Charming, suffered, romantic, tormented: love is that feeling capable of arousing a myriad of emotions in the human soul, without anyone ever being indifferent to it. A true love overwhelms, makes you grow and reflect. All this has never escaped the great poets of the past or even those of the present. Its effects they have been described over the centuries, in a different but at the same time similar way: love has always been that unstoppable force respect to which every man must surrender.
Many have been published over the years poetry love: some more sweet and carefree, others more nostalgic and suffering. Each poem has tried and will try forever to explain what it means to be in love and how its author experienced this feeling with such a fascinating aura. We have collected the 15 most beautiful and famous love poems ever, whose verses never cease to excite and touch the depths of the heart.
William Shakespeare Sonnet 116
What is love and, especially, how it manifests itself? This is the theme of this Shakespeare poem,
where the English poet and playwright highlights what that feeling is not, giving an unpublished and original description.
May it never be that I place obstacles
to the union of faithful souls; Love is not Love
if it changes when it discovers a change
or it tends to vanish when the other moves away.
Oh no! Love is always a fixed beacon
towering over the storm and never wavering;
is the guiding star of every lost boat,
whose value is unknown, although the distance is known.
Love is not subject to Time, even though it is rosy lips and cheeks
they will have to fall under its curved blade;
Love doesn't change in a few hours or weeks,
but fearless endures the last day of judgment:
if this is mistake and I will be tried,
I have never written, and no one has ever loved.
Khalil Gibran, Follow love
This poem also takes Shakespeare's words in a contemporary way. Gibran reflects on what love is not, because this feeling requires nothing but its being pure and an end in itself.
Love gives nothing but itself
and catches nothing but from himself.
Love does not possess,
nor would it want to be possessed
because love is enough for love.
Charles Bukowski, When God created love
Here is a modern tale of love through Bukowski's lapidary phrases. Everything that has been created seems superficial and imperfect, except the woman loved by the poet, capable of making the universe complete.
When God created love he didn't help us much
when God created dogs he didn't help dogs much
when God created the plants it was normal
when God created hatred he gave us a normal useful thing
when God created Me He created Me
when God created the monkey he was sleeping
when he created the giraffe he was drunk
when he created the narcotics he was in high spirits
and when he created suicide he was on the ground.
When he created you lying in bed
he knew what he was doing
he was drunk and high
and created the mountains and the sea and the fire
at the same time.
He made some mistakes
but when he created you lying in bed
made all of His Sacred Universe.
Herman Hesse, Because I love you
An authentic lyric by love declaration. The poet does not limit himself to describing the effects of this feeling, but addresses himself directly to the woman he loves, revealing her the reasons why he loves her.
Because I love you, at night I came to you
so impetuous and hesitant
and you will never be able to forget me
I have come to steal your soul.
Now she is mine - entirely mine
for bad and for good,
from my impetuous and daring love
no angel can save you.
Gaius Valerius Catullus, We live, my Lesbia, and we love
La overwhelming passion of the Latin poet for his woman is expressed in one of the most famous poems ever. Secret and adulterous love it ignites between the two even though it cannot be revealed in daylight.
We live, my Lesbia, and we love,
and every treacherous murmur of the old
let the vilest currency be worth to us.
The day can die and then rise again,
but when our short day dies,
an infinite night we will sleep.
You give me a thousand kisses, and then a hundred,
then give me another thousand, and then a hundred,
therefore a thousand continuos, and therefore a hundred.
And when they will be a thousand and a thousand,
we will hide their real number,
that does not cast the evil eye on the envious
for such a high number of kisses.
Paul Neruda, I don't love you as if you were a salt rose
It is almost never possible to describe how do you love a person. Neruda summed it up in this modern sonnet, where romance and passion come together in a wonderful declaration of love, one of the most evocative poems ever.
I don't love you as if you were a salt rose, topaz
O arrow of carnations that spread fire:
I love you as you love certain dark things,
Secretly, between the shadow and the soul.
I love you as the plant that does not bloom and bears
Inside, hidden, the light of those flowers;
Thanks to your love it lives dark in my body
The concentrated aroma that rose from the earth.
I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you directly without problems or pride:
So I love you because I don't know how to love otherwise
That so, this way I am not and you are not,
So close that your hand on my chest is mine,
So close that your eyes close with my sleep.
Rabindranath Tagore, Leave your heart
The birth of love is compared to unfolding of a flower: from the minute initial bud atevolution of the petals and corolla. It all happens quickly, but watch it with nostalgia at the first sprout, full of possibilities.
