BEST LOVE POEMS OF ALL TIME

YAH BABY.
Ok. The caps was justified. Trust me. These poets deserve it. Simply post a poem that you think could be the best love poem of all time. If there is one missing that warrants in, post it aswell. I want to see if I don't know any, and compare them all! Perhaps we can have a discussion about them after listing.

I CARRY YOUR HEART WITH ME
E.E.Cummings (not e.e.cummings)

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 the 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 WISHES FOR THE CLOTHS OF HEAVEN
W.B.Yeats

HAD I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

SHALL I COMPARE THEE TO A SUMMER'S DAY?
William Shakespeare

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art 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.

Woot! I highly approve. I love that one by cummings. And I'm always a big fan of Shakespeare, but I move to add sonnet 130.

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.

Totally unromantic on first sight, I know.. but that's what I like about it. He totally strips away the idealism and shallowness of some love poems. He'd rather love a real women, with all her flaws, than some unapproachable illusion. Huzzah to that.

Good choice! I have a poster with this poem on =)

I Do Not Love You... by Pablo Neruda

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

Sibellyne, that is perhaps my favorite love poem of all time.

good! haha, i'm glad i'm not crazy. debbylyn, i've never read that poem before, but i think i like it... a lot. awesome thread.

I agree ddavid....the Neruda poem can't be topped...the ultimate....I really like the E.E. Cummings I Carry Your Heart With Me poem....almost as good as I Do Not Love You.... If you have other Neruda poems....please do post them.

Songs Of The Portugese
Sonnet VI
Elizabeth Barett Browning

VI

Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand
Henceforward in thy shadow. Nevermore
Alone upon the threshold of my door
Of individual life, I shall command
The uses of my soul, nor lift my hand
Serenely in the sunshine as before,
Without the sense of that which I forbore--
Thy touch upon the palm. The widest land
Doom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mine
With pulses that beat double. What I do
And what I dream include thee, as the wine
Must taste of its own grapes. And when I sue
God for myself, He hears that name of thine,
And sees within my eyes the tears of two.

Debbylyn......The poem I Do Not Love You By: Neruda Is beautiful. One of my favorites also.

I agree with Nuovo... Ee Cummings' this poem's always makes me cry

Cindy, I love that one by Elizabeth Barrett Browning too!

Wow. Thank you for submitting that here, Bob. Beautiful.

Wow ddavid that poem is breathtaking....I can imagine it in Spanish....

Thanks for posting Immortal Obsession Bob....beautiful!

I think I might be falling in love? With Neruda... Does he have a book? I want to get my hands on some more...

Sonnet LXXXI by Pablo Neruda

And now you're mine. Rest with your dream in my dream.
Love and pain and work should all sleep, now.
The night turns on its invisible wheels,
and you are pure beside me as a sleeping amber.

No one else, Love, will sleep in my dreams. You will go,
we will go together, over the waters of time.
No one else will travel through the shadows with me,
only you, evergreen, ever sun, ever moon.

Your hands have already opened their delicate fists
and let their soft drifting signs drop away; your eyes closed like two gray
wings, and I move

after, following the folding water you carry, that carries
me away. The night, the world, the wind spin out their destiny.
Without you, I am your dream, only that, and that is all.

The second verse of the above poem is my favorite.....love the man!!!
He has many books....just ordered my first, "100 Love Sonnets"....can't wait to get it.

Beautiful poems...Loved those poems Bob....Deb love Neruda. You can get lost in his words.

What language ia A. Shamloo translated from? Very beautiful.....I can imagine his words are even more touching in his native tongue. I really like the second one you posted.

ddavid those Neruda selections are amazing.....thanks for posting them!

We know sluv....but it is so sweet while it lasts!

'Nevermore'

I believe the best love poem is a true love poem and they're very hard to find. Most people write about love but few really know what love is truly about. Anything real that comes from the heart and is meant is a great love poem, no matter the quality of the words or the way it sounds. It's not how you say "I love you" it's how you show it.

I wish the best in love for everybody. Karl

I know this isn't a love poem, but I just have to say "yes!" to khayyam...

"Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night
Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars
to Flight:
And Lo! the Hunter of the East has
caught
The Sultan's Turret in a Noose of Light."

I was caught from the first poem in the Rubaiyat. I actually wrote a poem on here titled with one of the lines a poem of his. "Before Life's Liquor in its Cup be dry." An entirely other subject is whether or not it was effective, but meh. As for Khayyam... i'd class his poems about wine in the Love Poem category ; D

Edmund Spenser

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 eek my name be wiped out likewise.
Not so (quoth I), let baser things devise
To die in dust, but you shall live by fame:
My verse your virtues 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.

William Shakespeare

Sonnet 116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments; love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no, it is an ever-fixèd mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his heighth be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

How could I have forgotten that one?! "Love is not love, which alters where it alteration finds..." I think that's wonderful and true.

I Shall Compare Thee to a Sumer's Day
-William Shakespear

I think that's on of the sweetest poems in the world, it says everything so nice and cute...

Aria, thanks for posting this....absolutely beautiful!

Aria, Thank you so much for posting these most beautiful poems of love....breathtakingly serene and deep....

"Die to the din and the noise
Of mundane concerns
In the silence of love
You will find the spark of life"

perfect lines....

Two masters of love poetry ....thank you... thank you again for posting! You did a wonderful job of translating!

Aira The poems you have posted are beautiful..........Dying To Love has a special meaning to me. It brings so many things to light....Thank you Aria for sharing these wonderful works with us.

What beautiful poems. I especially like In Love. Thanks Aria!

Ruth 1:16-17

And Ruth said, Do not intreat me to leave thee, to return from [following] after thee; for whither thou goest I will go, and where thou lodgest I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God; where thou diest will I die, and there will I be buried. The Lord do so to me, and more also, if aught but death part me and thee!

The ultimate in love promises!

I think thats a hard one there are so many amazing love poems out there I think it would be easier just to pick out the really bad ones lol

Debbie

Ruth 1:16-17

And Ruth said, Do not intreat me to leave thee, to return from [following] after thee; for whither thou goest I will go, and where thou lodgest I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God; where thou diest will I die, and there will I be buried. The Lord do so to me, and more also, if aught but death part me and thee!

The ultimate in love promises!

This is the ultimate love promise. I have that same feeling .....which you know...It is so hard not to follow. Thanks for sharing this. When the one whom we truely love dies before you... the pain is unbareable.

A Dream Within A Dream
Edgar Allen Poe

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

Thanks for this post Aria....most beautiful verses of love by Rumi... and your tribute to A. Shamloo is amazing! I love the ending stanza.

These poems are wonderful

I can't write happy poems

It's too hard to say.

When We Two Parted
by Lord Byron (1788 - 1824)

When we two parted
In silence and tears,
Half broken-hearted
To sever the years,
Pale grew thy cheek and cold,
Colder, thy kiss;
Truly that hour foretold
Sorrow to this.

The dew of the morning
Sunk, chill on my brow,
It felt like the warning
Of what I feel now.
Thy vows are all broken,
And light is thy fame;
I hear thy name spoken,
And share in its shame.

They name thee before me,
A knell to mine ear;
A shudder comes o'er me...
Why wert thou so dear?
They know not I knew thee,
Who knew thee too well..
Long, long shall I rue thee,
Too deeply to tell.

In secret we met
In silence I grieve
That thy heart could forget,
Thy spirit deceive.
If I should meet thee
After long years,
How should I greet thee?
With silence and tears.