Famous Love Poetry has some of the most popular love poetry written.

The first example of famous love poetry in this section is by Wystan Hugh Auden (February 21, 1907 – September 29, 1973), an English poet and critic who is widely regarded as among the most influential and important writers of the 20th century.

One of his most famous love poetry is Lullaby, which is reproduced here:

Lullaby

by W. H. Auden

Lay Your Sleeping head, my love,

Human on my faithless arm:

Time and fevers burn away

Individual beauty from

Thoughtful children, and the grave

Proves the child ephemeral:

But in my arms till break of day

Let the living creature lie,

Mortal, guilty, but to me

The entirely beautiful.

Soul and body have no bounds:

To lovers as they lie upon

Her tolerant enchanted slope

In their ordinary swoon,

Grave the vision Venus sends

Of supernatural sympathy,

Universal love and hope;

While an abstract insight wakes

Among the glaciers and the rocks

The hermit's carnal ecstasy,

Certainty, fidelity

On the stroke of midnight pass

Like vibrations of a bell

And fashionable madmen raise

Their pedantic boring cry:

Every farthing of the cost.

All the dreaded cards foretell.

Shall be paid, but from this night

Not a whisper, not a thought.

Not a kiss nor look be lost.

Beauty, midnight, vision dies:

Let the winds of dawn that blow

Softly round your dreaming head

Such a day of welcome show

Eye and knocking heart may bless,

Find our mortal world enough;

Noons of dryness find you fed

By the involuntary powers,

Nights of insult let you pass

Watched by every human love.

Omar Khayyam was a great writer and poet, as well as many other things! Famous for his literary works, he is believed to have written about a thousand four-line verses. This is his contribution to famous love poetry:

A Book of Verse

by Omar Khayyam

A book of verse, underneath the bough,

A jug of wine, a loaf of bread - and thou

Beside me singing in the wilderness -

Ah, wilderness were paradise now!

A four-line wonder of famous love poetry indeed by Omar Khayyam. The great Russian novelist and poet, Alexander Pushkin weighs in with Wondrous Moment as his own contribution to famous love poetry..

Wondrous Moment

by Alexander Pushkin

The wondrous moment of our meeting . . .

I well remember you appear

Before me like a vision fleeting,

A beauty's angel pure and clear.

In hopeless ennui surrounding

The worldly bustle, to my ear

For long your tender voice kept sounding,

For long in dreams came features dear.

Time passed. Unruly storms confounded

Old dreams, and I from year to year

Forgot how tender you had sounded,

Your heavenly features once so dear.

My backwoods days dragged slow and quiet —

Dull fence around, dark vault above —

Devoid of God and uninspired,

Devoid of tears, of fire, of love.

Sleep from my soul began retreating,

And here you once again appear

Before me like a vision fleeting,

A beauty's angel pure and clear.

In ecstasy the heart is beating,

Old joys for it anew revive;

Inspired and God-filled, it is greeting

The fire, and tears, and love alive.

Christina (Georgina) Rossetti (1830-1894) is the next poet we feature on famous love poetry. She was one of the most important English woman poets ever. Her deeply religious and intuitively spontaneous output enriched the Victorian era.

A Birthday is certainly one of her most famous love poetry, and the joyous triumphant tone of her rhymes make this poem a favourite one:

A Birthday

by Christina Rossetti

My heart is like a singing bird

Whose nest is in a watered shoot;

My heart is like an apple tree

Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit;

My heart is like a rainbow shell

That paddles in a halcyon sea;

My heart is gladder than all these

Because my love is come to me.

Raise me a dais of silk and down;

Hang it with vair and purple dyes;

Carve it in doves and pomegranates,

And peacocks with a hundred eyes;

Work it in gold and silver grapes,

In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys;

Because the birthday of my life

Is come, my love is come to me.

There are so many beautiful enriching verse that make up famous love poetry. It is sheer delight traversing its various roads and lanes through the ages!

Examples 6

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

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