Famous Old Love Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Old 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 old love poems. These examples illustrate what a famous old love poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Wilcox, Ella Wheeler
...in spite of his mirth and cheer,
I knew full well he was insincere.
And when the young buds burst on the tree,
The old love woke in my heart for the Sea.
Pride was forgotten – I knew, I knew,
That the soul of the Sea, like my own, was true.
I heard him calling, and lo! I came,
To find him waiting, for ever the same.
And when he saw me, with murmurs sweet
He ran to meet me, and fell at my feet.
And so again ‘neath the summer sky
We have plighted our tr...Read more of this...
by
Baudelaire, Charles
...sen me from all the brides
To bear the disgust of my dolorous groom
And since I can't throw back into the fires
Like an old love letter this gaunt buffoon
"I'll replace Your hate that overwhelms me
On the instrument of Your wicked gloom
And torture so well this miserable tree
Its pestiferous buds will never bloom!"
She chokes down the eucharist of venom,
Not comprehending eternal designs,
She prepares a Gehenna of her own,
And consecrates a pyre of maternal crimes.
Yet...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...the place where his toes had been,
And then he howled like a husky, and sang in a shaky key:
"When I go back to the old love that's true to the finger-tips,
I'll say: `Here's bushels of gold, love,' and I'll kiss my girl on the lips;
It's yours to have and to hold, love.' It's the proud, proud boy I'll be,
When I go back to the old love that's waited so long for me."...Read more of this...
by
Keats, John
...ereat more quick
Moved either host. On a wide sand they met,
And of those numbers every eye was wet;
For each their old love found. A murmuring rose,
Like what was never heard in all the throes
Of wind and waters: 'tis past human wit
To tell; 'tis dizziness to think of it.
This mighty consummation made, the host
Mov'd on for many a league; and gain'd, and lost
Huge sea-marks; vanward swelling in array,
And from the rear diminishing away,--
Till a faint dawn surp...Read more of this...
by
Stojanovic, Dejan
...I love the new sounds of love;
Only the new cures an old love.
Watching the love making of waves and the shore
I desire to be the wave of love.
There is no real hate in quarrels,
Only stupidity and lack of love.
The Sun shone upon me
And I shone upon the world with love.
I fly through memory
To find a newborn love.
Sing to me sea, sing to me sky
And the hiding world spr...Read more of this...
by
Wilcox, Ella Wheeler
...gods vouchsafed to men?
What better boon of all their precious store
Than our fond hearts that love and love again?
Old love may die; new love is just as sweet;
And life is fair and all the world complete:
Love is enough!...Read more of this...
by
Whittier, John Greenleaf
...ode on,
And Maud was left in the field alone.
But the lawyers smiled that afternoon,
When he hummed in court an old love-tune;
And the young girl mused beside the well
Till the rain on the unraked clover fell.
He wedded a wife of richest dower,
Who lived for fashion, as he for power.
Yet oft, in his marble hearth's bright glow,
He watched a picture come and go;
And sweet Maud Muller's hazel eyes
Looked out in their innocent surprise.
Oft, whe...Read more of this...
by
Meredith, George
...but I say, No!
The thing is mocked at! Helplessly afloat,
I know not what I do, whereto I strive,
The dread that my old love may be alive,
Has seized my nursling new love by the throat....Read more of this...
by
Meredith, George
...He found her by the ocean's moaning verge,
Nor any wicked change in her discerned;
And she believed his old love had returned,
Which was her exultation, and her scourge.
She took his hand, and walked with him, and seemed
The wife he sought, though shadow-like and dry.
She had one terror, lest her heart should sigh,
And tell her loudly she no longer dreamed.
She dared not say, 'This is my breast: look in.'
But there's a strength to help t...Read more of this...
by
Montague, John
...ou will always have me to blame,
Can dream we might have sailed on;
From absence's rib, a warm fiction.
To tear up old love by the roots,
To trample on past affections:
There is no music for so harsh a song....Read more of this...
by
Paterson, Andrew Barton
...station
Was green with the garland of Spring;
A spirit of glad exultation
Awoke in each animate thing;
And all the old love, the old longing,
Broke out in the breasts of the boys --
The visions of racing came thronging
With all its delirious joys.
