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    Great Love Poems
    Great Love Poems
    Great Love Poems
    Ebook289 pages1 hour

    Great Love Poems

    By Dover Publications

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    Never give all the heart, for love
    Will hardly seem worth thinking of
    To passionate women if it seem
    Certain, and they never dream
    That it fades out from kiss to kiss;
    For everything that's lovely is
    But a brief, dreamy, kind delight.
    — W. B. Yeats
    Down through the millennia the emotion of love has inspired countless poets to great heights of lyrical expression. In this volume readers can sample more than 150 great love poems by English and American poets. Spanning over four centuries of literary creation in the service of amour, the works include a selection of Shakespeare's sonnets, John Donne's "The Ecstasy," William Blake's "The Garden of Love," Robert Burns's "The Banks o'Doon" and "John Anderson My Jo," Lord Byron's "She Walks in Beauty," Edgar Allan Poe's "Annabel Lee," Robert Browning's "Meeting at Night," as well as works by W. B. Yeats, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, John Keats, Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, John Milton, Richard Lovelace, Sir John Suckling, Matthew Arnold, A. E. Housman, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Robert Frost. Includes two selections from the Common Core State Standards Initiative: "Sonnet 73" and "Song."
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDover Publications
    Release dateMar 1, 2012
    ISBN9780486111520
    Great Love Poems

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      Book preview

      Great Love Poems - Dover Publications

      EDMUND SPENSER

      (1552-1599)

      ‘One Day I Wrote Her Name upon the Strand’

      One day I wrote her name upon the strand, But came the waves and washed it away: Again I wrote it with a second hand, But came the tide, and made my pains his prey.

      ‘Vain man,’ said she, ‘that dost in vain assay A mortal thing so to immortalize, For I myself shall like to this decay, And eke my name be wiped out likewise.’

      ‘Not so,’ quod I, ’let baser things devise To die in dust, but you shall live by fame: My verse your virtues rare shall eternize, And in the heavens write your glorious name,

      Where, whenas Death shall all the world subdue, Our love shall live, and later life renew.’

      SIR WALTER RALEIGH

      (1552?—1618)

      ‘As Ye Came from the Holy Land’

      ‘As ye came from the holy land

      Of Walsinghame,

      Met you not with my true love

      By the way as you came?’

      ‘How should I know your true love,

      That have met many a one

      As I came from the holy land,

      That have come, that have gone?’

      ‘She is neither white nor brown,

      But as the heavens fair;

      There is none hath her form divine

      In the earth or the air.’

      ‘Such a one did I meet, good sir,

      Such an angelic face,

      Who like a nymph, like a queen, did appear

      In her gait, in her grace.’

      ‘She hath left me here alone,

      All alone, as unknown,

      Who sometime did me lead with herself,

      And me loved as her own.’

      ‘What’s the cause that she

      leaves you alone

      And a new way doth take,

      That sometime did love you as her own,

      And her joy did you make?’

      ‘I have loved her all my youth,

      But now am old, as you see:

      Love likes not the falling fruit,

      Nor the withered tree.

      ‘Know that Love is a careless child,

      And forgets promise past;

      He is blind, he is deaf when he list,

      And in faith never fast.

      ‘His desire is a dureless content,

      And a trustless joy;

      He is won with a world of despair,

      And is lost with a toy.

      ‘Of womenkind such indeed is the love,

      Or the word love abused,

      Under which many childish desires

      And conceits are excused.

      ‘But true love is a durable fire,

      In the mind ever burning,

      Never sick, never dead, never cold,

      From itself never turning.’

      Her Reply

      ²

      If all the world and love were young,

      And truth in every shepherd’s tongue,

      These pretty pleasures might me move

      To live with thee and be thy Love.

      But Time drives flocks from field to fold;

      When rivers rage and rocks grow cold;

      And Philomel becometh dumb;

      The rest complains of cares to come.

      The flowers do fade, and wanton fields

      To wayward Winter reckoning yields:

      A honey tongue, a heart of gall,

      Is fancy’s spring, but sorrow’s fall.

      Thy gowns, thy shoes, thy beds of roses,

      Thy cap, thy kirtle, and thy posies,

      Soon break, soon wither—soon forgotten,

      In folly ripe, in reason rotten.

