Great Love Poems

Shane Weller

• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780486272849
• eBook ISBN: 9780486111520
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

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.

Alphabetical List of Titles and First Lines

(Where the title is the same as the first line of a poem, only the former is given.)

page

Absence

Absent from thee, I languish still

Accept, thou shrine of my dead saint

Ah, what avails the sceptred race!

All in the Downs the fleet was moored

‘Along the Field as We Came By’

Ancient person, for whom I

And wilt thou leave me thus?

An hour with thee! When earliest day

An idle poet, here and there

Annabel Lee

Apparition, The

Appeal, The

Argument, An

As if a Phantom Caress’d Me

As I went down the hill along the wall

Ask me no more where Jove bestows

“ ‘As Ye Came from the Holy Land’”

At the Mid Hour of Night

Azalea, The

Bad Dreams

Banks o’ Doon, The

Bargain, The

Birthday, A

‘Bright Star, Would I Were Stedfast as Thou Art—’

Broken Appointment, A

Brown Penny

Busy old fool, unruly Sun

‘By This He Knew She Wept with Waking Eyes’

Canonization, The

Cards and Kisses

Carrier Letter

Cherry-Ripe

Chop-Cherry

Clod and the Pebble, The

Cold in the earth—and the deep snow piled above thee

Come live with me and be my Love

Come, Madam, come, all rest my powers defy

‘Come Not, When I Am Dead’

Come to me in my dreams, and then

Come to me in the silence of the night

Consider this small dust, here in the glass

Constant Lover, The

Cupid and my Campaspe play’d

Definition of Love, The

Diaphenia

Diaphenia like the daffadowndilly

Did Not

Divine Rapture, A

Down by the Salley Gardens

Drinking Song, A

Drink to me only with thine eyes

Echo

Ecstasy, The

E’en like two little bank-dividing brooks

Elegy: On His Mistress Going to Bed

Elizabeth of Bohemia

Eros Turannos

Exequy on His Wife

‘False though She Be to Me and Love’

Farewell, A

‘Farewell, Ungrateful Traitor!’

First Day, The

First Love

For Godsake hold your tongue, and let me love

Freedom and Love

From Pent-Up Aching Rivers

‘From You Have I Been Absent in the Spring’

Funeral, The

Garden of Love, The

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may

Give All to Love

Gloire de Dijon

Go, lovely Rose—

Had we but world enough, and time

Helen, thy beauty is to me

Her Reply

His Lady’s Cruelty

Hour Glass, The

Hour with Thee, An

How delicious is the winning

How did the party go in Portman Square?

‘How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count the Ways’

‘How Sweet I Roam’d from Field to Field’

—I am a gentleman in a dustcoat trying

‘I, Being Born a Woman and Distressed’

I cannot tell you how it was

If all the world and love were young

‘If Grief for Grief Can Touch Thee’

‘If I Am Proud, You Surely Know’

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

I have been here before

I Hid My Love

‘I Loved a Lass, a Fair One’

I loved thee, though I told thee not

I must not think of thee; and, tired yet strong

In a Cathedral City

I ne’er was struck before that hour

‘In Our Old Shipwrecked Days There Was an Hour’

In this fair stranger...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• SIR THOMAS WYATT - (1503-1542)
• EDMUND SPENSER - (1552-1599)
• SIR WALTER RALEIGH - (1552?—1618)
• SIR PHILIP SIDNEY - (1554-1586)
• JOHN LYLY - (1554?—1606)
• GEORGE PEELE - (1556-1596)
• HENRY CONSTABLE - (1562—1613)
• SAMUEL DANIEL - (1562?—1619)
• MICHAEL DRAYTON - (1563-1631)
• CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE - (1564-1593)
• WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE - (1564—1616)
• THOMAS CAMPION - (1567—1620)
• SIR HENRY WOTTON - (1568-1639)
• JOHN DONNE - (1572—1631)
• BEN JONSON - (1573?-1637)
• THOMAS HEYWOOD - (1574?—1641)
• GEORGE WITHER - (1588-1667)
• ROBERT HERRICK - (1591—1674)
• FRANCIS QUARLES - (1592—1644)
• HENRY KING - (1592—1669)
• THOMAS CAREW - (1595?—1645?)
• EDMUND WALLER - (1606-1687)
• JOHN MILTON - (1608—1674)
• SIR JOHN SUCKLING - (1609—1642)
• RICHARD LOVELACE - (1618—1658)
• ANDREW MARVELL - (1621—1678)
• JOHN DRYDEN - (1631-1700)
• JOHN WILMOT, EARL OF ROCHESTER - (1647—1680)
• MATTHEW PRIOR - (1664-1721)
• WILLIAM CONGREVE - (1670—1729)
• JOHN GAY - (1685-1732)
• HENRY CAREY - (1687?—1743)
• WILLIAM COWPER - (1731-1800)
• WILLIAM BLAKE - (1757-1827)
• ROBERT BURNS - (1759—1796)
• WILLIAM WORDSWORTH - (1770—1850)
• SIR WALTER SCOTT - (1771—1832)
• WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR - (1775-1864)
• THOMAS CAMPBELL - (1777—1844)
• THOMAS MOORE - (1779-1852)
• GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON - (1788-1824)
• PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY - (1792-1822)
• JOHN CLARE - (1793—1864)
• JOHN KEATS - (1795-1821)
• THOMAS HOOD - (1799—1845)
• WILLIAM BARNES - (1801—1886)
• RALPH WALDO EMERSON - (1803-1882)
• ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING - (1806-1861)
• EDGAR ALLAN POE - (1809—1849)
• ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON - ( 1809-1892)
• ROBERT BROWNING - (1812—1889)
• EMILY BRONTË - ( 1818-1848)
• WALT WHITMAN - (1819-1892)
• MATTHEW ARNOLD - (1822-1888)
• COVENTRY PATMORE - ( 1823-1896)
• DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI - (1828-1882)
• GEORGE MEREDITH - (1828—1909)
• EMILY DICKINSON - (1830—1886)
• CHRISTINA ROSSETTI - (1830-1909)
• WILLIAM MORRIS - (1834—1896)
• ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE - (1837-1909)
• WILFRID BLUNT - (1840-1922)
• THOMAS HARDY - (1840-1928)
• ALICE MEYNELL - (1847-1922)
• A. E. HOUSMAN - (1859-1936)
• W. B. YEATS - (1864-1939)
• ARTHUR SYMONS - (1865-1945)
• ERNEST DOWSON - (1867—1900)
• EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON - (1869-1935)
• HILAIRE BELLOC - (1870-1953)
• ROBERT FROST - (1874-1963)
• D. H. LAWRENCE - (1885-1930)
• EZRA POUND - (1885-1972)
• EDWARD THOMAS - (1887-1917)
• JOHN CROWE RANSOM - (1888-1974)
• EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY - (1892—1950)
• HART CRANE - (1899-1932)
• Alphabetical List of Titles and First Lines - (Where the title is the same as the first line of a poem, only the former is given.)