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Walt Whitman

Born on May 31, 1819, Walt Whitman is the author of Leaves of Grass...
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	FURTHER READING


		Poems About Difficult Love
		A Love Song by William Carlos Williams, read by Ron Silliman

		Amorosa Erranza by Julian T. Brolaski

		Anna, Thy Charms by Robert Burns

		Be Near Me by Faiz Ahmed Faiz

		Caboose Thoughts by Carl Sandburg

		Demon and The Dove by Miguel Murphy

		Designer Kisses by Major Jackson

		Dregs by César Vallejo

		Enemies by Dante Micheaux

		He would not stay for me, and who can wonder by A. E. Housman

		How Much? by Carl Sandburg

		I Am Not Yours by Sara Teasdale

		I Do Not Love Thee by Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton

		I have lived in your face by Jean Valentine

		I know I am but summer to your heart (Sonnet XXVII) by Edna St. Vincent Millay

		I'm A Fool To Love You by Cornelius Eady

		Last Words to Miriam by D. H. Lawrence

		Love by Katy Lederer

		Love in Fantastique Triumph satt by Aphra Behn

		Love's Secret by William Blake

		Loving and Beloved by Sir John Suckling

		My Love Sent Me a List by Olena Kalytiak Davis

		Never give all the heart by W. B. Yeats

		Not by Sophie Cabot Black

		One Art by Elizabeth Bishop

		Opal by Amy Lowell

		Our Bed Is Also Green by Joshua Bell

		Passer Mortuus Est by Edna St. Vincent Millay

		Pericardium by Joanna Klink

		Poetry Anonymous by Prageeta Sharma

		Prayer by Robert Glück

		Red and Blue Planets by Joni Wallace

		Song of Myself, XI by Walt Whitman

		Sonnet 102 [If no love is, O God, what fele I so?] by Petrarch

		Sonnet 12 [Alas, so all things now do hold their peace] by Petrarch

		Talking to Patrizia by Kenneth Koch

		The Barrier by Claude McKay

		The Flight by Sara Teasdale

		The Heart Breaking by Abraham Cowley

		The More Loving One by W. H. Auden, read by Nick Laird

		The Peace That So Lovingly Descends by Noelle Kocot

		The Unloved to His Beloved by William Alexander Percy

		They Romp with Wooly Canines by Patricia Smith

		They Were Not Kidding in the Fourteenth Century by Maureen N. McLane

		This Deepening Takes Place Again by Emily Kendal Frey

		To A Sea-Cliff by Thomas Hardy

		To His Coy Love by Michael Drayton

		UTOPIA: Love as Free as a Fountain by Joe Hall

		What Do I Care by Sara Teasdale

		What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why (Sonnet XLIII) by Edna St. Vincent Millay

		Whoever You Are Holding Me Now in Hand by Walt Whitman

		Witch-Wife by Edna St. Vincent Millay

		[I Failed Him and He Failed Me] by Katie Ford

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Sometimes with One I Love

by Walt Whitman

Sometimes with one I love I fill myself with rage for fear I effuse
unreturn'd love,
But now I think there is no unreturn'd love, the pay is certain
one way or another,
(I loved a certain person ardently and my love was not return'd,
Yet out of that I have written these songs.)

About this poem:
Walt Whitman's "Sometimes With One I Love" comes from the "Calamus" poems, which are found in his groundbreaking and epic volume, Leaves of Grass. In his 1876 preface to Two Rivulets, Whitman writes that the poems were partially important in his purpose to achieve "emotional expressions for humanity." In his essay "Calamus" the critic James E. Miller, Jr. writes: "Though the poet celebrates adhesiveness and associates the love of comrades with some of the tenderest, most memorable moments of his life, he also sometimes reveals the pain he has felt."

This poem appeared in Poem-A-Day on February 14, 2013. Browse the Poem-A-Day archive.

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