Love Poems

Saffron · Mon Feb 14, 2011 6:21 pm

One for Valentine's Day --

There is a pain – so utter –
It swallows substance up –
Then covers the Abyss with Trance –
So Memory can step
Around – across – upon it –
As one within a Swoon –
Goes safely – where an open eye –
Would drop Him – Bone by Bone.
—from “599” by Emily Dickinson

oops, no that can't be right. I'll try again, another E.D. This is one of my all time favorites. Gives me an idea! It would be fun if we had a thread where every one could post their own top 10.

Wild nights - Wild nights! (269)

Wild nights - Wild nights!
Were I with thee
Wild nights should be
Our luxury!

Futile - the winds -
To a Heart in port -
Done with the Compass -
Done with the Chart!

Rowing in Eden -
Ah - the Sea!
Might I but moor - tonight -
In thee!

Ok, make that 3 for Valentine's Day and now we will have covered it pretty well.

The Shirt
by Jane Kenyon

The shirt touches his neck
and smooths over his back.
It slides down his sides.
It even goes down below his belt—
down into his pants.
Lucky shirt.

lady of shallot · Mon Feb 14, 2011 6:23 pm

Was she in love with Henry Thoreau? We just read the wild nights poem the other day. I don't think she had any love life, but certainly imagination. Nice imagry

Saffron · Mon Feb 14, 2011 6:36 pm


	lady of shallot wrote: Was she in love with Henry Thoreau? We just read the wild nights poem the other day. I don't think she had any love life, but certainly imagination. Nice imagry

I do not believe Emily D was ever in love with Mr. Thoreau. Emily never married and definately had reclusive habits, but no reason to think she never had a lover or two.

oblivion · Tue Feb 15, 2011 3:40 am

There is a wonderful book on the market called "Lives like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson's Family's Feuds" by Lyndall Gordon. Informative biography which really reads well and makes good use of Emily's poems.

lady of shallot · Tue Feb 15, 2011 10:51 am

Interestingly enough we had a very nice young waiter at dinner last night who is finishing up his degree at Dartmouth college as an English major with aspirations to be a poet and eventually a professor of English. I posed the Emily D. question to him and he said that very recently there had come to light a "passionate" correspondence between Emily and a publisher but that they had never met.


	Quote: but no reason to think she never had a lover or two.

But wouldn't there be? Living in Victorian New England (where up until fairly recently contraceptive devices were illegal in CT.) Not only that but living with her family?

oblivion · Wed Feb 16, 2011 3:47 am

According to the above-mentioned book, she certainly had a few "crushes", if not downright love for a few people, albeit usually the wrong ones.

Penelope · Mon Sep 12, 2011 3:19 pm

I'm sorry if this has been posted before. It was in our weekend paper and I was quite stricken.

I love Noel Coward's gentle but sincere wit.

I Am No Good at Love

* Noël Coward
* guardian.co.uk, Friday 9 September 2011 22.55 BST

I am no good at love
My heart should be wise and free
I kill the unfortunate golden goose
Whoever it may be
With over-articulate tenderness
And too much intensity.

I am no good at love
I batter it out of shape
Suspicion tears at my sleepless mind
And, gibbering like an ape,
I lie alone in the endless dark
Knowing there's no escape.

I am no good at love
When my easy heart I yield
Wild words come tumbling from my mouth
Which should have stayed concealed;
And my jealousy turns a bed of bliss
Into a battlefield.

I am no good at love
I betray it with little sins
For I feel the misery of the end
In the moment that it begins
And the bitterness of the last good-bye
Is the bitterness that wins.

realiz · Tue Sep 13, 2011 1:47 pm

Love Poem
By Dorothea Lasky Dorothea Lasky

The rain whistled.

A taxi brought me to your apartment building
And there I stood.

I had dreamed a dream
Of us in a bedroom.
The light shining upon us in white sheets.

You were singing me a song of your sailing days
And in the dream
I reached deep in you and pulled out a cardinal
Which in bright red
Flew out the window.

Sometimes when we talk
On the phone, I think to myself
That the deep perfect of your soul
Is what draws me to you.
But still what soul is perfect?
All souls are misshapen and off-colored.
Morning comes within a soul
And makes it obey another law
In which all souls are snowflakes.

Once at a funeral, a man had died
And with the prayers said, his soul flew up in a hurry
Like it had been let out of something awful.
It was strangely colored, that soul.
And it was a funny shape and a funny temperature.
As it blew away, all of us looking felt the cold.

giselle · Tue Sep 13, 2011 6:04 pm

I really like both of these poems (certainly sounds like Noel is bad at love!) and I particularly like the closing of 'Love Poem' characterizing the soul by shape and temperature -- its pretty challenging to get our heads around the concept of 'soul' and I think this is a good attempt. Does beg the question of whether or not it is possible to fall in love with someone's soul, have to ponder that one a bit.

Penelope · Tue Sep 13, 2011 6:38 pm


	Quote: giselle: Does beg the question of whether or not it is possible to fall in love with someone's soul, have to ponder that one a bit.

I never believed any bloke who said it was my soul they wanted. :roll:

But it is true that we fall in love with people for very silly reasons. I always thought I would marry a handsome dark Italian who would sing romantic arias to me. Instead I married a red-headed Lancashire Lad who made me laugh, and still does.

There are just people we feel comfortable with.......complete...sort of feeling. We don't want to lose them because then we would feel incomplete......Well, that's how I see it......nothing rational about it at all. :lol:

All love that has not friendship for its base, is like a mansion built upon the sand.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox

giselle · Tue Sep 13, 2011 7:26 pm


	Penelope wrote: I never believed any bloke who said it was my soul they wanted.

Very wise, Penny!

I always enjoy your use of British expressions ... like 'bloke'. That's a great one.

Penelope · Fri Oct 14, 2011 5:08 pm

A Woman's Poem

He didn't like the casserole
And he didn't like my cake,
He said my biscuits were too hard
Not like his mother used to make.
I didn't perk the coffee right
He didn't like the stew,
I didn't mend his socks
The way his mother used to do.
I pondered for an answer
I was looking for a clue.
Then I turned around and
smacked him one

Like his mother used to do.
******************************************

I can confirm that this is a Love Poem.......

kelstan · Fri Oct 14, 2011 10:21 pm

My heart flutters when I come home and my husband has been cleaning and Lemon Pinesol is the first thing I smell when I walk through the door.

anisha_astrologer · Sat Oct 15, 2011 12:54 am

john keats' Endymion is a beautiful love poem. i loved it. it appeals to our sense of timeless love.

tjamesmoss.author · Sat Oct 15, 2011 8:10 am

It's so good to be a part of a community that READS.

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