Favourite loved poems for Valentine's Day

Literature / Love poems for Valentine's Day: February 14

Valentine's Day originated as a Christian feast day honoring a martyr named Valentine and through later folk traditions, it has also become a significant cultural and commercial celebration of romance and love in around the world. Valentine's Day is celebrated to honour love.  Gifts, flowers, chocolates, and other special gestures that show affection are common ways for people to demonstrate love and devotion.

Below are some of the best known and often quoted love poems. Here's an affectionate thank-you to these brilliant poets!

1.  A Red, Red Rose is a 1794 song in Scots by Robert Burns based on traditional sources. The song is also referred to by the title "(Oh) My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose" and is often published as a poem. Many composers have set Burns' lyric to music, but it gained worldwide popularity set to the traditional tune "Low Down in the Broom".

My love is like a red, red rose

My love is like a red red rose

That's newly sprung in June;

O my Love's like the melodie

That's sweetly play'd in tune;

As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,

So deep in love am I;

And I will love thee still, my dear,

Till a' the seas gang dry;

Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear,

And the rocks melt with' the sun;

And I will love thee still, my dear,

While the sands o' life shall run.

And fare thee well, my only Love

And fare the well, a while!

And I will come again, my Love,

Tho' it were ten thousand mile.

 

2.  How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count the Ways is taken from Sonnets from the Portuguese, written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, c. 1845–1846 and published first in 1850, is a collection of 44 love sonnets.  The collection was acclaimed and popular during the poet's lifetime and it remains so. Despite what the title implies, the sonnets are entirely Browning's own, and not translated from Portuguese. The first line of Sonnet 43 has become one of the most famous in English poetry: "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways."  (Listening pleasure:  Dame Judi Dench exquisitely recites the poem, "How do I love thee?  (Sonnet 43) by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (read by Dame Judi Dench). YouTube, uploaded by Zsuzsanna Uhlik. Accessed February 14, 2024)

Sonnet 43

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.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise;
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith;
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints,—I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life!—and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43) by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (read by Dame Judi Dench).  YouTube, uploaded by Zsuzsanna Uhlik. Accessed February 14, 2023.

 

3.  Love's Philosophy is a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley published in 1819. The poem was published by Leigh Hunt in the December 22, 1819 issue of The Indicator and reprinted in Posthumous Poems in 1824 edited by Mary Shelley. It was included in the Harvard manuscript book where it is headed "An Anacreontic", dated "January, 1820". Anacreontics are poems written in the style of the ancient Greek poet Anacreon, known for his celebrations of love. Shelley wrote it in a copy of Leigh Hunt's Literary Pocket-Book, 1819, which was presented to Sophia Stacey, December 29, 1820. 

Love's Philosophy

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?

4.  Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day?  "Sonnet 18" is one of the best-known of the 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. In the sonnet, the speaker asks whether he should compare the Fair Youth to a summer's day, but notes that he has qualities that surpass a summer's day, which is one of the themes of the poem.

Sonnet 18

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 dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimmed:

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.

 

 5.  She Walks in Beauty is a short lyrical poem in iambic tetrameter written in 1814 by Lord Byron, and is one of his most famous works. It is said to have been inspired by an event in Byron's life. On 11 June 1814, Byron attended a party in London. It is said to have been inspired by an event in Byron's life. On 11 June 1814, Byron attended a party in London. Among the guests was Mrs. Anne Beatrix Wilmot, wife of Byron's first cousin, Sir Robert Wilmot. He was struck by her unusual beauty, and the next morning the poem was written.

 

She Walks in Beauty

 

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!

 

6.  The Passionate Shepherd to His Love by Christopher Marlowe, is a pastoral poem from the English Renaissance. Marlowe composed the poem in iambic tetrameter in six stanzas, and each stanza is composed of two rhyming couplets; thus the first line of the poem reads: "Come live with me and be my love".

The Passionate Shepherd to His Love

Come live with me and be my love,

And we will all the pleasures prove,

That Valleys, groves, hills, and fields,

Woods, or steepy mountain yields.

And we will sit upon the Rocks,

Seeing the Shepherds feed their flocks,

By shallow Rivers to whose falls

Melodious birds sing Madrigals.

And I will make thee beds of Roses

And 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 Shepherds’ 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.

 

7.  When you are old by W.B. Yeats is a bittersweet poem that reveals the complexities of love. The poem is generally taken to be addressed to Maud Gonne, an Irish actress with whom Yeats was infatuated throughout his life.

When You are Old

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,

And nodding by the fire, take down this book,

And slowly read, and dream of the soft look

Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,

And loved your beauty with love false or true,

But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,

And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,

Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled

And paced upon the mountains overhead

And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

 

Suggested links for Valentine's Day: 

Love Poems. Poetry Foundation. Accessed February 14, 2023

Love Poems. poets.org. Accessed February 14, 2023

8 Valentine’s Day Poems That Will Make Your Sweetheart Swoon.  Good Housekeeping. Accessed February 14, 2023

 

Main resources:

Poetry Foundation. 

Wikipedia.

 

(c) February 14, 2013. Updated February 14, 2024. Tel. Inspired Pen Web. All rights reserved.