The ultimate collection of love quotes from poetry's greatest romantic poets - from Shakespeare's immortal sonnets to contemporary voices that speak to modern hearts
Love quotes from poetry have the power to capture what we feel but struggle to express. These 100 love poem quotes by romantic poets span centuries of human longing, from classical masters who invented romantic poetry to contemporary voices redefining love for the digital age.
Whether you're seeking the perfect romantic poetry quote for a wedding, anniversary, or simply want to understand how great poets have wrestled with love's complexities, this collection represents the finest love poem quotes from history's most celebrated romantic poets.
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Looking for deeper analysis of how love poetry evolved across cultures? Read our complete guide: The Evolution of Romantic Poetry: A Cross-Cultural Exploration →
The Immortal Classics: Foundational Love Poetry Quotes
These love poem quotes from legendary romantic poets established the language of romance that we still use today
William Shakespeare - The Master of Romantic Poetry
1. "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate."
From Sonnet 18 - Perhaps the most quoted love poem in English literature
2. "Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind, and therefore is winged Cupid painted blind."
From A Midsummer Night's Dream - Shakespeare's insight into love's irrationality
3. "Doubt thou the stars are fire; doubt that the sun doth move; doubt truth to be a liar; but never doubt I love."
From Hamlet - Even in tragedy, Shakespeare found perfect romantic poetry
4. "Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments. Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds."
From Sonnet 116 - The gold standard for wedding vows
5. "Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?"
From As You Like It - The romantic poets' eternal question
Elizabeth Barrett Browning - Victorian Romance's Voice
6. "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach."
From "Sonnets from the Portuguese" - Written for fellow poet Robert Browning
7. "I love thee with the breath, smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death."
The continuation of literature's most famous love declaration
Lord Byron - The Rebel Romantic Poet
8. "She walks in beauty, like the night of cloudless climes and starry skies."
Byron's most tender moment, proving even rebels can write gentle love poetry
9. "Man's love is of man's life a thing apart; 'Tis woman's whole existence."
From "Don Juan" - Controversial then, thought-provoking now
Robert Burns - Scotland's Love Poet
10. "Oh, my love is like a red, red rose, that's newly sprung in June."
Scotland's national poet captures love's fresh beauty in simple perfection
11. "And I will love thee still, my dear, till all the seas gang dry."
The promise every romantic poetry lover dreams of hearing
John Donne - Metaphysical Love Poetry
12. "For God's sake hold your tongue, and let me love."
From "The Canonization" - Donne's passionate plea for romantic freedom
13. "She is all states, and all princes I; nothing else is."
From "The Sun Rising" - Love as the only reality that matters
Emily Dickinson - America's Reclusive Romantic Poet
14. "I cannot live with you, it would be life, and life is over there behind the shelf."
Dickinson's complex relationship with impossible love
15. "Wild nights! Wild nights! Were I with thee, wild nights should be our luxury!"
The recluse's surprising passion in romantic poetry
16. "The heart wants what it wants—or else it does not care."
Modern psychology in 19th-century verse
Robert Browning - Optimistic Love Poetry
17. "Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be."
From "Rabbi Ben Ezra" - Love poetry's most hopeful vision of lasting romance
18. "Take away love and our earth is a tomb."
Browning's dramatic declaration of love's necessity
Walt Whitman - Democratic Romantic Poetry
19. "We were together. I forget the rest."
Whitman's minimalist perfection in love poetry
20. "I am large, I contain multitudes."
From "Song of Myself" - Love as expansion of the self
Edgar Allan Poe - Dark Romantic Poetry
21. "We loved with a love that was more than love."
From "Annabel Lee" - Obsessive love in gothic romantic poetry
22. "I was never really insane except upon occasions when my heart was touched."
