I was just critiquing some poetry and that got me wondering...What is your favorite love poem? I have two... Greater Love Red lips are not so red As the stained stones kissed by the English dead. Kindness of wooed and wooer Seems shame to their love pure. O Love, your eyes lose lure When I behold eyes blinded in my stead! Your slender attitude Trembles not exquisite like limbs knife-skewed, Rolling and rolling there Where God seems not to care: Till the fierce love they bear Cramps them in death’s extreme decrepitude. Your voice sings not so soft,— Though even as wind murmuring through raftered loft,— Your dear voice is not dear, Gentle, and evening clear, As theirs whom none now hear, Now earth has stopped their piteous mouths that coughed. Heart, you were never hot Nor large, nor full like hearts made great with shot; And though your hand be pale, Paler are all which trail Your cross through flame and hail: Weep, you may weep, for you may touch them not. Wilfred Owen I read this first when I was in Highschool for a love poem assignment and it has stayed with me over the years. My class mates gave me a hard time because they said, "Thats not about love!" But it absolutely is, it's about the greatest kind of love; of laying down your life in place of another. My other favorite love poem made my eyebrows shoot up into my hairline when I first read it, but when I thought about it...it may be one of the sweetest things ever. THE FLEA. by John Donne MARK but this flea, and mark in this, How little that which thou deniest me is ; It suck'd me first, and now sucks thee, And in this flea our two bloods mingled be. Thou know'st that this cannot be said A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead ; Yet this enjoys before it woo, And pamper'd swells with one blood made of two ; And this, alas ! is more than we would do. O stay, three lives in one flea spare, Where we almost, yea, more than married are. This flea is you and I, and this Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is. Though parents grudge, and you, we're met, And cloister'd in these living walls of jet. Though use make you apt to kill me, Let not to that self-murder added be, And sacrilege, three sins in killing three. Cruel and sudden, hast thou since Purpled thy nail in blood of innocence? Wherein could this flea guilty be, Except in that drop which it suck'd from thee? Yet thou triumph'st, and say'st that thou Find'st not thyself nor me the weaker now. 'Tis true ; then learn how false fears be ; Just so much honour, when thou yield'st to me, Will waste, as this flea's death took life from thee. They cannot be together except that their blood mingle in the bopdy of a flea. Awww..... A couple of my favorites. What are yours?
I guess it's more about fraternal love, but In Memoriam by Tennyson has some incredible passages about love and loss. Some of Christina Rossetti's sonnets are also amazing, especially this one from the Monna Innominata sequence:
My favorite is called (so creatively) "I Love You" by Roy Croft. My mom read it at my wedding. That's how much I like it.
I think that's why I like it so much, though. The sadness that comes with it. I like happy endings in real life but sad endings in fiction.
Don't know that I have a "favorite." Emily Dickinson Love – is anterior to Life - Posterior – to Death - Initial of Creation, and The Exponent of Earth -
Hey, fraternal love is still love right? Also, thanks for posting that poem, it really hit me. I know the exact feeling since my husband is a soldier.
"When We Two Parted" by George Gordon Byron. It's so sad, but dang I love it! It strikes a chord in me somewhere.
Milos, by Anis Mojgani Anis Mojgani is a multiple national and international winner of spoken poetry competitions. He also recently got married. And he goes on a US national tour each fall with other poets Buddy Wakefield and Derrick Brown as permanent touring members. Let us take a sack of spray paint and spray paint over the paintings. Let dance through Paris, Kiss in the shadow of the Louvre, crawl inside its windows, Scroll manifestos over its canvases, Write Morse code on the sculptures, Roll a sleeping bag on the floors to sleep inside of, Tell one another a story by flashlight. Unearth everything from before. Bury each other inside the other, Feed grapes to the ants, Light fireworks in the fists of sleeping kings. Kill a monarch. Break back outside and Find a world to do all these same things to, up, upon, against Break the bricks. Climb over them. And when the sirens scream, Laugh loud, hold my hand, and run fast. Run through the streets with me with a bunch of bottles, A bucket of gasoline, A mouthful of matches, A pocket full of paintings And fresh faced batch of policemen to chase the fires we are lighting. Laugh on a shoulder of gold. And I thought that the museums were cemeteries Where the dead paid the wall to hold what we had So that we could walk through what we once were. And children take their skulls to turn into gardens, To pluck for forefathers and farther stars, That on some nights resemble an armless mother Praying for her arms to return. Every tooth that we tear from our jaw To fling at the black gloved riot soldiers As another shadow that we are trying to lose. Let every giggle be filled with lust. Let us laugh this night away, and I will fuck you like you were a prayer. I could save me by having my mouth around you, And I will hold you afterwards like you were the pulpit And I was the sky, And this love that danced between that hardness As a telephone line of holiness that those two things spoke through. Take me into your heart like I was a saint, And you were a face of forgiveness Blooming in a valley destined to sink further. Be a river with me. Be the storm. The bend in the path. The front porch. The heat in the South. Be a boot full of banjo strings, A fistful of written songs, A mouthful of chocolate dust. And when they come to take us, Stab them between the eyes. Do not take your hand from around mine. Make a fist with the other, and punch spines like guilt, Spit, swear, kiss them like a grandmother. Howl open-mouthed terror, love filled. And when they come to cut out hair And ask to hear penance come from inside us, Say with me loud and trembling, But loud and clear: "I have already emptied myself. I kissed regret goodbye. "I took the hands of another backwards angel, "And rode backwards into the rain." When the hangman of 'morrow comes to hang the sun In its daily execution say this with me: "Sarah, we are apples. Our love is an apple. "I am unbuttoning my shirt, painting a circle over my heart. "...Please. Just shoot straight."
Charmingly sentimental: Jenny Kissed Me Jenny kiss'd me when we met, Jumping from the chair she sat in; Time, you thief, who love to get Sweets into your list, put that in! Say I'm weary, say I'm sad, Say that health and wealth have miss'd me, Say I'm growing old, but add, Jenny kiss'd me. -- James Leigh Hunt
Not to rain on the thread too much, but you probably don't want to be posting the full text of poems by contemporary poets. That's a copyright violation. Poems by those who are long since deceased are in the public domain and therefore not an issue.
There is such a thing as fair use that is probably applicable in a thread such as this, assuming this thread to be a comparative study of the form, and assuming all the entries are short and properly attributed. Mercurial's is the only one I have any serious reservations about at this point, due to its length. It may be too much to qualify as Fair Use. However, Steerpike's point is well taken. We generally discourage such threads because of the copyright issues, and often must close or delete them when the violations increase beyond manageability.
My favourite ‘love’ poem is Vultures, by Chinua Achebe. I know it is not your typical love poem, but I just love the way the poet explores how even the most heinous of people can still feel love. My favorite stanza - http://www.mahmag.org/english/worldpoetry.php?itemid=456
