Love Poems

Whether you’re searching for words to express a romantic love, a lovely friendship, or a love that’s complicated, reading and sharing poems can be a powerful way to express your feelings. Browse the curated selection of more than one hundred popular love poems below, from classic to contemporary, for poems to share on Valentine's Day, for weddings and anniversaries, and year-round.

Classic Love Poems

“The More Loving One” by W. H. Auden
Looking up at the stars, I know quite well...

“How Do I Love Thee?” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways...

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

“[To find a kiss of yours]” by Federico García Lorca
To find a kiss of yours...

“Having a Coke with You” by Frank O’Hara
is even more fun than going to San Sebastian...

"What Was Told, That" by Jalalu'l-din Rumi
What was said to the rose that made it open...

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

"I Am Not Yours" by Sara Teasdale
I am not yours, not lost in you...

“Her Lips Are Copper Wire” by Jean Toomer
whisper of yellow globes...

"Love Song" by William Carlos Williams
I lie here thinking of you...

More Classic Love Poems

"Serenade" by Djuna Barnes
"Love" by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
"Meeting at Night" by Robert Browning
"She Walks in Beauty" by George Gordon Byron
"Love" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
"Amores" by E. E. Cummings
"Wild Nights – Wild Nights! (249)" by Emily Dickinson
"On Love" by Kahlil Gibran
“The City is Peopled” by H. D.
"Of Love: A Sonnet" by Robert Herrick
“The Awakening” by James Weldon Johnson
"Ode to Psyche" by John Keats
"Endymion" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
"Love" by James Russell Lowell
"The Definition of Love" by Andrew Marvell
"The White Rose" by John Boyle O'Reilly
"The Look" by Sara Teasdale
“Vivien’s Song” by Alfred Lord Tennyson

more love poems

Contemporary Love Poems

“These Hands, If Not Gods” by Natalie Diaz
Haven't they moved like rivers...

“Heart to Heart” by Rita Dove
It's neither red...

“Resignation” by Nikki Giovanni
I love you...

“Scaffolding” by Seamus Heaney
Masons, when they start upon a building...

“For Keeps” by Joy Harjo
Sun makes the day new...

“When I Tell My Husband I Miss the Sun, He Knows” by Paige Lewis
what I really mean. He paints my name...

“Twenty-One Love Poems [Poem II]" by Adrienne Rich
I wake up in your bed...

"Teodoro Luna's Two Kisses" by Alberto Ríos
Mr. Teodoro Luna in his later years...

“poem I wrote sitting across the table from you” by Kevin Varone
If I had two nickels to rub together...

“Ditty” by Kevin Young
You, rare as Georgia...

More Contemporary Love Poems

"My Heart" by Kim Addonizio
"In Our Late Empire, Love" by Malachi Black
“Love Comes Quietly” by Robert Creeley
"The School of Nights & Hyphens" by Chen Chen
"Of the Irresolubleness of Diamonds" by Monica Ferrell
"Love in the Morning" by Annie Finch
“Happy first anniversary (in anticipation of your thirty ninth)” by Bob Hicok
“For What Binds Us” by Jane Hirshfield
“The moon rose over the bay. I had a lot of feelings.” by Donika Kelly
"Someone" by Joseph O. Legaspi
"Electrons" by Ruth Madievsky
“The Imprint” by Jennifer Moxley
"Chess" by Aimee Nezhukumatathil
"How to Love" by January Gill O'Neil
"Divine Overdose" by Matthew Rohrer
“Imaginary Morning Glory” by C. D. Wright
"Sonnet w/ Rose" by Matthew Yeager

more contemporary love poems

Love Poems for Specific Occasions

Poems for Weddings

"This Union" by Hafez
“A Blessing for Wedding” by Jane Hirshfield
"Briefly It Enters, and Briefly Speaks" by Jane Kenyon
“Yours” by Daniel Hoffman
“Epithalamion” by Rickey Laurentiis
“Epithalamion, [Happy Bridegroom]” by Sappho
“Re-Statement of Romance” by Wallace Stevens
“Poem to First Love” by Matthew Yeager

more poems for weddings

Poems for Anniversaries

"Stray" by Elizabeth Alexander
“Habitation” by Margaret Atwood
“To My Dear and Loving Husband" by Anne Bradstreet
“San Antonio” by Naomi Shihab Nye
"Blessings" by Jay Parini
“Falling” by Patrick Phillips
“[Again and again, even though we know love’s landscape]” by Rainer Maria Rilke
“Monna Innominata [I wish I could remember]" by Christina Rossetti
"Galaxy Love" by Gerald Stern
"Golden Anniversary" by Wislawa Szymborska
"In Each Look Our Years" by Edwin Torres
"Blue Vase" by Cynthia Zarin

more poems for anniversaries

Poems for Heartache and Love Lost

"The Embrace" by Mark Doty
“All I Ever Wanted” by Katie Ford
"Self-Portrait at 36 w/ David" by Ellen Hagan
“When You Leave” by Twyla M. Hansen
“I May After Leaving You Walk Quickly or Even Run” by Matthea Harvey
“What I Did Wrong” by Marie Howe
“Multiple Man: Guest-starring me & you” by Gary Jackson
“Poem Number Two on Bell’s Theorem, or The New Physicality of Long Distance Love” by June Jordan
“Holding Pattern” by Timothy Liu
“Love Elegy in the Chinese Garden, with Koi” by Nathan McClain
"Are You Going to Stay?" by Thomas Meyer
"Ode to Love" by Jennifer Militello
"Beside You on Main Street" by Jillian Weise
“Our Many Never Endings” by Courtney Queeney
"Sometimes with One I Love" by Walt Whitman

more poems about heartache

Poems for Friendships

"I Love the Hour Just Before" by Todd Boss
“Song Out Here” by Juan Felipe Herrera
"After the Movie" by Marie Howe
"For N & K" by Gina Myers
"How I Am" by Jason Shinder
"Friend," by Jean Valentine

more poems about friendship

Essays on Love & Poetry

Poetic Pairings
Learn how to pair the perfect poem with sweets, drinks, and flora for your partner on Valentine's Day.
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Eros and the Lyric Imagination
by Marilyn Hacker
Eros is often the fuel of the lyric imagination, which chooses to use words, sentences, musical structures of language to re/member the beloved, to enter that inexhaustible source of—not uniquely “carnal”—knowledge which is another person’s body and mind.
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All My Poems Are Love Poems: When Two Poets Fall in Love
Love poetry is about as old as love itself, from Homer’s vision of Penelope’s steadfastness, to the biblical Song of Solomon, to Shakespeare’s sonnets for his “Dark Lady” (or, some speculate, Dark Lord), to Keats’s love songs for his own depression. Most poets, at one time or another, write their way into the hearts of their chosen partners, but sometimes something slightly more unusual happens: two poets fall in love with each other.
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Dear Dainty Delicious Darlings
To poets such as Lewis Carroll, Paul Laurence Dunbar, James Joyce, D. H. Lawrence, Charles Olson, Alexander Pope, Gertrude Stein, Walt Whitman, and W. B. Yeats, love letters were the means by which they could send “A hundred thousand kisses, darling!” (Joyce) or just “a hundred and eighty-two” (Carroll), whether they had been “prepared by drinking” (Pope) or written “wildly...not stopping to think” (Dunbar). Read letters to and from these poets and more.
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Books of Love Poetry

Isn't It Romantic: 100 Love Poems by Younger American Poets, edited by Brett Fletcher Lauer and Aimee Kelley