Poe's admission of love's madness
Classic International Voices
23. Rumi: "Love is the whole thing. We are only pieces."
Persian mystical poetry that influenced romantic poets worldwide
24. Sappho: "Love shook my heart like the wind on the mountain rushing over the oak trees."
Ancient Greece's contribution to romantic poetry
25. Dante: "Love moved the sun and other stars."
From "Paradise" - Love as the cosmic force in medieval romantic poetry
The Romantic Revolution: Poetry's Most Passionate Era
The Romantic era gave birth to modern love poetry, with romantic poets who revolutionized how we express desire
Percy Bysshe Shelley - Revolutionary Romantic Poetry
26. "The fountains mingle with the river, and the rivers with the ocean; the winds of heaven mix forever with a sweet emotion."
From "Love's Philosophy" - Nature's unity as metaphor for romantic love
27. "Soul meets soul on lovers' lips."
Shelley's mystical view of romantic connection
John Keats - Sensual Romantic Poetry
28. "A thing of beauty is a joy forever."
From "Endymion" - Keats linking beauty and eternal love
29. "I almost wish we were butterflies and lived but three summer days—three such days with you I could fill with more delight than fifty common years could ever contain."
Romantic poetry's most beautiful meditation on love's intensity
William Wordsworth - Nature's Romantic Poet
30. "She was a phantom of delight when first she gleamed upon my sight."
Wordsworth's gentle approach to romantic poetry
31. "The best portion of a good man's life: his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and love."
Love poetry celebrating everyday devotion
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
32. "All thoughts, all passions, all delights, whatever stirs this mortal frame, all are but ministers of Love."
Romantic poetry declaring love as life's organizing principle
William Blake - Mystical Romantic Poetry
33. "Love seeketh not itself to please, nor for itself hath any care, but for another gives its ease, and builds a Heaven in Hell's despair."
Blake's spiritual approach to romantic poetry
34. "He who binds to himself a joy does the winged life destroy; but he who kisses the joy as it flies lives in eternity's sunrise."
Romantic poetry about loving without possessing
Christina Rossetti - Victorian Female Voice
35. "Better by far you should forget and smile than that you should remember and be sad."
From "Remember" - Generous love in romantic poetry
36. "My heart is like a singing bird whose nest is in a watered shoot."
From "A Birthday" - Joy transformed into romantic poetry
Alfred Lord Tennyson
37. "'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all."
From "In Memoriam" - Perhaps the most quoted line in romantic poetry
38. "Come not, when I am dead, to drop thy foolish tears upon my grave."
Tennyson's complex relationship with memory in love poetry
Robert Herrick
39. "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, old time is still a-flying."
From "To the Virgins" - Carpe diem in romantic poetry
European Romantic Poetry Masters
40. Goethe: "A life without love is like a year without summer."
German Romantic poetry's gentle wisdom
41. Heinrich Heine: "Where words leave off, music begins."
Romantic poetry reaching beyond language
42. Victor Hugo: "Life is the flower for which love is the honey."
French Romantic poetry's sweet metaphor
43. Giacomo Leopardi: "Love is the most beautiful of dreams and the worst of nightmares."
Italian Romantic poetry's honest duality
American Transcendentalist Love Poetry
44. Ralph Waldo Emerson: "All mankind love a lover."
Transcendental philosophy meets romantic poetry
45. Henry David Thoreau: "There is no remedy for love but to love more."
Practical mysticism in American romantic poetry
Later Romantic Voices
46. Dante Gabriel Rossetti: "Look in my face; my name is Might-have-been."
Pre-Raphaelite romantic poetry exploring regret
47. Algernon Charles Swinburne: "Love laid his sleepless head on a thorny rose bed."
Aesthetic movement's approach to romantic poetry
48. Matthew Arnold: "Ah, love, let us be true to one another!"
From "Dover Beach" - Love as refuge in uncertain times
49. Gerard Manley Hopkins: "Nothing is so beautiful as spring—when weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush."
Innovative rhythm in romantic nature poetry
50. Thomas Hardy: "When I set out for Lyonnesse, a hundred miles away, the rime was on the spray."
Hardy's bittersweet approach to love poetry
Modern Masters: 20th Century Love Poetry Revolution
Modern romantic poets transformed love poetry for the contemporary world, addressing psychology, sexuality, and changing relationships
Pablo Neruda - Latin American Romantic Poetry Giant
51. "Love is so short, forgetting is so long."