      Thy belt of straw and ivy-buds,

      Thy coral clasps and amber studs,—

      All these in me no means can move

      To come to thee and be thy Love.

      But could youth last, and love still breed,

      Had joys no date, nor age no need,

      Then these delights my mind might move

      To live with thee and be thy Love.

      SIR PHILIP SIDNEY

      (1554-1586)

      ‘Loving in Truth, and Fain in Verse My Love to Show’

      Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show,

      That the dear she might take some pleasure of my pain,

      Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know,

      Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain,

      I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe:

      Studying inventions fine, her wits to entertain,

      Oft turning others’ leaves, to see if thence would flow

      Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sunburned brain.

      But words came halting forth, wanting Invention’s stay;

      Invention, Nature’s child, fled stepdame Study’s blows;

      And others’ feet still seemed but strangers in my way.

      Thus, great with child to speak, and helpless in my throes,

      Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite:

      ‘Fool,’ said my Muse to me, ‘look in thy heart, and write.’

      His Lady’s Cruelty

      With how sad steps, O Moon, thou climb‘st the skies!

      How silently, and with how wan a face!

      What! may it be that even in heavenly place

      That busy archer his sharp arrows tries?

      Sure, if that long-with-love-acquainted eyes

      Can judge of love, thou feel’st a lover’s case:

      I read it in thy looks; thy languish’d grace

      To me, that feel the like, thy state descries.

      Then, even of fellowship, O Moon, tell me,

      Is constant love deem’d there but want of wit?

      Are beauties there as proud as here they be?

      Do they above love to be loved, and yet

      Those lovers scorn whom that love doth possess?

      Do they call ‘virtue’ there—ungratefulness?

      The Bargain

      My true love hath my heart, and I have his,

      By just exchange one for another given;

      I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss,

      There never was a better bargain driven:

      My true love hath my heart, and I have his.

      His heart in me keeps him and me in one,

      My heart in him his thoughts and senses guides;

      He loves my heart, for once it was his own,

      I cherish his because in me it bides:

      My true love hath my heart, and I have his.

      JOHN LYLY

      (1554?—1606)

      Cards and Kisses

      Cupid and my Campaspe play’d

      At cards for kisses—Cupid paid:

      He stakes his quiver, bow, and arrows,

      His mother’s doves, and team of sparrows;

      Loses them too; then down he throws

      The coral of his lips, the rose

      Growing on’s cheek (but none knows how);

      With these, the crystal of his brow,

      And then the dimple of his chin:

      All these did my Campaspe win.

      At last he set her both his eyes—

      She won, and Cupid blind did rise.

      O Love! has she done this for thee?

      What shall, alas! become of me?

      GEORGE PEELE

      (1556-1596)

      A Summer Song

      When as the rye reach to the chin,

      And chopcherry, chopcherry ripe within,

      Strawberries swimming in the cream,

      And school-boys playing in the stream;

      Then O, then O, then O my true love said,

      Till that time come again,

      She could not live a maid.

      HENRY CONSTABLE

      (1562—1613)

      Diaphenia

      Diaphenia like the daffadowndilly,

      White as the sun, fair as the lily,

      Heigh ho, how I do love thee!

      I do love thee as my lambs

      Are beloved of their dams;

      How blest were I if thou wouldst prove me.

      Diaphenia like the spreading roses,

      That in thy sweets all sweets encloses,

      Fair sweet, how I do love thee!

      I do love thee as each flower

      Loves the sun’s life-giving power;

      For dead, thy breath to life might move me.

      Diaphenia like to all things blessed

      When all thy praises are expressed,

      Dear joy, how I do love thee!

      As the birds do love the spring,

      Or the bees their careful king:

      Then in requite, sweet virgin, love me!

      SAMUEL DANIEL

      (1562?—1619)

      ‘If This Be Love, to Draw a Weary Breath’

      If this be love, to draw a weary breath,

      To paint on floods till the shore cry to th’air,

      With downward looks, still reading on the earth

      The sad memorials of my loves despair;

      If this be love, to war against my soul,

      Lie down to

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