Famous Not Love Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Not 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 not love poems. These examples illustrate what a famous not love poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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XVII (I do not love you...)

by Pablo Neruda
 I do not love you as if you were 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 certain solid...Read more of this...

Meditation On Saviors

by Robinson Jeffers
 I
When I considered it too closely, when I wore it like an element
 and smelt it like water,
Life is become less lovely, the net nearer than the skin, a
 little troublesome, a little terrible.

I pledged myself awhile ago not to seek refuge, neither in death
 nor in a walled garden,
In lies nor gated loyalties, nor in the gates of...Read more of this...

No One So Much As You

by Edward Thomas
 No one so much as you
Loves this my clay, 
Or would lament as you
Its dying day. 

You know me through and through
Though I have not told, 
And though with what you know
You are not bold. 

None ever was so fair
As I thought you: 
Not a word can I bear
Spoken against you. 

All that I ever did
For you seemed coarse
Compared...Read more of this...

Sonnet XXVII: Is Not Love Here

by Michael Drayton
 Is not Love here as 'tis in other climes, 
And differeth it, as do the several nations? 
Or hath it lost the virtue with the times, 
Or in this island altereth with the fashions? 
Or have our passions lesser power than theirs, 
Who had less art them lively to express? 
Is Nature grown less powerful in their heirs, 
Or...Read more of this...

Villeggiature

by Edith Nesbit
 My window, framed in pear-tree bloom,
White-curtained shone, and softly lighted:
So, by the pear-tree, to my room
Your ghost last night climbed uninvited.

Your solid self, long leagues away,
Deep in dull books, had hardly missed me;
And yet you found this Romeo's way,
And through the blossom climbed and kissed me.

I watched the still and dewy lawn,
The pear-tree boughs hung white above you;
I listened...Read more of this...

Sonnet XXXIV: Marvel Not Love

by Michael Drayton
 To Admiration

Marvel not, Love, though I thy power admire, 
Ravish'd a world beyond the farthest thought, 
And knowing more than ever hath been taught, 
That I am only starv'd in my desire. 
Marvel not, Love, though I thy power admire, 
Aiming at things exceeding all perfection, 
To Wisdom's self to minister correction, 
That I am only starv'd in my...Read more of this...

Why so Pale and Wan?

by Sir John Suckling
 WHY so pale and wan, fond lover? 
 Prithee, why so pale? 
Will, when looking well can't move her, 
 Looking ill prevail? 
 Prithee, why so pale? 

Why so dull and mute, young sinner? 
 Prithee, why so mute? 
Will, when speaking well can't win her, 
 Saying nothing do 't? 
 Prithee, why so mute? 

Quit, quit...Read more of this...

O Do Not Love Too Long

by William Butler Yeats
 Sweetheart, do not love too long:
I loved long and long,
And grew to be out of fashion
Like an old song.

All through the years of our youth
Neither could have known
Their own thought from the other's,
We were so much at one.

But O, in a minute she changed -
O do not love too long,
Or you will grow out of fashion
Like an old song....Read more of this...

But Men Loved Darkness rather than Light

by Richard Crashaw
 The world's light shines, shine as it will,
The world will love its darkness still.
I doubt though when the world's in hell,
It will not love its darkness half so well....Read more of this...

I Do Not Love You Except Because I Love You

by Pablo Neruda
 I do not love you except because I love you;
I go from loving to not loving you,
From waiting to not waiting for you
My heart moves from cold to fire.

I love you only because it's you the one I love;
I hate you deeply, and hating you
Bend to you, and the measure of my changing love for you
Is that I do...Read more of this...

The Double Image

by Anne Sexton
 1.

I am thirty this November.
You are still small, in your fourth year.
We stand watching the yellow leaves go *****,
flapping in the winter rain.
falling flat and washed. And I remember
mostly the three autumns you did not live here.
They said I'd never get you back again.
I tell you what you'll never really know:
all the medical hypothesis
that explained my brain will never...Read more of this...

Child of Europe

by Czeslaw Milosz
 1
We, whose lungs fill with the sweetness of day.
Who in May admire trees flowering
Are better than those who perished.

We, who taste of exotic dishes,
And enjoy fully the delights of love,
Are better than those who were buried.

We, from the fiery furnaces, from behind barbed wires
On which the winds of endless autumns howled,
We, who remember battles where the wounded air roared...Read more of this...

At Bordj-an-Nus

by Aleister Crowley
 El Arabi! El Arabi! Burn in thy brilliance, mine own!
O Beautiful! O Barbarous! Seductive as a serpent is
That poises head and hood, and makes his body tremble to the drone
Of tom-tom and of cymbal wooed by love's assassin sorceries!
El Arabi! El Arabi!
The moon is down; we are alone;
May not our mouths meet, madden, mix, melt in the starlight of...Read more of this...