The rushing of floods in their courses,
The rattle of rain on the roofs,
Recalled the fierce rush of the horses,
The thunder of galloping hoofs.
And soon one broke out: "I can suffer
No longer the life of a sl...Read more of this...
by
Wilcox, Ella Wheeler
...deep-ploughed furrows in my brow;
Forget the silver gleaming in my hair;
Look only in my eyes! Oh! darling, there
The old love shone no warmer then than now.
Down in the tender depths of thy dear eyes,
I find the lost sweet memory of my youth,
Bright with the holy radiance of thy truth,
And hallowed with the blue of summer skies.
Tie up the broken threads, and let us go,
Like reunited lovers, hand in hand,
Back, and yet onward, to the sunny land
Of our To Be,...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...same old human race—the same within, without,
Faces and hearts the same—feelings the same—yearnings the same,
The same old love—beauty and use the same.
5
We do not blame thee, Elder World—nor separate ourselves from thee:
(Would the Son separate himself from the Father?)
Looking back on thee—seeing thee to thy duties, grandeurs, through past ages bending,
building,
We build to ours to-day.
Mightier than Egypt’s tombs,
Fairer than Grecia’s, Roma’s temples,
P...Read more of this...
by
Borges, Jorge Luis
...is the dawn of death,
and fame, which absolutely nobody deserves,
and the practice of weaving hendecasyllables,
and an old love of encyclopedias
and fine handmade maps and smooth ivory,
and an incurable nostalgia for the Latin,
and bits of memories of Edinburgh and Geneva
and the loss of memory of names and dates,
and the cult of the East, which the varied peoples
of the teeming East do not themselves share,
and evening trembling with hope or expectation,
and the disease of ...Read more of this...
by
Sexton, Anne
...ttering eyes.
Now it's Friday's noon
and I would still curse
you with my rhyming words
and bring you flapping back, old love,
old circus knitting, god-in-her-moon,
all fairest in my lang syne verse,
the gauzy bride among the children,
the fancy amid the absurd
and awkward, that horn for hounds
that skipper homeward, that museum
keeper of stiff starfish, that blaze
within the pilgrim woman,
a clown mender, a dove's
cheek among the stones,
my Lady of first words,
this is th...Read more of this...
by
Hardy, Thomas
...A dream of mine flew over the mead
To the halls where my old Love reigns;
And it drew me on to follow its lead:
And I stood at her window-panes;
And I saw but a thing of flesh and bone
Speeding on to its cleft in the clay;
And my dream was scared, and expired on a moan,
And I whitely hastened away....Read more of this...
by
Frost, Robert
...t piano and new paint back there,
Was it some money suddenly come into?
Or some extravagance young love had been to?
Or old love on an impulse not to care--
Not to sink under being man and wife,
But get some color and music out of life?...Read more of this...
by
Cullen, Countee
...the light,
And there a seed, racked with heroic pain,
Thrust eager tentacles to sun and rain:
It climbed; it died; the old love conquered me
To weep the blossom it would never be.
But here a bud won light; it burst and flowered
Into a rose whose beauty challenged, "Coward!"
There was no thing alive save only I
That held life in contempt and longed to die.
And still I writhed and moaned, "The curse, the curse,
Than animated death, can death be worse?"
"Dark child of ...Read more of this...
by
Lawson, Henry
...we're doing well,
But we break our hearts, oh, we break our hearts! for the things we must not tell.
There's the old love wronged ere the new was won, there's the light of long ago;
There's the cruel lie that we suffer for, and the public must not know.
So we go through life with a ghastly mask, and we're doing fairly well,
While they break our hearts, oh, they kill our hearts! do the things we must not tell.
We see but pride in a selfish breast, while a h...Read more of this...
by
Carman, Bliss
...er heart
Is a woven part
Of the flurry and drift
Of whirling snow;
For the sake of two
Sad eyes and true,
And the old, old love
So long ago....Read more of this...
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