From "Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair" - Modern romantic poetry's most haunting line
52. "I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees."
Neruda's sensual nature metaphors in love poetry
53. "I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride."
Modern romantic poetry's honest simplicity
Rainer Maria Rilke - European Modernist Love Poetry
54. "Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage."
Rilke's psychological insight in romantic poetry
55. "Love consists of this: two solitudes that meet, protect and greet each other."
Modern love poetry defining healthy relationships
W.H. Auden - 20th Century British Love Poetry
56. "If equal affection cannot be, let the more loving one be me."
From "The More Loving One" - Generous love in modern poetry
57. "Lay your sleeping head, my love, human on my faithless arm."
From "Lullaby" - Complex modern romantic poetry
E.E. Cummings - Innovative Love Poetry
58. "I carry your heart with me (I carry it in my heart)."
Cummings' most beloved contribution to romantic poetry
59. "Somewhere I have never travelled, gladly beyond any experience, your eyes have their silence."
Experimental form meeting deep romantic poetry
Langston Hughes - Harlem Renaissance Love Poetry
60. "Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly."
Social justice meeting romantic poetry
61. "Let the rain kiss you. Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops."
Hughes' sensual approach to love poetry
William Butler Yeats - Irish Literary Renaissance
62. "I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, and a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made."
From "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" - Escape and longing in romantic poetry
63. "But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet. Tread softly because you tread on my dreams."
From "He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven" - Vulnerable romantic poetry
T.S. Eliot - Modernist Complexity
64. "We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."
From "Four Quartets" - Love as discovery in modern poetry
Edna St. Vincent Millay - Female Modernist Voice
65. "My candle burns at both ends; it will not last the night; but ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—it gives a lovely light!"
Modern women's romantic poetry celebrating intensity
66. "Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink nor slumber nor a roof against the rain."
Honest assessment of love's limits in modern poetry
Dylan Thomas - Welsh Poetic Voice
67. "Do not go gentle into that good night, old age should burn and rave at close of day."
Passionate resistance in love poetry
68. "The force that through the green fuse drives the flower drives my green age."
Life force as love force in modern romantic poetry
Sylvia Plath - Confessional Love Poetry
69. "I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart: I am, I am, I am."
From "The Bell Jar" - Self-affirmation in modern romantic poetry
70. "If you expect nothing from anybody, you're never disappointed."
Plath's complex relationship with romantic expectation
Anne Sexton - Intimate Modern Poetry
71. "Put your ear down close to your soul and listen hard."
Self-love as foundation for romantic poetry
Robert Frost - American Pastoral Romance
72. "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference."
Choice and consequence in romantic poetry
International Modern Voices
73. Federico García Lorca: "Green, how I want you green. Green wind. Green branches."
Spanish surrealist approach to romantic poetry
74. Octavio Paz: "Love is an attempt to change a piece of a dream world into reality."
Mexican Nobel laureate's philosophical romantic poetry
75. Wisława Szymborska: "Every beginning is only a sequel, after all, and the book of events is always open halfway through."
Polish Nobel laureate's wise romantic poetry
Contemporary Voices: Modern Love Poetry for Digital Hearts
Today's romantic poets navigate love in the age of technology, social media, and changing relationship dynamics
Leonard Cohen - Poetic Troubadour
76. "There is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in."
From "Anthem" - Hope and healing in modern romantic poetry
77. "I greet you from the other side of sorrow and despair, with a love so vast and shattered it will reach you everywhere."
Cohen's expansive view of love in contemporary poetry
Mary Oliver - Nature's Modern Voice
78. "Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"
From "The Summer Day" - Urgency and purpose in love poetry
79. "Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift."
Acceptance and growth in contemporary romantic poetry
Billy Collins - Accessible Modern Poetry
80. "The trouble with poetry is that it encourages the writing of more poetry."
Collins' humor meeting romantic poetry
Sharon Olds - Confessional Contemporary Voice
81. "True love is mixed up with birdlike squawkings and irritations."
