Be Mine: Poems for Sweethearts

Woo your beloved by pairing the perfect poem with sweets, drink, and posies. The irresistible combination is sure to result in wobbly knees, a melting heart, and a very smitten sweetheart.

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
by E. E. Cummings

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

Drink: Vinho Verde
Sweet: Tiramisu
Flower: Red Rose

Credo
by Matthew Rohrer

I believe there is something else

entirely going on but no single
person can ever know it,
so we fall in love.

It could also be true that what we use
everyday to open cans was something
much nobler, that we'll never recognize.

Drink: Piña Colada
Sweet: Tres Leches Cake
Flower: Sunflower

How Do I Love Thee?
by 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.

Drink: Muscat
Sweet: Angel Food Cake
Flower: Amaryllis

It's all I have to bring today
by Emily Dickinson

Be sure you count – should I forget
Some one the sum could tell –
This, and my heart, and all the Bees
Which in the Clover dwell.

Drink: Mead
Sweet: Strawberry Shortcake
Flower: Honeysuckle

A Birthday
by Christina Rossetti

My heart is like a singing bird
   Whose nest is in a water'd shoot;
My heart is like an apple-tree
   Whose boughs are bent with thick-set fruit

Drink: Apple Pomegranate Martini
Sweet: Cupcakes
Flower: Stargazer Lily

A Line-storm Song
by Robert Frost

All song of the woods is crushed like some
   Wild, easily shattered rose.
Come, be my love in the wet woods; come,
   Where the boughs rain when it blows.

Drink: Mulled Cider
Sweet: Salt Water Taffy
Flower: Wildflowers

The Kiss
by Stephen Dunn

She kissed me again, reaching that place
that sends messages to toes and fingertips,
then all the way to something like home.
Some music was playing on its own.

Drink: Port
Sweet: Chocolate Truffles
Flower: Hyacinth

Chateau If
by Peter Gizzi

        if to say light to inhabit light if to speak if to live, so
        if to say it is you if love is if your form is if your waist that
pictures the fluted stem if lavender
        if in this field
        if I were to say hummingbird it might behave as an
adjective here

Drink: Champagne
Sweet: Sweet Crepes
Flower: Lavender

Blue
by May Swenson

        ...I love your spots,
your white neck, Rose, your hair's
wild straw splash, silk spools
for your ears. But where white
spouts out, spills on your brow
to clear eyepools, wheel shafts
of light, Rose, you are Blue.

Drink: Berry Brandy
Sweet: Mixed Berry Pie
Flower: Pink Rose and Blue Iris

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
by William Shakespeare

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.

Drink: May Wine
Sweet: Ice Cream Sundae
Flower: Tulip

The Fist
by Derek Walcott

        ...When have I ever not loved
the pain of love? But this has moved

past love to mania. This has the strong
clench of the madman...

Drink: Absinthe
Sweet: Bittersweet Chocolate
Flower: Poppy