Chapter 16
In This Chapter
Finding fantastic love poems worth knowing
Inspiring your one true love with poetry
Love is one of the most common themes in poetry. As long as poetry has existed, poets have used it to explore the passions, urges, surprises, and complications of this exalted feeling. Readers have turned to love poems for solace, a touch of beauty, or better understanding of their own situations. So in this chapter, we give you a selection of ten of the world’s greatest love poems. Written by men and women from many different times and places (ancient Greece, 10th-century Japan, 20th-century Chile) and points of view, they explore all aspects of love, from lust to devotion to saying goodbye. These are great poems to memorize, to send to significant others, or simply to contemplate as lovely examples of what the meeting of great passion and great art can accomplish.
“He Is More Than a Hero” by Sappho (About 610–580 B.C.)
He is more than a hero
He is a god in my eyes —
the man who is allowed
to sit beside you — he
who listens intimately
to the sweet murmur of
your voice, the enticing
laughter that makes my own
heart beat fast. If I meet
you suddenly, I can’t
speak — my tongue is broken;
a thin flame runs under
my skin; seeing nothing,
hearing only my own ears
drumming, I drip with sweat;
trembling shakes my body
and I turn paler than
dry grass. At such times
death isn’t far from me
“If Someone Would Come” by Lady Izumi Shikibu (970–1030)
If someone would come,
I could show, and have him listen —
evening light shining
on bush clover in full bloom
as crickets bring on the night.
“Western Wind” by Anonymous (About the 15th Century)
Western wind, when wilt thou blow?
The small rain down can rain.
Christ, that my love were in my arms,
And I in my bed again.
Sonnet 61 from Idea by Michael Drayton (1563–1631)
Since there’s no help, come, let us kiss and part —
Nay, I have done: you get no more of me;
And I am glad, yea, glad with all my heart
That thus so cleanly I myself can free.
Shake hands forever, cancel all our vows,
And when we meet at any time again,
Be it not seen in either of our brows
That we one jot of former love retain.
Now at the last gasp of love’s latest breath,
When, his pulse failing, Passion speechless lies,
When Faith is kneeling by his bed of death,
And Innocence is closing up his eyes, —
Now, if thou would’st, when all have given him over,
From death to life thou might’st him yet recover.
“When I Heard at the Close of the Day” by Walt Whitman (1819–1892)
When I heard at the close of the day how my name had been receiv’d with
plaudits in the capitol, still it was not a happy night for me that
follow’d,
And else when I carous’d, or when my plans were accomplish’d, still I
was not happy,
But the day when I rose at dawn from the bed of perfect health, refresh’d,
singing, inhaling the ripe breath of autumn,
When I saw the full moon in the west grow pale and disappear in the
morning light,
When I wander’d alone over the beach, and undressing bathed, laughing
with the cool waters, and saw the sun rise,
And when I thought how my dear friend my lover was on his way coming,
O then I was happy,
O then each breath tasted sweeter, and all that day my food nourish’d me
more, and the beautiful day pass’d well,
And the next came with equal joy, and with the next at evening came my
friend,
And that night while all was still I heard the waters roll slowly continually
up the shores,
I heard the hissing rustle of the liquid and sands as directed to me
whispering to congratulate me,
For the one I love most lay sleeping by me under the same cover in the
cool night,
In the stillness in the autumn moonbeams his face was inclined toward me,
And his arm lay lightly around my breast — and that night I was happy.
Poem 640 by Emily Dickinson (1830–1886)
I cannot live with You —
It would be Life —
And Life is over there —
Behind the Shelf
The Sexton keeps the Key to —
Putting up
Our Life — His Porcelain —
Like a Cup —
Discarded of the Housewife —
Quaint — or Broke —
A newer Sevres pleases —
Old Ones crack —
I could not die — with You —
For One must wait
To shut the Other’s Gaze down —
You — could not —
And I — Could I stand by
And see You — freeze —
Without my Right of Frost —
Death’s privilege?
Nor could I rise — with You —
Because Your Face —
Would put out Jesus’ —
That New Grace
Grow plain — and foreign
On my homesick Eye —
Except that You than He
Shone closer by —
They’d judge Us — How —
For You — served Heaven — You know,
Or sought to —
I could not —
Because You saturated Sight —
And I had no more Eyes
For sordid excellence
As Paradise
And were You lost, I would be —
Though My Name
Rang loudest
On the Heavenly fame —
And were You — saved —
And I — condemned to be
Where You were not —
That self — were Hell to Me —
So We must meet apart —
You there — I — here —
With just the Door ajar
That Oceans are — and Prayer —
And that White Sustenance —
Despair —
“A Negro Love Song” by Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872–1906)
Seen my lady home las’ night,
Jump back, honey, jump back.
Hel’ huh han’ an’ sque’z it tight,
Jump back, honey, jump back.
Hyeahd huh sigh a little sigh,
Seen a light gleam f’om huh eye,
An’ a smile go flittin’ by —
Jump back, honey, jump back.
Hyeahd de win’ blow thoo de pine,
Jump back, honey, jump back.
Mockin’-bird was singin’ fine,
Jump back, honey, jump back.
An’ my hea’t was beatin’ so,
When I reached my lady’s do’,
Dat I could n’t ba’ to go —
Jump back, honey, jump back.
Put my ahm aroun’ huh wais’,
Jump back, honey, jump back.
Raised huh lips an’ took a tase,
Jump back, honey, jump back.
Love me, honey, love me true?
Love me well ez I love you?
An’ she answe’d, “’Cose I do” —
Jump back, honey, jump back.
“Leaning Into the Afternoons” by Pablo Neruda (1904–1973)
Leaning into the afternoons I cast my sad nets
towards your oceanic eyes.
There in the highest blaze my solitude lengthens and flames,
its arms turning like a drowning man’s.
I send out red signals across your absent eyes
that move like the sea near a lighthouse.
You keep only darkness, my distant female,
from your regard sometimes the coast of dread emerges.
Leaning into the afternoons I fling my sad nets
to that sea that beats on your marine eyes.
The birds of night peck at the first stars
That flash like my soul when I love you.
The night gallops on its shadowy mare
shedding blue tassels over the land.
“The Business” by Robert Creeley (1926– )
To be in love is like going out-
side to see what kind of day
it is. Do not
mistake me. If you love
her how prove she
loves also, except that it
occurs, a remote chance on
which you stake
yourself? But barter for
the Indian was a means of sustenance.
There are records.
“A Kind of Loss” by Ingeborg Bachmann (1926–1973)
Things shared: seasons, books and a piece of music.
The keys, the teacups, the bread basket, sheets and a bed.
A dowry — of words, of gestures — brought with, used, used up.
House rules followed. Said. Done. The hand given, always.
I fell in love with winter, with a Viennese septet and with summer.
With maps of the country, a mountain hideaway, a beach and a bed.
Idolized days on the calendar, declared that promises last forever,
worshipped a something and was devout before a nothing
(— the folded-up newspaper, cold ashes, the scrap with some notes on it),
fearless in religion for this bed was the church.
My inexhaustible painting went forth from this view of the lake.
I saluted all peoples, my neighbors, down from this balcony.
By the fireplace, safe, my hair was its uttermost color.
When it rang, the doorbell sounded the alarm for my happiness.
I haven’t lost you, I’ve lost
the world.