Valentine's Love Poems

Throughout the ages, poetry has been used to express love and emotion. Why not use one to show your significant other how you feel about them this Valentine's Day.

Here are five great love poems to help you out:

1. How Do I Love Thee? Let me Count the Ways - Elizabeth Barrett Browning

How do I love thee? Let me count the
ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and
height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of
sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s
faith.

I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, - I love thee with the
breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! – and, if God
Choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

2. Love is Anterior to Life - Emily Dickinson
Love is anterior to life,
Posterior to death,
Initial of creation, and
The exponent of breath.

3. A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning - John Donne

As virtous men passe mildly 'away,
And whisper to their soules, to goe,
Whilst some of their sad friends doe say,
The breath goes now, and some say, no:

So let us melt, and make no noise,
No teare-floods, nor sigh-tempests move,
'Twere prophanation of our joyes
To tell the layetie our love.

Moving of th'earth brings harmes and feares,
Men reckon what it did and meant,
But trepidation of the spheares,
Though greater farre, is innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers love
(Whose soule is sense) cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
Those things which elemented it.
But we by a'love, so much refin'd
That we ourselves know not what it is,
nter-assured of the mind,
Care lesse, eyes, lips, and hands to misse.
Our two soules therefore, which are one,

Though I must goe, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to ayery thinnesse beate.
If they be two, they are two so
As stiffe twin compasses are two,
Thy soule the fixt foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if the 'other doe.
And though it in the center sit,
Yet when the other far doth rome,
It leanes, and hearkens after it,
And growes erect, as it comes home.


4. 1 Corinthians 13:4-7

Love is patient, love is kind.
It does not envy.
Love is never boastful, nor conceited, nor rude;
It is not self-seeking, nor easily angered.
It keeps no record of wrongdoing.
It does not delight in evil,
But rejoices in the truth.
It always protects, trusts, hopes, and preserves.
There is nothing love cannot face;
There is no limit to its faith, hope, and endurance.
In a word, there are three things that last forever:
Faith, hope, and love;
But the greatest of them all is love.

5. My love is Like a Red, Red Rose - Robert Burns

O my Luve's like a red, red rose
That’s newly sprung in June;
O my Luve's like the melodie
That’s sweetly play'd in tune.

As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
So deep in luve am I:
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a’ the seas gang dry:

Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi’ the sun:
I will luve thee still, my dear,
While the sands o’ life shall run.

And fare thee weel, my only Luve
And fare thee weel, a while!
And I will come again, my Luve,
Tho’ it were ten thousand mile.