Valentine's Day/Love Poems

[zeldafitzgerald]

Ryan and I are making our Valentines gifts for each other this year, and I'm still brainstorming what I want to do. I'm very sure that I want it to involve poetry, but I'm still deciding whether to chose 1 poem and write it out beautiful and collage around it and frame it, or if I should choose several poems and make a small poem book (still collaged, just in book form).

So I'm try to gather my very favorite love/romance poems, as well as discover some new ones. What are your favorite love poems? If you're making cards or gifts too, I'd love to hear ideas too!

Here are two of mine, one is a song....which I'm not especially looking for but I'm posting this one because it sort of reads like a poem.

Perhaps Love by John Denver

Perhaps love is like a resting place
A shelter from the storm
It exists to give you comfort
It is there to keep you warm
And in those times of trouble
When you are most alone
The memory of love will bring you home

Perhaps love is like a window
Perhaps an open door
It invites you to come closer
It wants to show you more
And even if you lose yourself
And don't know what to do
The memory of love will see you through

Oh, Love to some is like a cloud
To some as strong as steel

For some a way of living
For some a way to feel
And some say love is holding on
And some say letting go
And some say love is everything
And some say they don't know

Perhaps love is like the ocean
Full of conflict, full of pain
Like a fire when it's cold outside
Thunder when it rains
If I should live forever
And all my dreams come true
My memories of love will be of you
______________________________

i like my body when it is with your
body. It is so quite new a thing.
Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body. i like what it does,
i like its hows. i like to feel the spine
of your body and its bones, and the trembling
-firm-smooth ness and which i will
again and again and again
kiss
-e. e. cummings

[Dominique]

Wow those are nice I'll try to have a hunt around for some I like, I've forgotten what my favourites are. That's a nice idea for a present too!

[gilmoreren]

I have a couple

He wishes for the cloths of heaven

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

WB Yeats

-

Valentine

Not a red rose or a satin heart.

I give you an onion.
It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.
It promises light
like the careful undressing of love.

Here.
It will blind you with tears
like a lover.
It will make your reflection
a wobbling photo of grief.

I am trying to be truthful.

Not a cute card or kissogram.

I give you an onion.
Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips,
possessive and faithful
as we are,
for as long as we are.

Take it.
Its platinum loops shrink to a wedding ring,
if you like.
Lethal.
Its scent will cling to your fingers,
cling to your knife.

Carol Ann Duffy

-

[Kristie]

For our first year anniversary, I made Nick this book of love quotes/poems/songs. I took an empty diary and just filled it in. He really liked it and it's the present he's liked most. But, I outdid myself that first year haha I can't get more creative than that, and I did it the first year. I have a separate diary with all the stuff because I wrote it down before putting it in his book so I didn't ruin it or anything. For Valentine's Day, we agreed to just do cards and stuffed animals (maybe flowers & chocolates) but not something we have to put a lot of time into. It is a corporate holiday after all.

[Isa]

A classic but still my all-time favorite:

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints,--I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life!--and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

-Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Sonnets from the Portuguese


Hey Zelda, didn't you guys win a romantic weekend getaway a while ago? Have you gone yet?

For Valentine's Day I always get a new mug! That's what Syl gave me the first year we were going out (we'd only been going out for a couple weeks) and it's been a tradition ever since. I now have 8 lovely Valentine's mugs! And I've got a feeling he's planning on taking me to the movies this year, there's this new movie with Hugh Grant that's coming out on Valentine's Day and he knows Hugh is the only other man in my life

[Kristie]

I like Hugh Grant, but I don't think he'd be the other man in my life. He playes Edward Ferrers, but I like Colin Firth (Mr. Darcy). I do like that quote though. I can write some of my favourites later while I'm at work.

[Kristie]

Here are some of my favourites from the book I made Nick:
Not all treasure is silver and gold.
~Pirates of the Caribbean

I love you without knowing how or when or even from where. I love you straightforwardly without complexities or pride. I love you because I know no other way than this.
~Patch Adams

Love is when you don’t want to sleep because reality is better than any dream.

To love someone means to see them as God intended.
~Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Life without life is like a tree without blossom and fruit.
~Khalil Gibran

Love is like swallowing hot chocolate before it has cooled. It takes you by surprise at first, but keeps you warm for a long time.

Once in a while, right in the middle of an ordinary life, love gives us a fairy tale.

A life without love is no life at all.
~Ever After

And my real favourite:
Love is what makes two people sit in the middle of a bench when there's plenty of room at both ends.

[zeldafitzgerald]

admin said:

A

Hey Zelda, didn't you guys win a romantic weekend getaway a while ago? Have you gone yet?

For Valentine's Day I always get a new mug! That's what Syl gave me the first year we were going out (we'd only been going out for a couple weeks) and it's been a tradition ever since. I now have 8 lovely Valentine's mugs! And I've got a feeling he's planning on taking me to the movies this year, there's this new movie with Hugh Grant that's coming out on Valentine's Day and he knows Hugh is the only other man in my life

Yup! We won 2 nights at a super cute Inn/Lodge. We're going for a weekend in March, but haven't picked out which one yet. I'm very excited - Lake Placid looks so cozy and romantic in the winter!

The Hugh Grant movie - Music and Lyrics - looks very cute. I love Hugh as well, it's hard to pick my favorite Hugh movie out of SO many good ones - Love Actually, Two Weeks Notice, About A Boy, etc...


And I love all the poems and quotes everyone is posting! They are so sweet. I love poetry. I love how it can express so much so easily. I love how easy it looks to write until you try and then you appreciate the magic it takes to form the words so simply and yet have them fit so perfectly for what you're trying to say.

[Kristie]

It's been a long time since this thread was up at the top, and I wanted to bump it back up a little. I do have some more quotes, but not poems:
"You can't stop your heart from loving---it's like standing out in the ocean yelling at the waves to stop."
-The Mermaid Chair, Sue Monk Kidd

And, well, I guess this is from Shakespeare's sonnets, but I found it in Sense and Sensibility:
"Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds. Or bends with the remover to remove. Oh no! It is an ever fixed mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken."

[tahlia]

kdreichert06 said:

Here are some of my favourites from the book I made Nick:
To love someone means to see them as God intended.
~Fyodor Dostoyevsky

i love this quote! if you remember - where did you find this quote? from one of his novels?