Featuring beautiful prose from the likes of Emily Dickinson, John Keats, William Shakespeare, and more read 14 of the best love poems for Valentine’s Day, and spread the love wherever you are.
The subject of love has been written about for centuries. One of the oldest pieces of real magic left in the world, love itself is not picky and has a habit of materialising when you least expect it. Explore the musings of these old poets as they articulate love and all they perceived it to be, perfect for when you’re lost for words or need some encouragement this Valentine’s Day.
Discover our top love poems for Valentine’s Day below:
- Sonnet 43 by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
- When You Are Old by W. B. Yeats
- A Red, Red Rose by Robert Burns
- Sonnet 116 by William Shakespeare
- I Loved You First by Christina Rossetti
- She Walks in Beauty by Lord Byron
- If You Call Me by Sarojini Naidu
- Wild Nights – Wild Nights! by Emily Dickinson
- The Passionate Shepherd to His Love by Christopher Marlowe
- Unending Love by Rabindranath Tagore
- Love’s Philosophy by Percy Bysshe Shelley
- The Kiss by Sara Teasdale
- A Glimpse by Walt Whitman
- A Marriage by Mark Twain
Sonnet 43 by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
In the first of our favourite love poems for Valentine’s Day, Elizabeth Barrett Browning proclaims her unending love for her beloved, how deeply her love goes, and how her love will continue even after she is gone. A prolific poet of her time, Browning’s work has influenced the likes of Emily Dickinson, who is said to have had the poet’s portrait hanging in her room.
‘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.’
Writer’s On… Love
This book includes extracts, from secret letters to romance stories to famous love sayings, and contains some of history’s most enduring meditations on the subject. Vacillating between all-consuming passions and rational, cynical, even comical analyses, this collection offers an intriguing overview of that most human of emotions: love.
When You Are Old by W. B. Yeats
‘When You are Old’ is a poem by Irish poet William Butler Yeats, asking his love to look forward to old age in an attempt to secure his adoration in return. It’s said to be about the poet’s relationship with Irish actress Maud Gonne after he fell in love with her in nine short days.
‘When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;’
Responsibilities and Other Poems
Responsibilities and Other Poems is a 1916 collection of poetry by William Butler Yeats. This fantastic volume is highly recommended for all lovers of poetry, and is not to be missed by readers with an interest in the Irish Literary Revival.
A Red, Red Rose by Robert Burns
First published in 1794, ‘A Red, Red Rose’ was written in the form of a ballad intended to be sung aloud. Here Burns is proclaiming his love to his ‘bonnie lass’. A love that is so everlasting it will remain even when our planet itself has gone.
‘O my Luve is like a red, red rose
That’s newly sprung in June;
O my Luve is like the melody
That’s sweetly played in tune.So 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.’
Sonnet 116 by William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare is the king of sonnets, and this one is particularly romantic. Loved equally to ‘Sonnet 18’ (Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day), ‘Sonnet 116’ attempts to define love and the ever-changing magical form that it is.
‘Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand’ring bark,’
I Loved You First by Christina Rossetti
‘I Loved You First’ by Christina Rossetti defines that feeling of oneness that comes with meeting the right person. It’s consuming, confusing, and often out-bid by the love of the person you share it with.
‘I loved you first: but afterwards your love
Outsoaring mine, sang such a loftier song
As drowned the friendly cooings of my dove.
Which owes the other most? my love was long,
And yours one moment seemed to wax more strong;
I loved and guessed at you, you construed me
And loved me for what might or might not be –
Nay, weights and measures do us both a wrong.’
She Walks in Beauty by Lord Byron
This famous poem by the Romantic writer Lord Byron attempts to capture the sense of the external beauty of a particular woman, proclaiming that her outer beauty represents her inner goodness and virtue.
‘She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.’
If You Call Me by Sarojini Naidu
Sarojini Naidu was an Indian activist and feminist poet. Nicknamed ‘The Nightingale of India’ for her contribution to poetry, she was also the first Indian woman to be president of the India National Congress. Her poem ‘If You Call Me’ is a short piece describing the intense feeling of her complete devotion to her lover.