Honest portrayal of love's reality in contemporary poetry
Ocean Vuong - Asian-American Love Poetry
82. "Sometimes being offered tenderness feels like the very proof that you've been ruined."
Contemporary trauma and healing in romantic poetry
83. "The most beautiful part of your body is where it's headed."
Body positivity in modern love poetry
Rupi Kaur - Instagram Generation Poetry
84. "You were my cup of tea, but I drink champagne now."
Modern empowerment in accessible romantic poetry
85. "How you love yourself is how you teach others to love you."
Self-love philosophy in contemporary poetry
Warsan Shire - Diaspora Love Poetry
86. "My alone feels so good, I'll only have you if you're sweeter than my solitude."
Contemporary standards for romantic poetry
Andrea Gibson - LGBTQ+ Love Poetry
87. "I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence."
Social justice meeting romantic poetry in contemporary voices
Richard Siken - Intense Contemporary Romance
88. "Tell me about the dream where we pull the bodies out of the lake and they are ours."
Surreal intensity in modern romantic poetry
Claudia Rankine - Racial Identity and Love
89. "Because white men can't police their imagination, black men are dying."
Contemporary social reality affecting romantic poetry
Joy Harjo - Native American Contemporary Voice
90. "Remember the sky that you were born under, know each of the star's stories."
Indigenous wisdom in contemporary romantic poetry
Terrance Hayes - Innovative Contemporary Form
91. "I lock you in an American sonnet that is part prison, part panic closet."
Formal innovation in contemporary love poetry
Danez Smith - Millennial Black Queer Voice
92. "What does it mean to be Black and alive and gay and a poet in America?"
Identity intersection in contemporary romantic poetry
Juan Felipe Herrera - Chicano Love Poetry
93. "Poetry is a call to action, and it also is action."
Activism and romance in contemporary poetry
Amanda Gorman - Gen Z Poetic Voice
94. "There is always light, if only we're brave enough to see it. If only we're brave enough to be it."
Hope and agency in the newest romantic poetry
International Contemporary Voices
95. Margaret Atwood: "You fit into me like a hook into an eye, a fish hook, an open eye."
Canadian precision in contemporary romantic poetry
96. Carol Ann Duffy: "What will survive of us is love."
British Poet Laureate's take on romantic poetry
97. Adrienne Rich: "There must be those among whom we can sit down and weep and still be counted as warriors."
Feminist revolution in romantic poetry
98. Audre Lorde: "And where the words of women are crying to be heard, we must each of us recognize our responsibility to seek those words out, to read them and share them and examine them in their pertinence to our lives."
Intersectional love in contemporary poetry
99. Maya Angelou: "Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope."
Optimistic love in contemporary romantic poetry
100. Nikita Gill: "You are not a victim for sharing your story. You are a survivor setting the world on fire with your truth. And you never know who needs your light, your warmth, and raging courage."
Digital age empowerment in romantic poetry
How to Use These Love Poem Quotes
These 100 greatest love poem quotes by romantic poets represent centuries of human attempts to capture love's essence in words. Whether you're:
- Planning a wedding: Shakespeare's Sonnet 116 and Browning's "Grow old along with me" remain popular choices
- Processing heartbreak: Find solace in Neruda's "Love is so short, forgetting is so long"
- Celebrating an anniversary: Consider Rumi's mystical "Love is the whole thing"
- Writing your own poetry: Study how these masters used metaphor, rhythm, and imagery
- Understanding literary history: See how romantic poetry evolved from classical forms to contemporary free verse
The Evolution of Love Poetry: From Classical to Contemporary
Love quotes from poetry reveal how romantic expression has evolved while remaining fundamentally human. From Shakespeare's formal sonnets to Instagram poets' accessible verses, the core questions remain: How do we express the inexpressible? How do we make permanent what feels ephemeral?
These romantic poets across centuries prove that while the medium changes—from handwritten letters to social media posts—the urgent need to capture love in language remains constant.
Want to explore how love poetry developed across different cultures? Read our comprehensive analysis: How Poetry Captures Hearts Across Cultures →
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