Famous Amorous Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Amorous poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous amorous poems. These examples illustrate what a famous amorous poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
John Keats
O GODDESS! hear these tuneless numbers, wrung
By sweet enforcement and remembrance dear,
And pardon that thy secrets should be sung
Even into thine own soft-conch¨¨d ear:
Surely I dream'd to-day, or did I see 5
The wing¨¨d Psyche with awaken'd eyes?
I wander'd in a forest thoughtlessly,
And, on the sudden, fainting with surprise,
Saw two fair creatures, couch¨¨d...Read more of this...
by
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Greene, garlanded with February's few flowers
Ere March came in with Marlowe's rapturous rage;
Peele, from whose hand the sweet white locks of age
Took the mild chaplet woven of honored hours;
Nash, laughing hard; Lodge, flushed from lyric bowers;
And Lilly, a goldfinch in a twisted cage
Fed by some gay great lady's pettish page
Till short sweet songs gush clear like short spring showers;
Kid,...Read more of this...
by
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Women have loved before as I love now;
At least, in lively chronicles of the past—
Of Irish waters by a Cornish prow
Or Trojan waters by a Spartan mast
Much to their cost invaded—here and there,
Hunting the amorous line, skimming the rest,
I find some woman bearing as I bear
Love like a burning city in the breast.
I think however that of all alive
I...Read more of this...
by
Louise Gluck
Sleep, pretty lady, the night is enfolding you;
Drift, and so lightly, on crystalline streams.
Wrapped in its perfumes, the darkness is holding you;
Starlight bespangles the way of your dreams.
Chorus the nightingales, wistfully amorous;
Blessedly quiet, the blare of the day.
All the sweet hours may your visions be glamorous-
Sleep, pretty lady, as long as you may.
Sleep, pretty lady, the night shall be...Read more of this...
by
John Milton
O Nightingale! that on yon bloomy spray
Warblest at eve, when all the woods are still,
Thou with fresh hope the lover's heart dost fill,
While the jolly hours lead on propitious May.
Thy liquid notes that close the eye of day,
First heard before the shallow cuckoo's bill,
Portend success in love; O, if Jove's will
Have linked that amorous power to thy soft lay,
Now...Read more of this...
by
Ogden Nash
In fourteen hundred and ninety-two,
Someone sailed the ocean blue.
Somebody borrowed the fare in Spain
For a business trip on the bounding main,
And to prove to the people, by actual test,
You could get to the East by sailing West.
Somebody said, Sail on! Sail on!
And studied China and China's lingo,
And cried from the bow, There's China now!
And promptly bumped into San Domingo.
Somebody...Read more of this...
by
Elinor Wylie
When my eyes are weeds,
And my lips are petals, spinning
Down the wind that has beginning
Where the crumpled beeches start
In a fringe of salty reeds;
When my arms are elder-bushes,
And the rangy lilac pushes
Upward, upward through my heart;
Summer, do your worst!
Light your tinsel moon, and call on
Your performing stars to fall on
Headlong through your paper sky;
Nevermore shall I be cursed
By a...Read more of this...
by
John Wilmot
Much wine had passed, with grave discourse
Of who fucks who, and who does worse
(Such as you usually do hear
From those that diet at the Bear),
When I, who still take care to see
Drunkenness relieved by lechery,
Went out into St. James's Park
To cool my head and fire my heart.
But though St. James has th' honor on 't,
'Tis consecrate to prick and...Read more of this...
by
Robert Burns
I GAT your letter, winsome Willie;
Wi’ gratefu’ heart I thank you brawlie;
Tho’ I maun say’t, I wad be silly,
And unco vain,
Should I believe, my coaxin billie
Your flatterin strain.
But I’se believe ye kindly meant it:
I sud be laith to think ye hinted
Ironic satire, sidelins sklented
On my poor Musie;
Tho’ in sic phraisin terms ye’ve penn’d it,
I scarce...Read more of this...
by
Paul Eluard
I have not always had this certainty, this pessimism which reassures the best among us. There was
a time when my friends laughed at me. I was not the master of my words. A certain indifference, I
have not always known well what I wanted to say, but most often it was because I had nothing to
say. The necessity of...Read more of this...
by
Francesco Petrarch
SONNET LXXXV. Avventuroso più d' altro terreno. HE APOSTROPHIZES THE SPOT WHERE LAURA FIRST SALUTED HIM. Ah, happiest spot of earth! in this sweet placeLove first beheld my condescending fairRetard her steps, to smile with courteous graceOn me, and smiling glad the ambient air.The deep-cut image, wrought with skilful care,Time...Read more of this...
by
Francesco Petrarch
CANZONE XX. Ben mi credea passar mio tempo omai. HE CANNOT LIVE WITHOUT SEEING HER, BUT WOULD NOT DIE THAT HE MAY STILL LOVE HER. As pass'd the years which I have left behind,To pass my future years I fondly thought,Amid old studies, with desires the same;But, from my lady since I...Read more of this...
by
Francesco Petrarch
[Pg 253] SONNET XXIV. Gli occhi di ch' io parlai sì caldamente. HIS LYRE IS NOW ATTUNED ONLY TO WOE. The eyes, the face, the limbs of heavenly mould,So long the theme of my impassion'd lay,Charms which so stole me from myself away,That strange to other men the course...Read more of this...
by
John Wilmot
Vulcan, contrive me such a cup
As Nestor used of old;
Show all thy skill to trim it up,
Damask it round with gold.
