4 Poems on Love You Should Read Today

Why is poetry so popular with love-lorn peeps, heartbroken couples or those in the throes of ardour? What is it about the heart that it can connect with a poem of love, some of which can be interpreted any which way?

Love poetry is a thing on Instagram and even if you haven’t publicly posted your scribblings, don’t you psst… have a diary somewhere beneath dried petals in your drawer tucked away for-your-eyes only?

Sigh, if this is taking you in the zone of longing, here are 4 flavours of love for you today.

How do I Love Thee by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

“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”

Averring her adoration, expressing how deep and wide it is, counting the ways in which she is besotted with her beloved, How do I Love Thee is the ultimate declaration of ardour. It is an all consuming passion and yet spiritual, tying it with human emotions.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, married to the poet Robert Browning was more popular than her husband. This Sonnet is part of Sonnets from the Portuguese, published in 1850 and Portuguese is rumoured to be Elizabeth’s nickname.

Read it here.

Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare

“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate”

Deep affection sets the tone of this sonnet. Dwelling on the youthfulness and beauty of one’s beloved is a commonly occuring theme in love poems. Sonnet 18 goes a step further and alludes to immortality through adoration and the written word. Love never dies, does it?

William Shakespeare, the playwright was first famous as a poet. The poem is part of Fair Youth sequence which has Sonnets 1 – 126, published in 1609. Though the sonnet seems to talk of the beloved, it underlies that eternal life may not be accessible to man but it can be achieved through the written word.

Having 14 lines of iambic pentameter, it is a typical Shakespearean sonnet.

Read it here.

Mad Girl’s Love Song by Sylvia Plath

“I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;

I lift my lids and all is born again.

(I think I made you up inside my head.)”

Unrequited love, broken promises, disappointed hopes, Mad Girl’s Love Song is the reminder we need of how love can be transforming even though not returned. Don’t let the poem turn you maudlin, rejoice in the beauty of affection that humans are capable of. Reflect on the fact that love, the feeling can sometimes be imagined when love, the verb is shy of appearing.

Written by Sylvia Plath in her third year of Smith’s College in 1953, the poem has been analysed through the lens of mental illness, isolation, denial and escapism.

For poetry afficinados, it’s written in the villanelle form.

Read it here.

Variations on the Word Love by Margaret Atwood

“It’s a single

Vowel in this metallic

Silence, a mouth that says

O again and again in wonder

And pain, a breath, a finger

Grip on a cliffside. You can

Hold on or let go.”

How can you define deep affection? The raw, basic essence of love is sugar-coated with commercial connotations in our times. At the same time, the essence of the emotion is too vast and complex to be expressed through just 4 letters. Choose to use the word gingerely and with sincerity for it’s fragile and sacred.

This modern-day poem on affection was written by Margaret Atwood in 1981, who says the word love is not enough but it will have to do. The poem is said to raise questions on whether we toss around this word too casually?

Read it here.

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