Famous No Love Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous No Love poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous no love poems. These examples illustrate what a famous no love poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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The Old Huntsman

by Siegfried Sassoon
 I’ve never ceased to curse the day I signed 
A seven years’ bargain for the Golden Fleece. 
’Twas a bad deal all round; and dear enough 
It cost me, what with my daft management, 
And the mean folk as owed and never paid me, 
And backing losers; and the local bucks 
Egging me on with whiskys while I bragged...Read more of this...

Love Sonnet XVII

by Pablo Neruda
 I do not love you as if you were a salt rose, or topaz
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a...Read more of this...

The Appeal

by D. H. Lawrence
You, Helen, who see the stars
As mistletoe berries burning in a black tree,
You surely, seeing I am a bowl of kisses,
Should put your mouth to mine and drink of me.

Helen, you let my kisses steam
Wasteful into the night's black nostrils; drink
Me up I pray; oh you who are Night's Bacchante,
How can you from my bowl of kisses shrink!...Read more of this...

Lost

by Robert William Service
 "Black is the sky, but the land is white--
 (O the wind, the snow and the storm!)--
 Father, where is our boy to-night?
 Pray to God he is safe and warm."

 "Mother, mother, why should you fear?
 Safe is he, and the Arctic moon
 Over his cabin shines so clear--
 Rest and sleep, 'twill be morning soon."

"It's getting dark...Read more of this...

Sonnet 116: Let me not to the marriage of true minds

by William Shakespeare
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within...Read more of this...

A Song Of The Sandbags

by Robert William Service
 No, Bill, I'm not a-spooning out no patriotic tosh
 (The cove be'ind the sandbags ain't a death-or-glory cuss).
And though I strafes 'em good and 'ard I doesn't 'ate the Boche,
 I guess they're mostly decent, just the same as most of us.
I guess they loves their 'omes and kids as much as you or me;
 And just the same...Read more of this...

Michael-Angelo

by D. H. Lawrence
God shook thy roundness in His finger's cup,
He sunk His hands in firmness down thy sides,
And drew the circle of His grasp, O Man,
Along thy limbs delighted, thine, His bride's.

And so thou wert God-shapen: His finger
Curved thy mouth for thee, and His strong shoulder
Planted thee upright: art not proud to see
In the curve of thine exquisite form the joy of...Read more of this...

End of Another Home Holiday

by D. H. Lawrence
I

When shall I see the half moon sink again
Behind the black sycamore at the end of the garden?
When will the scent of the dim, white phlox
Creep up the wall to me, and in at my open window?

Why is it, the long slow stroke of the midnight bell,
    (Will it never finish the twelve?)
Falls again and again on...Read more of this...

Why I Love Thee?

by Sadakichi Hartmann
Why I love thee?
Ask why the seawind wanders,
Why the shore is aflush with the tide,
Why the moon through heaven meanders;
Like seafaring ships that ride
On a sullen, motionless deep;
Why the seabirds are fluttering the strand
Where the waves sing themselves to sleep
And starshine lives in the curves of the sand!

...Read more of this...

Longing

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
If you could sit with me beside the sea to-day,
And whisper with me sweetest dreamings o’er and o’er;
I think I should not find the clouds so dim and gray,
And not so loud the waves complaining at the shore.

If you could sit with me upon the shore to-day,
And hold my hand in yours as in the days of old,
I think I...Read more of this...

A White Blossom

by D. H. Lawrence
A tiny moon as white and small as a single jasmine flower
Leans all alone above my window, on night's wintry bower,
Liquid as lime-tree blossom, soft as brilliant water or rain
She shines, the one white love of my youth, which all sin cannot stain....Read more of this...

She Walks in Beauty

by George (Lord) Byron
She walks in Beauty, like the night 
Of cloudless climes and starry skies; 
And all that's best of dark and bright 
Meet in her aspect and her eyes: 
Thus mellowed to that tender light 
Which Heaven to gaudy day denies. 

One shade the more, one ray the less, 
Had half impaired the nameless grace 
Which waves in every raven tress,...Read more of this...

Here I Am ..

by Charles Bukowski
 drunk again at 3 a.m. at the end of my 2nd bottle
of wine, I have typed from a dozen to 15 pages of
poesy
an old man
maddened for the flesh of young girls in this
dwindling twilight
liver gone
kidneys going
pancrea pooped
top-floor blood pressure 
while all the fear of the wasted years
laughs between my toes
no woman will live with me
no Florence Nightingale to watch...Read more of this...