Astrophel And Stella-Sonnet LIV

by Sir Philip Sidney
 Because I breathe not love to every one,
Nor do not use set colours for to wear,
Nor nourish special locks of vowed hair,
Nor give each speech a full point of a groan,
The courtly nymphs, acquainted with the moan
Of them who in their lips Love's standard bear,
"What, he!" say they of me, "now I dare swear
He cannot love. No, no, let...Read more of this...

Sonnet CXVI: 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...Read more of this...

Persuasion

by John Drinkwater
Persuasion

I 	At any moment love unheralded
Comes, and is king. Then as, with a fall
Of frost, the buds upon the hawthorn spread
Are withered in untimely burial,
So love, occasion gone, his crown puts by,
And as a beggar walks unfriended ways,
With but remembered beauty to defy
The frozen sorrows of unsceptred days.
Or in that later travelling he comes
Upon a bleak oblivion, and tells
Himself, again,...Read more of this...

All Thats Not Love . .

by Alan Seeger
 All that's not love is the dearth of my days, 
The leaves of the volume with rubric unwrit, 
The temple in times without prayer, without praise, 
The altar unset and the candle unlit. 


Let me survive not the lovable sway 
Of early desire, nor see when it goes 
The courts of Life's abbey in ivied decay, 
Whence sometime sweet...Read more of this...

The Tearful Tale Of Captain Dan

by Ellis Parker Butler
 A sinner was old Captain Dan;
 His wives guv him no rest:
He had one wife to East Skiddaw
 And one to Skiddaw West.

Now Ann Eliza was the name
 Of her at East Skiddaw;
She was the most cantankerous
 Female you ever saw.

I don’t know but one crosser-grained,
 And of this Captain Dan
She was the wife at Skiddaw West—
 She was...Read more of this...

The Dream

by George (Lord) Byron
 I

Our life is twofold; Sleep hath its own world,
A boundary between the things misnamed
Death and existence: Sleep hath its own world,
And a wide realm of wild reality,
And dreams in their development have breath,
And tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy;
They leave a weight upon our waking thoughts,
They take a weight from off waking toils,
They do divide our being;...Read more of this...

Not Love Perhaps

by A S J Tessimond
 This is not Love, perhaps, 
Love that lays down its life, 
that many waters cannot quench, 
nor the floods drown, 
But something written in lighter ink, 
said in a lower tone, something, perhaps, especially our own.

A need, at times, to be together and talk, 
And then the finding we can walk 
More firmly through dark narrow places, 
And meet...Read more of this...

Sonnet 141: In faith I do not love thee with mine eyes

by William Shakespeare
 In faith, I do not love thee with mine eyes,
For they in thee a thousand errors note;
But 'tis my heart that loves what they despise,
Who in despite of view is pleased to dote.
Nor are mine cars with thy tongue's tune delighted,
Nor tender feeling to base touches prone,
Nor taste, nor smell, desire to be invited
To any sensual feast with thee...Read more of this...

Fairy Tale

by Robert Desnos
 Many times upon a time
There was a man who loved a woman.
Many times upon a time
There was a woman who loved a man.
Many times upon a time
There was a man and there was a woman
Who did not love the ones who loved them.

Once upon a time
Perhaps only once
A man and a woman who loved each other....Read more of this...

I Do Not Love Thee For That Fair

by Thomas Carew
 I do not love thee for that fair
Rich fan of thy most curious hair;
Though the wires thereof be drawn
Finer than threads of lawn,
And are softer than the leaves
On which the subtle spider weaves.

I do not love thee for those flowers
Growing on thy cheeks, love's bowers;
Though such cunning them hath spread,
None can paint them white and red:
Love's golden arrows thence...Read more of this...

Protest

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Who say my hea't ain't true to you?
Dey bettah heish dey mouf.
I knows I loves you thoo an' thoo
In watah time er drouf.
I wush dese people 'd stop dey talkin',
Don't mean no mo' dan chicken's squawkin':
I guess I knows which way I's walkin',
I knows de norf f'om souf.
I does not love Elizy Brown,
I guess I knows my min'.
You allus try...Read more of this...

A Leave-Taking

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 Let us go hence, my songs; she will not hear. 
Let us go hence together without fear; 
Keep silence now, for singing-time is over, 
And over all old things and all things dear. 
She loves not you nor me as all we love her. 
Yea, though we sang as angels in her ear, 
 She would not hear. 

Let...Read more of this...

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