A Selection of Love Poems & Passages
From "Invitation to Love," by Paul Laurence Dunbar:
Come when my heart is full of grief,
Or when my heart is merry;
Come with the falling of the leaf
Or with the redd'ning cherry
From "He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven," in The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats:
But I, being poor have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
From The Prophet, by Kahlil Gibran:
Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together, yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.
From "Somewhere I Have Never Traveled," by E. E. Cummings:
your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skillfully, mysteriously) her first rose
From "Sonnet 116," in Love Poems and Sonnets of William Shakespeare:
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
From "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
From Beloved, by Toni Morrison:
Paul D sits down in the rocking chair and examines the quilt patched in carnival colors. His hands are limp between his knees. There are too many things to feel about this woman. His head hurts. Suddenly he remembers Sixo trying to describe what he felt about the Thirty-Mile Woman. "She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order. It's good, you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind."
From "A Poem of Friendship" in Cotton Candy on a Rainy Day by Nikki Giovanni:
I don't want to be near you
for the thoughts we share
but the words we never haveto speak.
From "The Book of Ruth," 1: 16-17 in The Bible
For whither thou goest, I will go;
And where thou lodgest, I will lodge;
Thy people shall be my people;
And thy God my God.
Come when my heart is full of grief,
Or when my heart is merry;
Come with the falling of the leaf
Or with the redd'ning cherry
From "He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven," in The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats:
But I, being poor have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
From The Prophet, by Kahlil Gibran:
Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together, yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.
From "Somewhere I Have Never Traveled," by E. E. Cummings:
your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skillfully, mysteriously) her first rose
From "Sonnet 116," in Love Poems and Sonnets of William Shakespeare:
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
From "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
From Beloved, by Toni Morrison:
Paul D sits down in the rocking chair and examines the quilt patched in carnival colors. His hands are limp between his knees. There are too many things to feel about this woman. His head hurts. Suddenly he remembers Sixo trying to describe what he felt about the Thirty-Mile Woman. "She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order. It's good, you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind."
From "A Poem of Friendship" in Cotton Candy on a Rainy Day by Nikki Giovanni:
I don't want to be near you
for the thoughts we share
but the words we never haveto speak.
From "The Book of Ruth," 1: 16-17 in The Bible
For whither thou goest, I will go;
And where thou lodgest, I will lodge;
Thy people shall be my people;
And thy God my God.