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Introduction: The Timeless Appeal of Love Poems
Ever since the dawn of time, poets have written poems about love. One of the oldest love poems in existence, “The Love Song for Shu-Sin”, celebrates the marriage of the ruler Shu-Sin to a goddess of fertility.
Throughout the centuries, regardless of geographical location, cultural setting, or time, love in poetry is a universally resonant theme. It is not surprising that so many poets chose to write about love; the richness and complexity of poetic forms lends itself naturally to the equally complex nature of love.
Classic Love Poems: The Foundation of Timeless Verse
Many people are familiar with classic love poems such as Shakespeare’s sonnets written during the Renaissance period. For example, Sonnet 30 employs iambic pentameter form to describe the power of memory in the midst of sadness. The speaker finds themselves alone in their thoughts and begins to mourn past missed opportunities:
“When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste”
However, the speaker is able to divert these negative emotions by simply focusing their thoughts on memories of a friend:
“But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restored and sorrows end.”
Sonnet 30 is also a great example for showing that not all love poems have to be on the topic of romantic love; sometimes, the love is friendly or familial love.
A classic example of romantic love can be found in Thomas Campion’s “There is a Garden in her Face”. Campion uses garden metaphors to describe his captivation with his lover’s beautiful face. For example:
“There is a garden in her face
Where roses and white lilies grow;
A heav’nly paradise is that place
Wherein all pleasant fruits do flow.
There cherries grow which none may buy,
Till “Cherry ripe” themselves do cry.”
Campion infuses affection into every line of his poem through the tender language that he uses such as “heav’nly paradise” and comparing his lover’s lips to ripe cherries that all are forbidden to touch.
Contemporary Expressions: Modern Poems about Love
Jumping ahead to the early 20th century and modern poems about love, many poets not only explored the diversity of emotions connected to love, but several poets also experimented with poetry forms.
One poet to write experimental love poems was E. E. Cummings, who wrote the love poem “all nearness pauses, while a star can grow”. In his poem, Cummings uses unconventional spacing and punctuation to promote the idea that like love, poetry cannot be contained within time or space.
“Time’s a strange fellow;
more he gives than takes
(and he takes all) nor any marvel finds
quite disappearance but some keener makes
losing, gaining
—love! if a world ends
more than all worlds begin to (see?) begin”
Another example of a modern love poem is “America” by Claude McKay. In his poem, McKay details the pain associated with loving something that both helps and harms you.
“Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,
And sinks into my throat her tiger’s tooth,
Stealing my breath of life, I will confess
I love this cultured hell that tests my youth.”
McKay contrasts the imagery of a vicious monster attacking with an equally intense simile to describe feelings of love: “Her vigor flows like tides into my blood”.
Personal Favorites: The Love Poem as an Intimate Declaration
Poetry can also serve as an intimate window into a poet’s individual emotions. For example, “Prisms” by Laura Riding Jackson shares her personal method of accepting uncertainty in her life:
“When life crashes like a cracked pane,
Still shall I love
Even the slight grass and the patient dust.
Death also sees, though darkly,
And I must trust then as now
Only another kind of prism
Through which I may not put my hands to touch.”
Even in the midst of the unknown, Jackson recognizes the power of perception, comparing experiences to prisms that reflect light differently based on how the “light” or perception is applied. In the midst of change she can still find beauty in the mundane, loving “the slight grass and the patient dust”.
Another example is “O Captain! My Captain!” by Walt Whitman, a passionate elegy written for Abraham Lincoln following his assassination. Whitman’s poem is full of triumphant images of a captain being welcomed into a city by crowds of admirers. Additionally, the word “father” implies the depth of loss felt by Whitman personally following Lincoln’s death. This emotional poem underscores the incredible impact Lincoln had on this country and the nation-wide sorrow that was felt for his sudden passing
Love Poems for Everyone: Celebrating Diverse Voices
As stated before, love poetry can be found in every culture and in every time across the world. During the Harlem Renaissance, for example, African-American poet Jean Toomer wrote the love poem, “Her Lips are Copper Wire” to describe the passion that connects lovers.
Imagery-rich phrases like “let your breath be moist against me like bright beads on yellow globes” or “telephone the power-house that the main wires are insulate” employ modern technology like street lights or electric wires to emphasize the intimacy the speaker desires.
Secret Admirers: Love Poems for a Crush
Many of us at one time or another have had a crush on someone, and poets are certainly not immune to this same feeling. “Oranges” by Gary Soto is a great example of a love poem for a crush as it follows a young boy on his first date where he takes his crush to a local drugstore and buys her a treat.
One of the most relatable aspects of this poem is the boy’s attention to detail as he moves through his first dating experience. He notices the way the candy is arranged on the drug store shelf, or the freshly-planted trees they pass on their walk. At one point, the boy realizes that he doesn’t have enough money to buy his crush chocolate, so he offers a nickel and an orange to the store clerk. The clerk recognizes and remembers the feelings of excitement and anticipation in the boy, and she lets him have the chocolate and keep his orange.
Conclusion: The Enduring Power of Love in Poetry
Love in poetry continues to not only be a recurring theme, but it also continues to take on new forms as time goes on. No one can ever fully understand the intricacies of love, but poetry allows writers to begin to unravel even just a small piece of what love is.
As love is a universal human experience, many of these poems can just as easily be appreciated and applicable to the 21st century as much as when they were first written, some hundreds of years ago. Love poems continue to captivate and inspire us, connecting hearts across time and space
For more poems to celebrate love, check out this curated collection from the Poetry Foundation. And if you are looking for more practice analyzing poems, then you’ll “LOVE” our Poetry course.