Bei Hennef

by D. H. Lawrence
The little river twittering in the twilight,
The wan, wondering look of the pale sky,
    This is almost bliss.

And everything shut up and gone to sleep,
All the troubles and anxieties and pain
    Gone under the twilight.

Only the twilight now, and the soft "Sh!" of the river
    That will last for ever.

And at...Read more of this...

Shall I compare thee to a summers day? (Sonnet 18 XVIII)

by William Shakespeare
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer shall not...Read more of this...

Love and Friendship

by Emily Brontë
Love is like the wild rose-briar,
Friendship like the holly-tree—
The holly is dark when the rose-briar blooms
But which will bloom most constantly?

The wild rose-briar is sweet in spring,
Its summer blossoms scent the air;
Yet wait till winter comes again
And who will call the wild-briar fair?

Then scorn the silly rose-wreath now
And deck thee with the holly’s sheen,
That when December blights thy brow
He still...Read more of this...

350. Epistle to John Maxwell Esq. of Terraughty

by Robert Burns
 HEALTH to the Maxwell’s veteran Chief!
Health, aye unsour’d by care or grief:
Inspir’d, I turn’d Fate’s sibyl leaf,
 This natal morn,
I see thy life is stuff o’ prief,
 Scarce quite half-worn.


This day thou metes threescore eleven,
And I can tell that bounteous Heaven
(The second-sight, ye ken, is given
 To ilka Poet)
On thee a tack o’ seven times seven
 Will yet bestow...Read more of this...

Song-Day in Autumn

by D. H. Lawrence
When the autumn roses
  Are heavy with dew,
Before the mist discloses
  The leaf's brown hue,
You would, among the laughing hills
  Of yesterday
Walk innocent in the daffodils,
Coiffing up your auburn hair
In a puritan fillet, a chaste white snare
To catch and keep me with you there
  So far away.

When from the autumn roses
  Trickles the dew,
When the...Read more of this...

Wild Nights -- Wild Nights!

by Emily Dickinson
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!...Read more of this...

Lillies in the Fire

by D. H. Lawrence
I

Ah, you stack of white lilies, all white and gold,
I am adrift as a sunbeam, and without form
Or having, save I light on you to warm
Your pallor into radiance, flush your cold

White beauty into incandescence: you
Are not a stack of white lilies to-night, but a white
And clustered star transfigured by me to-night,
And lighting these ruddy leaves like a star dropped...Read more of this...

I Wish I Could Remember That First Day

by Christina Rossetti
I wish I could remember that first day,
First hour, first moment of your meeting me,
If bright or dim the season, it might be
Summer or Winter for aught I can say;
So unrecorded did it slip away,
So blind was I to see and to foresee,
So dull to mark the budding of my tree
That would not blossom yet for many a May.
If only...Read more of this...

An Evening in Dandaloo

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 It was while we held our races -- 
Hurdles, sprints and steplechases -- 
Up in Dandaloo, 
That a crowd of Sydney stealers, 
Jockeys, pugilists and spielers 
Brought some horses, real heelers, 
Came and put us through. 
Beat our nags and won our money, 
Made the game by np means funny, 
Made us rather blue; 
When the racing was concluded,...Read more of this...

Return

by D. H. Lawrence
Now I am come again, you who have so desired
My coming, why do you look away from me?
Why does your cheek burn against me--have I inspired
Such anger as sets your mouth unwontedly?

Ah, here I sit while you break the music beneath
Your bow; for broken it is, and hurting to hear:
Cease then from music--does anguish of absence bequeath
Me only aloofness when...Read more of this...

Kisses In The Train

by D. H. Lawrence
I saw the midlands
Revolve through her hair;
The fields of autumn
Stretching bare,
And sheep on the pasture
Tossed back in a scare.

And still as ever
The world went round,
My mouth on her pulsing
Neck was found,
And my breast to her beating
Breast was bound.

But my heart at the centre
Of all, in a swound
Was still as a pivot,
As all the ground
On its prowling orbit
Shifted round.

And still in...Read more of this...

This Much And More

by Djuna Barnes
If my lover were a comet
Hung in air,
I would braid my leaping body
In his hair.

Yea, if they buried him ten leagues
Beneath the loam,
My fingers they would learn to dig
And I’d plunge home!...Read more of this...

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