25 Love poems

"Alysoun" or "Alison", also known as "Bytuene Mersh ant Averil", is a late-13th or early-14th century poem in Middle English dealing with the themes of love and springtime through images familiar from other medieval poems. It forms part of the collection known as the Harley Lyrics, and exemplifies its best qualities. There may once have been music for this poem, but if so it no longer survives. "Alysoun" was included in The Oxford Book of English Verse, and it has been called one of the best lyrics in the language.

Amores is Ovid's first completed book of poetry, written in elegiac couplets. It was first published in 16 BC in five books, but Ovid, by his own account, later edited it down into the three-book edition that survives today. The book follows the popular model of the erotic elegy, as made famous by figures such as Tibullus or Propertius, but is often subversive and humorous with these tropes, exaggerating common motifs and devices to the point of absurdity.

"Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art" is a love sonnet by John Keats.

Catullus 45 is a poem by the Roman poet Catullus, describing the love between a fictional couple called Acme and Septimius. It is an over-the-top love poem that is ever so slightly tongue-in-cheek.

Chang Hen Ge is a literary masterpiece from the Tang dynasty by the famous Chinese poet Bai Juyi (772-846). It retells the love story between Emperor Xuanzong of Tang and his favorite concubine Yang Guifei (719-756). This epic poem is dated from 809.

Epipsychidion is a major poetical work published in 1821 by Percy Bysshe Shelley. The work was subtitled: Verses addressed to the noble and unfortunate Lady Emilia V—, now imprisoned in the convent of —. The title is Greek for "concerning or about a little soul", from epi, "around", "about"; and psychidion, "little soul".

The so-called Heart Book is a 16th-century Danish manuscript, now kept in Det Kongelige Bibliotek, Copenhagen.

In Blackwater Woods is a free verse poem written by Mary Oliver (1935-2019). The poem was first published in 1983 in her collection American Primitive, which won the 1984 Pulitzer Prize. The poem, like much of Oliver's work, uses imagery of nature to make a statement about human experience.

Istanbul #2461 is an ancient Sumerian cuneiform tablet which is believed to contain the oldest love poem ever found. It is on display at the Istanbul Museum of the Ancient Orient.

Khosrow and Shirin is the title of a famous tragic romance by the Persian poet Nizami Ganjavi (1141–1209), who also wrote Layla and Majnun. It tells a highly elaborated fictional version of the story of the love of the Sasanian king Khosrow II for the Armenian princess Shirin, who becomes queen of Persia. The essential narrative is a love story of Persian origin which was already well known from the great epico-historical poem the Shahnameh and other Persian writers and popular tales, and other works have the same title.

"The Lilly" is a poem written by the English poet William Blake. It was published as part of his collection Songs of Experience in 1794.

A love song is a song about romantic love, falling in love, heartbreak after a breakup, and the feelings that these experiences bring. A comprehensive list of even the best known performers and composers of love songs would be a large order.

A Love Supreme is an album by American jazz saxophonist John Coltrane. He recorded it in one session on December 9, 1964, at Van Gelder Studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, leading a quartet featuring pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Jimmy Garrison, and drummer Elvin Jones.

"A Lover's Complaint" is a narrative poem written by William Shakespeare, and published as part of the 1609 quarto of Shakespeare's Sonnets. It was published by Thomas Thorpe.

"Meeting at Night" is a Victorian English love poem by Robert Browning. The original poem appeared in Dramatic Romances and Lyrics (1845) in which "Night" and "Morning" were two sections. In 1849, the poet separated them into the two poems "Meeting at Night" and "Parting at Morning".

Muna Madan is a Nepali episodic love poem published in 1936 by the poet Laxmi Prasad Devkota. Considered a classic of Nepali literature, Muna Madan remains a popular poem and is taught in schools. The plot follows Madan, newly married to Muna, who leaves for Lhasa in Tibet to make his fortune, despite protests from his wife.

Oriri (1940) is a long poem by the birth control pioneer Marie C. Stopes, published by Heinemann as a short book. Its subject is love between a "He" and a "She", and it is written in semi-dramatic form, with other members of the cast including "Spirits of Air", "Spirits of Earth" and other "Elementals". Stopes writes in the "Argument" that prefaces the poem: "Interwoven in the tale is a crystallisation of most of what matters fundamentally in the sciences of geology and physiology, in the art of love, and in religion."

The Petit Livre d'Amour is a collection of love poems, written in c. 1500 by Pierre Sala (1457–1529), an antiquary and valet de chambre of Louis XII

The Phoenix and the Turtle is an allegorical poem about the death of ideal love by William Shakespeare. It is widely considered to be one of his most obscure works and has led to many conflicting interpretations. It has also been called "the first great published metaphysical poem". The title "The Phoenix and the Turtle" is a conventional label. As published, the poem was untitled. The "turtle" is the turtle dove, not the shelled reptile.

"Roses Are Red" is the name of a classic children's rhyming poem. It is also a class of poems inspired by that poem. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 19798. It is most commonly used as a love poem.

Sappho 31 is an archaic Greek lyric poem by the ancient Greek poet Sappho of the island of Lesbos. The poem is also known as phainetai moi after the opening words of its first line. It is one of Sappho's most famous poems, describing her love for a young woman.

"The Seagull" is a love poem in 30 lines by the 14th-century Welsh poet Dafydd ap Gwilym, probably written in or around the 1340s. Dafydd is widely seen as the greatest of the Welsh poets, and this is one of his best-known and best-loved works.

Sonnets from the Portuguese, written ca. 1845–1846 and published first in 1850, is a collection of 44 love sonnets written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. The collection was acclaimed and popular during the poet's lifetime and it remains so.

Thawathotsamat, meaning "Twelve Months," is a poem of 1,042 lines in Thai, probably composed in the late fifteenth century CE. The title is a Thai adaptation of the Pali-Sanskrit words dvā dasa māsa, two ten months. The male speaker laments over a lost lover through the course of one year, drawing on the seasonal weather for similes of his emotions. Both the speaker and beloved are addressed with royal forms. A late verse declares that the poem was written by a "young-king" with the help of three court poets. The work has sometimes been mistakenly classified as a treatise on Siamese royal ceremonies. The work is less studied and less well-known than other early works of Thai literature, partly because of the obscurity of its archaic language, and partly because of conservative concerns over its erotic passages. A new annotated Thai edition appeared in 2017.

"Wild Nights – Wild Nights!" is an 1861 poem by Emily Dickinson. It was included in her posthumous collection of Poems, Second Series, published November 9, 1891.