

of Lydian horse or armored

tread of mainland infantry

28. “THE GOOD MORROW” BY JOHN DONNE

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29. “A LOVE SONG FOR LUCINDA” BY LANGSTON HUGHES 

Love

Is a ripe plum

Growing on a purple tree.

Taste it once

And the spell of its enchantment

Will never let you be.

Love

Is a bright star

Glowing in far Southern skies.

Look too hard

And its burning flame

Will always hurt your eyes.

Love

Is a high mountain

Stark in a windy sky.

If you

Would never lose your breath

Do not climb too high.

30. “TWENTY ONE LOVE POEMS” BY ADRIENNE RICH

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31. “I LOVE YOU” BY CARL SANDBERG

I love you for what you are, but I love you yet more for what you are going to be.

I love you not so much for your realities as for your ideals. I pray for your desires that they may be great, rather than for your satisfactions, which may be so hazardously little.

A satisfied flower is one whose petals are about to fall. The most beautiful rose is one hardly more than a bud wherein the pangs and ecstasies of desire are working for a larger and finer growth. Not always shall you be what you are now. You are going forward toward something great. I am on the way with you and therefore I love you.

32. “FOR HIM” BY RUPI KAUR

33. “UNTITLED” BY RUPI KAUR

34. “SONNET XLIII”” BY ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

For the ends of being and ideal grace.

I love thee to the level of every day’s

Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.

I love thee freely, as men strive for right;

I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.

I love thee with the passion put to use

In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.

I love thee with a love I seemed to lose

With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,

Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,

I shall but love thee better after death.

35. “FALLING STARS” BY RAINER MARIA RILKE

Do you remember still the falling stars

that like swift horses through the heavens raced

and suddenly leaped across the hurdles

of our wishes—do you recall? And we

did make so many! For there were countless numbers

of stars: each time we looked above we were

astounded by the swiftness of their daring play,

while in our hearts we felt safe and secure

watching these brilliant bodies disintegrate,

knowing somehow we had survived their fall.

36. “PHOTOGRAPH” BY ANDREA GIBSON

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37. “LITANY” BY BILLY COLLINS

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38. “LOVE POEM” BY AUDRE LORDE

Speak earth and bless me with what is richest

make sky flow honey out of my hips

rigis mountains

spread over a valley

carved out by the mouth of rain.

And I knew when I entered her I was

high wind in her forests hollow

fingers whispering sound

honey flowed

from the split cup

impaled on a lance of tongues

on the tips of her breasts on her navel

and my breath

howling into her entrances

through lungs of pain.

Greedy as herring-gulls

or a child

I swing out over the earth

over and over

again.

39. “DEFEATED BY LOVE” BY RUMI

The sky was lit

by the splendor of the moon

So powerful

I fell to the ground

Your love

has made me sure

I am ready to forsake

this worldly life

and surrender

to the magnificence

of your Being

40. “HABITATION” BY MARGARET ATWOOD

Marriage is not

a house, or even a tent

it is before that, and colder:

the edge of the forest, the edge

of the desert

the unpainted stairs

at the back, where we squat

outdoors, eating popcorn

where painfully and with wonder

at having survived

this far

we are learning to make fire

41. “DESIRE” BY ALICE WALKER

My desire

is always the same; wherever Life

deposits me:

I want to stick my toe

& soon my whole body

into the water.

I want to shake out a fat broom

& sweep dried leaves

bruised blossoms

dead insects

& dust.

I want to grow

something.

It seems impossible that desire

can sometimes transform into devotion;

but this has happened.

And that is how I’ve survived:

how the hole

I carefully tended

in the garden of my heart

grew a heart

to fill it.

42. “MAD GIRL’S LOVE SONG” BY SYLVIA PLATH

“I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;

I lift my lids and all is born again.

(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,

And arbitrary blackness gallops in:

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed

And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.

(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell’s fires fade:

Exit seraphim and Satan’s men:

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you’d return the way you said,

But I grow old and I forget your name.

(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;

At least when spring comes they roar back again.

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

(I think I made you up inside my head.)”

