Poems About Love
Curated by the Writory editorial team. Updated September 2026.
Quick answer: Read 14 of the greatest poems about love, from Shakespeare and Burns to Rossetti and Byron. Full texts with short notes on what makes each one last.
Love is the subject poetry keeps coming back to, and for good reason: it asks the plainest questions and gives the least reliable answers. The poems here range from a shepherd's spring promises to a quarrel settled at the end of a long day.
Some are vows, some are arguments, and one or two are almost jokes. What they share is exactness. Shakespeare fixes love as a star that does not move; Burns reaches for a red rose and a folk tune; Rossetti simply cannot contain her joy.
Read them slowly. The best love poems were built to be said aloud to one person, and they still work that way.
Explore poems about lasting friendship
Sonnet 116: Let me not to the marriage of true minds
William Shakespeare · Elizabethan · Sonnet
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;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me prov'd,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.
The plainest vow in English, and the one most read out at weddings: love as the fixed star that outlasts every storm.
Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
William Shakespeare · Elizabethan · Sonnet
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:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd,
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course untrimm'd:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
A compliment that kept its promise. She is still alive here, four centuries on, because the poem is.
Sonnet 130: My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun
William Shakespeare · Elizabethan · Sonnet
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red, than her lips red:
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound:
I grant I never saw a goddess go,--
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet by heaven, I think my love as rare,
As any she belied with false compare.
The anti-love-poem that turns out truest of all. He strips away every false comparison and loves her anyway.
The Passionate Shepherd To His Love
Christopher Marlowe · Elizabethan
Come live with me, and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove,
That hills and valleys, dales and fields,
And all the craggy mountain yields.
There we will sit upon the rocks,
And see the shepherds feed their flocks
By shallow rivers, to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.
And I will make thee beds of roses,
With a thousand fragrant posies,
A cap of flowers and a kirtle
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle;
A gown made of the finest wool,
Which from our pretty lambs we pull;
Fair lined slippers for the cold,
With buckles of the purest gold;
A belt of straw and ivy buds,
With coral clasps and amber studs;
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me, and be my love.
The shepherd swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May morning:
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me, and be my love.
All coral clasps and beds of roses. Young love making its whole case out of what it promises to give.
Song To Celia - II
Ben Jonson · Renaissance · Song
Drink to me only with thine eyes,
And I will pledge with mine;
Or leave a kiss but in the cup,
And I'll not look for wine.
The thirst that from the soul doth rise
Doth ask a drink divine;
But might I of Jove's nectar sup,
I would not change for thine.
I sent thee late a rosy wreath,
Not so much honouring thee
As giving it a hope, that there
It could not withered be.
But thou thereon didst only breathe,
And sent'st it back to me;
Since when it grows, and smells, I swear,
Not of itself, but thee.
You have hummed the first line without knowing it was four hundred years old.
Air And Angels
John Donne · Metaphysical · Metaphysical
Twice or thrice had I loved thee,
Before I knew thy face or name,
So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame,
Angels affect us oft, and worship'd be;
Still when, to where thou wert, I came,
Some lovely glorious nothing I did see.
But since my soul, whose child love is,
Takes limbs of flesh, and else could nothing do,
More subtile than the parent is,
Love must not be, but take a body too,
And therefore what thou wert, and who,
I bid Love ask, and now
That it assume thy body, I allow,
And fix itself in thy lip, eye, and brow.
Whilst thus to ballast love, I thought,
And so more steadily to have gone,
With wares which would sink admiration,
I saw, I had love's pinnace overfraught,
Ev'ry thy hair for love to work upon
Is much too much, some fitter must be sought;
For, nor in nothing, nor in things
Extreme, and scatt'ring bright, can love inhere;
Then as an Angel, face, and wings
Of air, not pure as it, yet pure doth wear,
So thy love may be my loves sphere;
Just such disparity
As is twixt Air and Angels' purity,
'Twixt women's love, and men's will ever be.
A Red, Red Rose
Robert Burns · Romantic
O my Luve's like a red, red rose
That's newly sprung in June;
O my Luve's like the melodie
That's sweetly played in tune.
As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
So deep in luve am I;
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a' the seas gang dry:
Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi' the sun;
I will luve thee still, my dear,
While the sands o' life shall run.
And fare thee weel, my only Luve,
And fare thee weel awhile!
And I will come again, my Luve,
Tho' it ware ten thousand mile.
The folk-song plainness that every later love poem has quietly tried to steal.
A Birthday
Christina Rossetti · Victorian
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 thickset fruit;
My heart is like a rainbow shell
That paddles in a halcyon sea;
My heart is gladder than all these
Because my love is come to me.