Make it so large that, filled with sack
Up to the swelling brim,
Vast toasts on the delicious lake
Like ships at sea may swim.
Engrave not battle on its cheek:
With war I've nought to do;
I'm none of those that took Maastricht,
Nor Yarmouth...Read more of this...
by
Sylvia Plath
How this tart fable instructs
And mocks! Here's the parody of that moral mousetrap
Set in the proverbs stitched on samplers
Approving chased girls who get them to a tree
And put on bark's nun-black
Habit which deflects
All amorous arrows. For to sheathe the virgin shape
In a scabbard of wood baffles pursuers,
Whether goat-thighed or god-haloed. Ever since that first Daphne
Switched her incomparable back
For a...Read more of this...
by
Francesco Petrarch
SESTINA III. L' aere gravato, e l' importuna nebbia. HE COMPARES LAURA TO WINTER, AND FORESEES THAT SHE WILL ALWAYS BE THE SAME. The overcharged air, the impending cloud,Compress'd together by impetuous winds,Must presently discharge themselves in rain;Already as of crystal are the streams,And, for the fine grass late that clothed...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
1
SOMETHING startles me where I thought I was safest;
I withdraw from the still woods I loved;
I will not go now on the pastures to walk;
I will not strip the clothes from my body to meet my lover the sea;
I will not touch my flesh to the earth, as to other flesh, to renew me.
O how...Read more of this...
by
Francesco Petrarch
[Pg 76] CANZONE X. Poichè per mio destino. IN PRAISE OF LAURA'S EYES: IN THEM HE FINDS EVERY GOOD, AND HE CAN NEVER CEASE TO PRAISE THEM. Since then by destinyI am compell'd to sing the strong desire,Which here condemns me ceaselessly to sigh,May Love, whose quenchless fireExcites...Read more of this...
by
Eugene Field
When Willie was a little boy,
No more than five or six,
Right constantly he did annoy
His mother with his tricks.
Yet not a picayune cared I
For what he did or said,
Unless, as happened frequently,
The rascal wet the bed.
Closely he cuddled up to me,
And put his hands in mine,
Till all at once I seemed to be
Afloat...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
FROM pent-up, aching rivers;
From that of myself, without which I were nothing;
From what I am determin’d to make illustrious, even if I stand sole among men;
From my own voice resonant—singing the phallus,
Singing the song of procreation,
Singing the need of superb children, and therein superb grown people,
Singing the muscular urge and the blending,
Singing the...Read more of this...
by
John Milton
I
O Nightingale, that on yon bloomy Spray
Warbl'st at eeve, when all the Woods are still,
Thou with fresh hope the Lovers heart dost fill,
While the jolly hours lead on propitious May,
Thy liquid notes that close the eye of Day,
First heard before the shallow Cuccoo's bill
Portend success in love; O if Jove's will
Have linkt that amorous power to thy soft lay,
Now...Read more of this...
by
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
A little leaf just in the forest's edge,
All summer long, had listened to the wooing
Of amorous brids that flew across the hedge,
Singing their blithe sweet songs for her undoing.
So many were the flattering things they told her,
The parent tree seemed quite too small to hold her.
At last one lonesome day she saw them fly
Across the fields behind the coquette...Read more of this...
by
Alec Derwent (A D) Hope
Reading the menu at the morning service:
- Iced Venusberg perhaps, or buttered bum -
Orders the usual sex-ersatz, and, nervous,
Glances around - Will she or won't she come?
The congregation dissected into pews
Gulping their strip teas in the luminous cavern
Agape's sacamental berry stews;
The nickel-plated light and clatter of heaven
Receive him, temporary Tantalus
Into...Read more of this...
by
Eugene Field
To-day, fair Thisbe, winsome girl!
Strays o'er the meads where daisies blow,
Or, ling'ring where the brooklets purl,
Laves in the cool, refreshing flow.
To-morrow, Thisbe, with a host
Of amorous suitors in her train,
Comes like a goddess forth to coast
Or skate upon the frozen main.
To-day, sweet posies mark her track,
While birds sing gayly in the trees;
To-morrow morn, her...Read more of this...
by
D. H. Lawrence
I wonder, can the night go by;
Can this shot arrow of travel fly
Shaft-golden with light, sheer into the sky
Of a dawned to-morrow,
Without ever sleep delivering us
From each other, or loosing the dolorous
Unfruitful sorrow!
What is it then that you can see
That at the window endlessly
You watch the red sparks whirl and flee
And...Read more of this...
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