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Love Poems

Classic and contemporary love poems to share.

By The Editors

Two women on white wedding gowns

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Whether it’s for an anniversary, Valentine’s Day, or just because, here’s a selection of love poems for your special someone.

Classic Love

- Bird-Understander
Craig Arnold
- To My Dear and Loving Husband
Anne Bradstreet
- The Sun Rising
John Donne
- Sonnet 40: Take all my loves, my love, yea, take them all
William Shakespeare
- Sonnet 65: Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea
William Shakespeare
- Song: to Celia [“Drink to me only with thine eyes”]
Ben Jonson

Teen Love

- Poem for My Love
June Jordan
- A Glimpse
Walt Whitman
- Valentine
Tom Pickard
- I Love You
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
- Recitative
A.E. Stallings

Romantic Love

- "I loved you first: but afterwards your love"
Christina Rossetti
- You, Therefore
Reginald Shepherd
- Lines Depicting Simple Happiness
Peter Gizzi
- Flirtation
Rita Dove
- [love is more thicker than forget]
E. E. Cummings

Break Up

- Poem
Jill Alexander Essbaum
- They Flee From Me
Sir Thomas Wyatt
- The Nails
W. S. Merwin
- I’ll Open the Window
Anna Swir
- A Communication Which the Author Had to London, Before She Made Her Will
Isabella Whitney
- Neutral Tones
Thomas Hardy

Funny Love

- Love Explained
Jennifer Michael Hecht
- Windchime
Tony Hoagland
- The Quiet World
Jeffrey McDaniel
- Video Blues
Mary Jo Salter

Sad Love

- Yours & Mine
Alice Fulton
- Somewhere or Other
Christina Rossetti
- Venice, Unaccompanied
Monica Youn
- Take, Oh, Take Those Lips Away
John Fletcher
- A Broken Appointment
Thomas Hardy

Friendship

- Inviting a Friend to Supper
Ben Jonson
- Tenderness and Rot
Kay Ryan
- Sonnet: I Thank You
Henry Timrod
- Blue Ridge
Ellen Bryant Voigt
- Luciferin
Dean Young
- Love and Friendship
Emily Brontë

Erotic

- [Lying in bed I think about you]
Joshua Beckman
- Aubade
Amber Flora Thomas
- Project for a Fainting
Brenda Shaughnessy
- Recreation
Audre Lorde
- The Imperfect Enjoyment
John Wilmot Earl of Rochester
- Upon Julia’s Breasts
Robert Herrick

I Miss You

- "The day is gone, and all its sweets are gone!"
John Keats
- Valentine
Lorna Dee Cervantes
- Dear One Absent This Long While
Lisa Olstein
- Country Love Song
Melanie Almeder
- Then
Roddy Lumsden

In Loving Memory

- We Never Know
Yusef Komunyakaa
- Love Letter (Clouds)
Sarah Manguso
- Sonnet 23: Methought I saw my late espoused saint
John Milton
- You Were You Are Elegy
Mary Jo Bang
- An Elegy
Ben Jonson