Raise me a dais of silk and down;
Hang it with vair and purple dyes;
Carve it in doves and pomegranates,
And peacocks with a hundred eyes;
Work it in gold and silver grapes,
In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys;
Because the birthday of my life
Is come, my love is come to me.
Not courtship but the body's whole yes, so full of joy it has to build a dais to stand on.
Sonnet 22 - When our two souls stand up erect and strong
Elizabeth Barrett Browning · Victorian · Sonnet
When our two souls stand up erect and strong,
Face to face, silent, drawing nigh and nigher,
Until the lengthening wings break into fire
At either curved point, - what bitter wrong
Can the earth do to us, that we should not long
Be here contented? Think. In mounting higher,
The angels would press on us and aspire
To drop some golden orb of perfect song
Into our deep, dear silence. Let us stay
Rather on earth, Beloved, - where the unfit
Contrarious moods of men recoil away
And isolate pure spirits, and permit
A place to stand and love in for a day,
With darkness and the death-hour rounding it.
Two souls standing up straight against each other, choosing the plain earth so they can stay near.
She Walks in Beauty
George Gordon, Lord Byron · Romantic
She walks in Beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which Heaven to gaudy day denies.
One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o'er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express,
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.
And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!
Byron at his least cynical. Beauty held as a truce between the dark and the light.
Love's Philosophy
Percy Bysshe Shelley · Romantic
The fountains mingle with the river
And the rivers with the Ocean,
The winds of Heaven mix for ever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single;
All things by a law divine
In one spirit meet and mingle.
Why not I with thine?--
See the mountains kiss high Heaven
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister-flower would be forgiven
If it disdained its brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth
And the moonbeams kiss the sea:
What is all this sweet work worth
If thou kiss not me?
A flirtation dressed up as natural law: everything in the world embraces, so why not you and me?
Love and Friendship
Emily Bronte · Victorian
Love is like the wild rose-briar,
Friendship like the holly-tree --
The holly is dark when the rose-briar blooms
But which will bloom most contantly?
The wild-rose briar is sweet in the spring,
Its summer blossoms scent the air;
Yet wait till winter comes again
And who wil call the wild-briar fair?
Then scorn the silly rose-wreath now
And deck thee with the holly's sheen,
That when December blights thy brow
He may still leave thy garland green.
Love is the wild rose, friendship the holly. She asks which one still keeps its green in December.
Love -- is that later Thing than Death --
Emily Dickinson · American
Love -- is that later Thing than Death --
More previous -- than Life --
Confirms it at its entrance -- And
Usurps it -- of itself --
Tastes Death -- the first -- to hand the sting
The Second -- to its friend --
Disarms the little interval --
Deposits Him with God --
Then hovers -- an inferior Guard --
Lest this Beloved Charge
Need -- once in an Eternity --
A smaller than the Large --
Dickinson makes love the thing that comes after death, not the thing that ends at it.
A Woman's Last Word
Robert Browning · Victorian
Let's contend no more, Love,
Strive nor weep:
All be as before, Love,
--Only sleep!
What so wild as words are?
I and thou
In debate, as birds are,
Hawk on bough!
See the creature stalking
While we speak!
Hush and hide the talking,
Cheek on cheek.
What so false as truth is,
False to thee?
Where the serpent's tooth is,
Shun the tree--
Where the apple reddens,
Never pry--
Lest we lose our Edens,
Eve and I.
Be a god and hold me
With a charm!
Be a man and fold me
With thine arm!
Teach me, only teach, Love!
As I ought
I will speak thy speech, Love,
Think thy thought--
Meet, if thou require it,
Both demands,
Laying flesh and spirit
In thy hands.
That shall be to-morrow,
Not to-night:
I must bury sorrow
Out of sight:
--Must a little weep, Love,
(Foolish me!)
And so fall asleep, Love,
Loved by thee.
A quarrel talked down to sleep. Love as the daily work of letting the argument go.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the most famous poem about love?
Shakespeare's Sonnet 116, which begins 'Let me not to the marriage of true minds,' is probably the most quoted love poem in English. Sonnet 18 ('Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?') runs a close second, and both appear in full in this collection.
What are short love poems worth reading?
Robert Burns's 'A Red, Red Rose' and Emily Dickinson's 'Love is that later Thing than Death' are both short and unforgettable. Ben Jonson's 'Drink to me only with thine eyes' is another that fits in a breath.
Who are the great love poets?
Shakespeare, John Donne, Robert Burns, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Lord Byron and Christina Rossetti all wrote love poems that have lasted for centuries. This page gathers one strong poem from each.
What makes a good love poem?
Specifics, not superlatives. The love poems that last name one real thing, as Burns does with his rose or Byron with a single evening's walk, and trust the reader to feel the rest.
How to write a poem about love
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