43. “SOMEWHERE I HAVE NEVER TRAVELED” BY E.E. CUMMINGS

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44. “LOVE IS A PLACE” BY E.E. CUMMINGS

love is a place

& through this place of

love move

(with brightness of peace)

all places

yes is a world

& in this world of

yes live

(skilfully curled)

all worlds

45. “UNTITLED” BY AMAN BATRA

46. “YOUR FEET” BY PABLO NERUDA

When I cannot look at your face

I look at your feet.

Your feet of arched bone,

your hard little feet.

I know that they support you,

and that your sweet weight

rises upon them.

Your waist and your breasts,

the doubled purple

of your nipples,

the sockets of your eyes

that have just flown away,

your wide fruit mouth,

your red tresses,

my little tower.

But I love your feet

only because they walked

upon the earth and upon

the wind and upon the waters,

until they found me.

47. “THE WORLD AS MEDITATION” BY WALLACE STEVENS

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48. “BLUEBIRD TYPEWRITER POETRY #7” BY SEAN BATES

49. “MARRIED LOVE” BY KUAN TAO-SHENG, TRANSLATED BY KENNETH REXROTH AND LING CHUNG

You and I

Have so much love,

That it

Burns like a fire,

In which we bake a lump of clay

Molded into a figure of you

And a figure of me.

Then we take both of them,

And break them into pieces,

And mix the pieces with water,

And mold again a figure of you,

And a figure of me.

I am in your clay.

You are in my clay.

In life we share a single quilt.

In death we will share one bed.

50. “HOW FALLING IN LOVE IS LIKE OWNING A DOG” BY TAYLOR MALI

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51. “LOVE IS A FIRE THAT BURNS UNSEEN” BY LUÍS VAZ DE CAMÕES, TRANSLATED BY RICHARD ZENITH

Love is a fire that burns unseen,

a wound that aches yet isn’t felt,

an always discontent contentment,

a pain that rages without hurting,

a longing for nothing but to long,

a loneliness in the midst of people,

a never feeling pleased when pleased,

a passion that gains when lost in thought.

It’s being enslaved of your own free will;

it’s counting your defeat a victory;

it’s staying loyal to your killer.

But if it’s so self-contradictory,

how can Love, when Love chooses,

bring human hearts into sympathy?

52. “NEVER GIVE ALL THE HEART” BY W.B. YEATS

Never give all the heart, for love

Will hardly seem worth thinking of

To passionate women if it seem

Certain, and they never dream

That it fades out from kiss to kiss;

For everything that’s lovely is

But a brief, dreamy, kind delight.

O never give the heart outright,

For they, for all smooth lips can say,

Have given their hearts up to the play.

And who could play it well enough

If deaf and dumb and blind with love?

He that made this knows all the cost,

For he gave all his heart and lost.

53. “HOW TO LOVE YOUR INTROVERT” BY KEVIN YANG

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54. “SEDUCTION” BY NIKKI GIOVANNI

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55. “CAMOMILE TEA” BY KATHERINE MANSFIELD

Outside the sky is light with stars;

There’s a hollow roaring from the sea.

And, alas! for the little almond flowers,

The wind is shaking the almond tree.

How little I thought, a year ago,

In the horrible cottage upon the Lee

That he and I should be sitting so

And sipping a cup of camomile tea.

Light as feathers the witches fly,

The horn of the moon is plain to see;

By a firefly under a jonquil flower

A goblin toasts a bumble-bee.

We might be fifty, we might be five,

So snug, so compact, so wise are we!

Under the kitchen-table leg

My knee is pressing against his knee.

Our shutters are shut, the fire is low,

The tap is dripping peacefully;

The saucepan shadows on the wall

Are black and round and plain to see.

56. “WILL YOU STILL LOVE ME?” BY ARIELLE WILBURN

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57. “NAMING THE HEARTBEATS” BY AIMEE NEZHUKUMATATHIL

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58. “WHEN I SAY THAT LOVING ME IS KIND OF LIKE BEING A CHICAGO BULLS FAN” BY HANIF ABDURRAQIB 

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What are your favorite love poems? I’m basically addicted to love poetry now, so let me know what I missed in the comments. Want even more love (like lots of it)? Check out our list of 100 Must-Read Books With ‘Love’ In The Title.

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