Famous Love Poems to Stir Your Soul

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.I love thee to the depth and breadth and heightMy soul can reach, when feeling out of sightFor the ends of being and ideal grace.I love thee to the level of every day'sMost 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 useIn my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.I love thee with a love I seemed to loseWith 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.-ELIZBETH BARRETT BROWNING

The highway is full of big cars going nowhere fastAnd folks is smoking anything that'll burnSome people wrap their lives around a cocktail glassAnd you sit wonderingwhere you're going to turn.I got it.Come. And be my baby.Some prophets say the world is gonna end tomorrowBut others say we've got a week or twoThe paper is full of every kind of blooming horrorAnd you sit wonderingwhat you're gonna do.I got it.Come. And be my baby.- MAYA ANGELOU

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,And nodding by the fire, take down this book,And slowly read, and dream of the soft lookYour eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;How many loved your moments of glad grace,And loved your beauty with love false or true,But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,And loved the sorrows of your changing face;And bending down beside the glowing bars,Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fledAnd paced upon the mountains overheadAnd hid his face amid a crowd of stars.- WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

One day I wrote her name upon the strand,But came the waves and washed it away:Again I wrote it with a second hand,But came the tide, and made my pains his prey."Vain man," said she, "that dost in vain assay,A mortal thing so to immortalize;For I myself shall like to this decay,And eke my name be wiped out likewise.""Not so," (quod I) "let baser things deviseTo die in dust, but you shall live by fame:My verse your vertues rare shall eternize,And in the heavens write your glorious name:Where whenas death shall all the world subdue,Our love shall live, and later life renew." - EDMUND SPENSER

If ever two were one, then surely we.If ever man were loved by wife, then thee.If ever wife was happy in a man,Compare with me, ye women, if you can.I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold,Or all the riches that the East doth hold.My love is such that rivers cannot quench,Nor ought but love from thee give recompense.Thy love is such I can no way repay;The heavens reward thee manifold, I pray.Then while we live, in love let’s so persever,That when we live no more, we may live ever.-ANNE BRADSTREET

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 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)-E. E. CUMMINGS

I loved you first: but afterwards your loveOutsoaring mine, sang such a loftier songAs drowned the friendly cooings of my dove.Which owes the other most? my love was long,And yours one moment seemed to wax more strong;I loved and guessed at you, you construed meAnd loved me for what might or might not be –Nay, weights and measures do us both a wrong.For verily love knows not ‘mine’ or ‘thine;’With separate ‘I’ and ‘thou’ free love has done,For one is both and both are one in love:Rich love knows nought of ‘thine that is not mine;’Both have the strength and both the length thereof,Both of us, of the love which makes us one.- CHRISTINA ROSSETTI

I am not yours, not lost in you,Not lost, although I long to beLost as a candle lit at noon,Lost as a snowflake in the sea.You love me, and I find you stillA spirit beautiful and bright,Yet I am I, who long to beLost as a light is lost in light.Oh plunge me deep in love—put outMy senses, leave me deaf and blind,Swept by the tempest of your love,A taper in a rushing wind.-SARA TEASDALE

Again and again, even though we know love’s landscapeand the little churchyard with its lamenting namesand the terrible reticent gorge in which the othersend: again and again the two of us walk out togetherunder the ancient trees, lay ourselves down again and againamong the flowers, and look up into the sky.-RAINER MARIA RILKE

Sun makes the day new.Tiny green plants emerge from earth.Birds are singing the sky into place.There is nowhere else I want to be but here.I lean into the rhythm of your heart to see where it will take us.We gallop into a warm, southern wind.I link my legs to yours and we ride together,Toward the ancient encampment of our relatives.Where have you been? they ask.And what has taken you so long?That night after eating, singing, and dancingWe lay together under the stars.We know ourselves to be part of mystery.It is unspeakable.It is everlasting.It is for keeps.-JOY HARJO

I am yours as the summer air at evening isPossessed by the scent of linden blossoms,As the snowcap gleams with lightLent it by the brimming moon.Without you I'd be an unleafed treeBlasted in a bleakness with no Spring.Your love is the weather of my being.What is an island without the sea?-DANIEL HOFFMAN

Looking up at the stars, I know quite wellThat, for all they care, I can go to hell,But on earth indifference is the leastWe have to dread from man or beast.How should we like it were stars to burnWith a passion for us we could not return?If equal affection cannot be,Let the more loving one be me.Admirer as I think I amOf stars that do not give a damn,I cannot, now I see them, sayI missed one terribly all day.Were all stars to disappear or die,I should learn to look at an empty skyAnd feel its total dark sublime,Though this might take me a little time.-W. H. AUDEN

I wish I could remember that first day,First hour, first moment of your meeting me,If bright or dim the season, it might beSummer or Winter for aught I can say;So unrecorded did it slip away,So blind was I to see and to foresee,So dull to mark the budding of my treeThat would not blossom yet for many a May.If only I could recollect it, suchA day of days! I let it come and goAs traceless as a thaw of bygone snow;It seemed to mean so little, meant so much;If only now I could recall that touch,First touch of hand in hand – Did one but know!-CHRISTINA ROSSETTI