‘If you call me I will come
Swifter, O my Love,
Than a trembling forest deer
Or a panting dove,
Swifter than a snake that flies
To the charmer’s thrall . . .
If you call me I will come
Fearless what befall.’
Songs of Love
This pocket-sized collection of Naidu’s most moving romantic poetry is the perfect gift for those who love reading on the go. Brimming with charming love poems, this volume features Naidu’s lyrical language and magical romance.
Wild Nights – Wild Nights! by Emily Dickinson
‘Wild Nights – Wild Nights!’ is one of Emily Dickinson’s most famous poems. This short piece focuses on the pure ecstasy of a night spent with one’s love. The ambiguity allows for personal interpretation, and the intimacy she writes about is continually questioned because Dickinson was a well-known recluse.
‘Wild nights – Wild nights!
Were I with thee
Wild nights should be
Our luxury!Futile – the winds –
To a Heart in port –
Done with the Compass –
Done with the Chart!Rowing in Eden –
Ah – the Sea!
Might I but moor – tonight –
In thee!’
Responsibilities and Other Poems is a 1916 collection of poetry by William Butler Yeats. This fantastic volume is highly recommended for all lovers of poetry, and is not to be missed by readers with an interest in the Irish Literary Revival.
The Passionate Shepherd to His Love by Christopher Marlowe
Written in the 1590s, this well-loved poem was one of the most popular of the English Renaissance. It is a poem of seduction, with the author attempting to use the description of rural life, full of beautiful and intense sensual pleasure, to woo his love.
‘Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove,
That Valleys, groves, hills, and fields,
Woods, or steepy mountain yields.And we will sit upon the Rocks,
Seeing the Shepherds feed their flocks,
By shallow Rivers to whose falls
Melodious birds sing Madrigals.’
Unending Love by Rabindranath Tagore
In this beautiful love song by the Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore, he articulates his unending adoration for his beloved. Going on to explain the lengths and depths that his love goes to until it concludes everlasting and immortal.
‘I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times…
In life after life, in age after age, forever.
My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs,
That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms,
In life after life, in age after age, forever.’
Love’s Philosophy by Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley is one of the most famous English Romantic poets. In this poem, he presents a playful argument for the union of himself and his beloved, using the unity and beauty of nature as an explanation for his philosophy of love.
‘The fountains mingle with the river
And the rivers with the ocean,
The winds of heaven mix for ever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single;
All things by a law divine
In one spirit meet and mingle.
Why not I with thine?—’
One of the leading English Romantic poets and is regarded by many to be one of the finest lyric poets to have ever lived.
The Kiss by Sara Teasdale
‘The Kiss’ by Sara Teasdale is a poem explaining the romantic enormity of a lover’s first kiss. She compares it to elements far beyond the reaches of humanity and how she is eternally bound to her lover, ever changed from their first encounter.
‘Before you kissed me only winds of heaven
Had kissed me, and the tenderness of rain—
Now you have come, how can I care for kisses
Like theirs again?
I sought the sea, she sent her winds to meet me,
They surged about me singing of the south—
I turned my head away to keep still holy
Your kiss upon my mouth.’
A Glimpse by Walt Whitman
Quite possibly Walt Whitman’s most-loved romantic poem, ‘A Glimpse’ is about a connection between two people who have a mutual understanding of their love for one another. Simply content in each other’s company, they render their busy surroundings redundant, as if the world around them stops with one ‘glimpse’ of the other.
‘A long while, amid the noises of coming and going–of drinking and
oath and smutty jest,
There we two, content, happy in being together, speaking little,
perhaps not a word.’
A Marriage by Mark Twain
The last piece in our list of the best love poems for Valentine’s Day is ‘A Marriage’ by Mark Twain. Written for his new bride in the months before they were married, Twain articulates that he sees marriage as more than a contract of devotion but as a bond between two people, giving life a new sense of beauty and meaning.
‘A marriage makes of two fractional lives a whole;
It gives two purposeless lives a work,
And doubles the strength of each to perform it.
It gives to two questioning natures a reason for living
And something to live for.
It will give new gladness to the sunshine,
A new fragrance to the flowers, a new beauty to the earth
And a new mystery to life.’
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