Although love is a common topic in poetry, writing a good poem about it can be difficult.
How to write a love poem
It is a great place to start if you are looking for love poems. The most beautiful love poems communicate more than "I love your" These poems communicate more than just "I love you" and often reflect a particular aspect or feeling of being in love. They also tend to be universal. Once you've read and enjoyed romantic poems, creative writing techniques can be used to create a poem for your loved ones.
- Keep your eyes on. Your favorite love poems will help you decide if you want to create sonnets and sestinas, free verse, or sonnets. To find the right form for you, you can experiment with various poetic forms.
- Locate a controlling picture. Poetry relies on imagery and sensory details to provide a visual experience for the reader. The importance of imagery, symbolism, or figurative words in love poetry is especially high. A symbol of love is often an inanimate object, natural phenomenon, or inanimate thing. Robert Burns provides an example simile. Sometimes romantic love can also serve as a symbol of other themes, such as patriotism and the life artist. These poems may look like love poems but really are about something else. Your poem can use imagery or metaphors but will most likely benefit from some grounding.
- Get big. Love poetry often uses hyperbole or exaggeration. It is common to use outrageous comparisons when trying to express intense emotions. Writing love poetry can be done in the reverse direction. Instead, focus on a tiny detail. It is something that only a close friend would notice.
Here are 4 examples of love poems
Begin with the classics, if you're just beginning to explore romantic poetry.
"Sonnet 18", William Shakespeare (1609). This is William Shakespeare's most well-known poem. The controlling image is found in the very beginning line. The speaker wants to make a comparison between someone and a day of summer. This sonnet is like all others. It ends with a rhyming sentence that gives the reader a twist or resolution. It's the idea of the poem's beloved's beauty being immortalized in its text. Here is the entire text:
Let me compare you to a sunny day.
Thou art more beautiful than you are temperate.
May's darling flowers are often shaken by the harsh winds.
Summer's lease is too short;
Sometimes, it can get too hot for the eye to see heaven.
His golden complexion often gets dulled.
Every fair is not fair all the time.
Nature's unpredictability or chance;
But thy everlasting summer will not end,
You won't lose the fair thou owest.
It is not a sin to wander in his shadow,
If thou growst in everlasting lines of time:
As long as people can breathe and see,
This is the life that lasts, and it gives you life.
"When You Are Old" (1893)
"When You Are Old," like other love poems, is written second-person. Despite being a dark poem about the loss of love, the poem's rhyme scheme is ABBA and the iambic pentameter composition give it a sing-song vibe. "When You Are Old" serves as a reminder that love poems do not have to end in a happy way. Here is the complete text:
When you're tired and old,
Take down the book by nodding at the flames
Slowly read, dreaming of the soft looks
Your eyes have once been open and the shadows are deep.We are so glad you enjoyed your moments of thankful grace.
Your beauty was loved with true or false love
One man loved you as a pilgrim soul.
I loved your sorrows and changed faces;And then, bend down alongside the glowing bars.
Murmur, a tiny sadly. Love flees!
And kept my eyes fixed on the mountains in the distance
And hid in the midst of a sea of stars.
"Love" (1909) by William Carlos Williams
The William Carlos Williams poem "When You are Old" follows a regular rhyme pattern (ABAB). "Love" addresses more than one subject, unlike the other examples we have of love poetry. This is not a poem written in third person but a theory on love's duality (passion/pain). Here's the entire text:
Love is not just one thing.
Passion and pain can mix
Glist'ring it for aye unto.It's not pain, but pity.
Do not die, or the pang will flee;
Passion is not, gritty and foul.
Born one instant, instant dead.Love is not just one thing.
Combine silver and gold to make one.
Passion and pain can mix
Glist'ring it for aye unto.
El Beso (1909)
Grimke's romantic love poem follows a well-worn path, using natural phenomena (twilights and stars), but rather that making grandiose connections, simply puts them next to the features (teeths, hairs, eyes, lips, mouth) of his beloved. Grimke employs internal rhyme ("languor," surrender") and repetition ("yearning," "madness," "madness," "madness," "snare of a shine") to create a rhythm that almost feels physical. Here is the complete text of Grimke's poem:
Twilight and you
Quiet–the stars;
You can't keep your teeth shining.
The mischievous sound of your laughter
Your hair is a gloomy place.
You are the lure of me, eye and lips;
Yearning, yearning,
Languor, surrender;
The opening of your face
Madness is madness.
Tremulous, breathless, flaming,
The space between two sighs;
Then awakening–remembrance,
Pain, regret–your sobbing;
Again, the stars are quiet.
Twilight–and you.
