Five of my Favourite Love Poems

Few things express love more beautifully than poetry. For this reason I have dedicated this blog to a few of my favourite love poems. What I wouldn’t give to have a man compose something as beautiful as those below just for me: some things just cannot be bought. Enjoy!

My Love is Like to Ice

My Love is like to ice, and I to fire:
How comes it then that this her cold so great
Is not dissolved through my so hot desire,
But harder grows the more her I entreat?
Or how comes it that my exceeding heat
Is not allayed by her heart-frozen cold,
But that I burn much more in boiling sweat,
And feel my flames augmented manifold?
What more miraculous thing may be told,
That fire, which all things melts, should harden ice,
And ice, which is congealed with senseless cold,
Should kindle fire by wonderful device?
Such is the power of love in gentle mind,
That it can alter all the course of kind.

Edmund Spenser

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways

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 candlelight.
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 love thee better after death.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

 

To My Valentine

More than a catbird hates a cat,

Or a criminal hates a clue,

Or the Axis hates the United States,

That’s how much I love you.

I love you more than a duck can swim,

And more than a grapefruit squirts,

I love you more than a gin rummy is a bore,

 more than a toothache hurts.

As a shipwrecked sailor hates the sea,

Or a juggler hates a shove,

As a hostess detests unexpected guests,

That’s how much you I love.

I love you more than a wasp can sting,

And more than the subway jerks,

I love you as much as a beggar needs a crutch,

And more than a hangnail irks.

I swear to you by the stars above,

And below if there such be,

As the High Court loathes perjurious oaths,

That’s how much you’re loved by me.

            Ogden Nash

Love’s Philosophy

The fountains mingle with the river

And the rivers with the Ocean,
The winds of Heaven mix for ever
                With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single;
                All things by a law divine
In one spirit meet and mingle.
                Why not I with thine? –

See the mountains kiss high Heaven
                And the waves clasp one another;
No sister-flower would be forgiven
                If it disdained its brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth
                And the moonbeams kiss the sea:
What is all this sweet work worth
                If thou kiss not me?

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Not Love Perhaps

This is not Love perhaps – Love that lays down
its life, that many waters cannot quench, nor the floods drown -
But something written in lighter ink, said in a lower tone:
Something perhaps especially our own:
A need at times to be together and talk -
And then the finding we can walk
More firmly through dark narrow places
And meet more easily nightmare faces:
A need to reach out sometimes hand to hand - 
And then find Earth less like an alien land:
A need for alliance to defeat
The whisperers at the corner of the street:
A need for inns on roads, islands on seas, halts for discoveries to be shared.
Maps checked and notes compared:
A need at times of each for each
Direct as the need of throat and tongue for speech.

A. S. J. Tessimond