The following poems about love, friendship, romance, and devotion are appropriate for young people.

Read related lesson plans for Valentine's Day and year-round.

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

Love Comes Quietly” by Robert Creeley
Love comes quietly…

Resignation” by Nikki Giovanni
I love you because the Earth turns round the sun…

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

Of Love: A Sonnet” by Robert Herrick
How love came in I do not know…

Yours” by Daniel Hoffman
I am yours as the summer air at evening is…

Birthday” by Richie Hofmann
I look for words in the dark…

Action Poem” by Helen Hoyt
I kiss the locks of your hair...

The Awakening” by James Weldon Johnson
I dreamed that I was a rose…

The Wall Hanging I Never Noticed” by Dorothea Lasky
I never noticed before…

Having a Coke with You” by Frank O’Hara
Is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye…

Astronomers Locate a New Planet” by Matthew Olzmann
Like the universe’s largest engagement ring, it twirls…

[Do you still remember: falling stars]” by Rainer Maria Rilke
Do you still remember: falling stars…

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? (Sonnet 18)” by William Shakespeare
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day...

Let me not to the marriage of true minds (Sonnet 116)” by William Shakespeare
Let me not to the marriage of true minds…

Love’s Philosophy” by Percy Bysshe Shelley
The fountains mingle with the river…

Love at First Sight” by Wislawa Szymborska
They’re both convinced...

poem i wrote sitting across the table from you” by Kevin Varrone
if I had two nickels to rub together…

Battery” by Anne Waldman
A trio of instruments you love the notes…

Poem to First Love” by Matthew Yeager
To have been told “I love you” by you could well be, for me...


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