Leave your heart
Finally break out,
Give in, gem, give in.
The spirit of flowering
It fell on you.
you can stay
Still bud?
Fernando Pessoa, Love, when it reveals itself
All those who experience love in their lifetime know how it unleashes a riot of emotions which make it clear, but which, at the same time, they make words appear insufficient. We don't know what to say, we don't understand how we should express ourselves. Perhaps, however, it is precisely this that indissolubly binds two lovers.
Love, when it reveals itself,
It is not known to reveal itself.
He knows how to look at her,
But he can't talk to her.
Who means what he feels
He doesn't know what to say.
Speak: it seems to lie ...
He is silent: he seems to forget ...
Ah, but if she guessed,
If he could hear the look,
And if one look were enough for her
To know they are loving her!
But whoever hears a lot is silent;
Who means what he hears
Remains without a soul or a word,
Stay alone, completely!
But if that could tell you
What I dare not tell you,
I won't have to talk to her anymore
Because I'm talking to you ...
Eugenio Montale, I went down, giving you my arm, at least a million stairs
The Italian poet dedicates these verses to his wife, disappeared after years spent together. Montale shows how love does not always require large gestures: that simple extending the arm to support the beloved is worth more than many words.
I went down, giving you my arm, at least a million stairs
and now that you are not there, there is emptiness on every step.
Even so, our long journey was short.
Mine still lasts, and I no longer need them
connections, reservations,
the traps, the scorns of those who believe
that reality is what you see.
I went down a million stairs giving you my arm
not because with four eyes perhaps you can see more.
I got off with you because I knew that about the two of us
the only true pupils, although so clouded,
they were yours.
Emily Dickinson, Sometimes with the heart
To truly love requires a combination of factors and one of the most celebrated poetesses shows how difficult it is for this to happen.
Sometimes with the Heart
Rarely with the soul
Even less with force
Few - really love.
John Keats, Without you
When you fall in love from the depths of your soul, you just can't being without the person towards whom this feeling is felt. The English poet explains this harmony and union between two different entities as well.
I can not exist without you.
I forget about everything except to see you again:
My life seems to stop there,
I don't see any further.
You absorbed me.
Right now I have the feeling
How to dissolve:
I would be extremely sad
Without the hope of seeing you again soon.
I would be afraid to get away from you.
You stole my soul away with a power
I cannot resist;
Yet I could resist until I saw you;
And even after seeing you
I often tried to reason
Against the reasons for my love.
Now I am no longer capable of it.
It would be too great a penalty.
My love Is selfish.
I can not breathe without you.
Paul Eluard, Talk to keep quiet
Complicity between two lovers also means understand each other without having to express themselves in words. This is what Éluard manifests in his poetry Talk to keep quiet.
Speak
Without having anything to say
Communication
In silence
The needs of the soul
Give voice
To the wrinkles of the face
To the eyelashes
In the corners of the mouth
Speak
Holding hands
Keep quiet
Holding hands.
Alda Merini, I have known the wonders in you
Without love, one is unable to fully enjoy them wonders that life has in store for us. In fact, some of these are known only when the heart starts beating not only for ourselves.
I have known the wonders in you
Wonders of love so discovered
Which looked like shells to me
Where I smelled the sea and the desert
Corral beaches and love in there
I am lost as in the storm
Always holding this heart still
Who (well I knew) loved a chimera.
Nazim Hikmet, You are my bondage you are my freedom
Love is made of contrasts and oppositions, as this lyric by Nazim Hikmet demonstrates.
You are my bondage you are my freedom
You are my burning flesh
Like the naked flesh of summer nights
You are my homeland
You, with the green reflections of your eyes
You, tall and victorious
You are my nostalgia
To know that you are inaccessible
At the same moment
In which I grab you.
Jacques Prevert, The boys who love each other
What Prévert describes in this poem is a young love, with the boys as protagonists. They are the ones who love each other without worrying about the anger and envy of others, able to fully enjoy a new and pure feeling.
Boys who love each other kiss standing up
Against the gates of the night
And the passers-by who pass mark them with their finger
But the guys who love each other
They are not there for anyone
And it is their shadow only
That trembles in the night
Stimulating the anger of passers-by
Their anger their contempt laughs their envy
The boys who love each other are not there for anyone
They are elsewhere much farther than the night
Much higher than the day
In the dazzling splendor of their first love.
