Love Poems
Classic and contemporary love poems to share.
BY The Editors
From Sappho’s ancient Greek poems to contemporary Sapphic poetry, from Byron to Browning, and everywhere in between, poets have given us language for love. Whether you’re searching for a poem for an occasion like an anniversary, a wedding, or Valentine’s Day, or because you need a pick-me-up or a forget-me-not, here’s a diverse selection of love poems.
For more poems about love, explore our archive.
- E. E. Cummings
Sonnets from the Portuguese 43: How do I love thee? Let me count the ways
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
William Shakespeare
A Red, Red Rose
Robert Burns
When I Heard at the Close of the Day
Walt Whitman
She Walks in Beauty
Lord Byron (George Gordon)
Love
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
from Endymion
John Keats
On Love
Kahlil Gibran
- D. H. Lawrence
The Language
Robert Creeley
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
The House of Life: 22. Heart's Haven
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
- Billy Collins
"I loved you first: but afterwards your love"
Christina Rossetti
The Anniversary
John Donne
I Knew a Woman
Theodore Roethke
You, Therefore
Reginald Shepherd
Sonnet 116: Let me not to the marriage of true minds
William Shakespeare
Now
Robert Browning
- E. E. Cummings
Invitation to Love
Paul Laurence Dunbar
Superbly Situated
Robert Hershon
“Hope” is the thing with feathers
Emily Dickinson
Wedding Hymn
Sidney Lanier
The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
Christopher Marlowe
- Kai Coggin
A Birthday
Christina Rossetti
To My Dear and Loving Husband
Anne Bradstreet
- W. S. Merwin
Bird-Understander
Craig Arnold
i love you to the moon &
Chen Chen
Poem for My Love
June Jordan
A-
Samuel Menashe
When You Are Old
William Butler Yeats
Lines Depicting Simple Happiness
Peter Gizzi
- Rita Dove
- Frank Marshall Davis
A Memory of Us
Safia Elhillo
A Glimpse
Walt Whitman
When Lucille Bogan Sings "Shave 'Em Dry"
Aimee Nezhukumatathil
I Love You
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Of Love
Robert Herrick
O Best of All Nights, Return and Return Again
James Laughlin
- Todd Boss
- Lauren Whitehead
Recreation
Audre Lorde
First Kiss
Kim Addonizio
The Imperfect Enjoyment
John Wilmot Earl of Rochester
Aubade
Amber Flora Thomas
- Mirabai
- Dorothea Lasky
- Sharon Olds
Wild nights - Wild nights! (269)
Emily Dickinson
- sam sax
Upon Julia’s Breasts
Robert Herrick
[Didn’t Sappho say her guts clutched up like this?]
Marilyn Hacker
[Lying in bed I think about you]
Joshua Beckman
- Sharon Olds
- Phillip B. Williams
Heat
Jane Hirshfield
Phenomenal Woman
Maya Angelou
- Kara Jackson
- Kim Moore
"Leave me, O Love, which reachest but to dust"
Sir Philip Sidney
- Caroline Bird
How to Triumph Like a Girl
Ada Limón
30th Birthday
Alice Notley
O Me! O Life!
Walt Whitman
- Kara Jackson
The Same City
Terrance Hayes
Mothers
Nikki Giovanni
- Jaswinder Bolina
- Victoria Chang
Sweet Daddy
Patricia Smith
Four-Eyed Girls
Nancy Lee
Inviting a Friend to Supper
Ben Jonson
Sonnet: I Thank You
Henry Timrod
Blue Ridge
Ellen Bryant Voigt
Love and Friendship
Emily Brontë
- Ralph Angel
“Time does not bring relief; you all have lied”
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Valentine
Lorna Dee Cervantes
Dear One Absent This Long While
Lisa Olstein
- Melanie Almeder
Then
Roddy Lumsden
[Fortune Hath Taken Thee Away, My Love]
Sir Walter Raleigh
- Assotto Saint
To One in Paradise
Edgar Allan Poe
Later
Raymond Luczak
We Never Know
Yusef Komunyakaa
Love Letter (Clouds)
Sarah Manguso
- Mary Jo Bang
An Elegy
Ben Jonson