When You Are Old (Yeats) When you are old and gray and full of sleep, And nodding by the fire, take down this book, And slowly read, and dream of the soft look Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep; How many loved your moments of glad grace, And loved your beauty with love false or true; But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face. And bending down beside the glowing bars Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled And paced upon the mountains overhead And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

the best - I love the Yeats one quoted by painful_ginsu, and also Christopher Marlowe's "Passionate Shepherd to His Love" albeit a little too oft-quoted. my personal favorite (by no means "best," but best to me) is one of my own, "child": primordial child you bring the past alive for me as you run along the edge of the Earth and sea So newly born of them, you radiate their wisdom and stay their momentum with your every nimble step You connect me to the ancient and the timeless And fill me with the voices of the ages Your smile carries me to times as yet unknown Like the Cheshire Cat's, holding as the background dims and changes And I see the smile of a man falling into himself as his bride glides on a cloud of love, to stand at his side; The smile of a father seeing his child born - Both crying, the circle complete The voices chorus as the smile tips upwards and you search my eyes You reach for me - lift my heart as I lift your body You've come for a kiss a hug some milk I fold you in and close my eyes to hear the hush of the waves The weight of your body in my arms tells me you are flesh But I know you are made of love and all there ever was

OK, I'll come out of hiding for this one...Erotic in a subtle way. This "old guy" likes that I guess, and remembers when it was real once for me: XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXXOXOXOX I Knew A Woman I knew a woman, lovely in her bones, When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them; Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one: The shapes a bright container can contain! Of her choice virtues only gods should speak, Or English poets who grew up on Greek (I'd have them sing in chorus, cheek to cheek.) How well her wishes went! She stroked my chin, She taught me Turn, and Counter-turn, and stand; She taught me Touch, that undulant white skin: I nibbled meekly from her proffered hand; She was the sickle; I, poor I, the rake, Coming behind her for her pretty sake (But what prodigious mowing did we make.) Love likes a gander, and adores a goose: Her full lips pursed, the errant note to seize; She played it quick, she played it light and loose; My eyes, they dazzled at her flowing knees; Her several parts could keep a pure repose, Or one hip quiver with a mobile nose (She moved in circles, and those circles moved.) Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay: I'm martyr to a motion not my own; What's freedom for? To know eternity. I swear she cast a shadow white as stone. But who would count eternity in days? These old bones live to learn her wanton ways: (I measure time by how a body sways.) ============================== Oh, I think I need to lie down and rest, or smoke a cigarette perhaps... JOG

On his mother's lap young Cupid is at play, For my heart his dice he casts each day. -Meleager

Here are a few I like. The last is maybe not a traditional "love poem" but it's about love. ************************ When you go by Edwin Morgan When you go, if you go, And I should want to die, there's nothing I'd be saved by more than the time you fell asleep in my arms in a trust so gentle I let the darkening room drink up the evening, till rest, or the new rain lightly roused you awake. I asked if you heard the rain in your dream and half dreaming still you only said, I love you. ************************ Bookworm by Norman MacCaig I open the second volume of a rose and find it says, word for word, the same as the first one. The waves of the sea annoy me, they bore me; why aren't they divided in paragraphs? I look at the night and make nothing of it - those black pages with no print. But I love the gothic script of pinetrees and on the pond the light's fancy italics. And the cherry tree's petals - they make a sweet lyric, I appreciate their dying fall. But it's strange, girl, how I come back from the library of everything to stare and stare at the closed book of you. When will you open to me and show me the meaning of all the hard words in the lexicon of love? ************************ An Arundel Tomb by Philip Larkin Side by side, their faces blurred, The earl and countess lie in stone, Their proper habits vaguely shown As jointed armour, stiffened pleat, And that faint hint of the absurd - The little dogs under their feet. Such plainess of the pre-baroque Hardly involves the eye, until It meets his left hand gauntlet, still Clasped empty in the other; and One sees, with sharp tender shock, His hand withdrawn, holding her hand. They would not think to lie so long. Such faithfulness in effigy Was just a detail friends could see: A sculptor's sweet comissioned grace Thrown off in helping to prolong The Latin names around the base. They would not guess how early in Their supine stationary voyage Their air would change to soundless damage, Turn the old tenantry away; How soon succeeding eyes begin To look, not read. Rigidly they Persisted, linked, through lengths and breadths Of time. Snow fell, undated. Light Each summer thronged the grass. A bright Litter of birdcalls strewed the same Bone-riddled ground. And up the paths The endless altered people came, Washing at their identity. Now, helpless in the hollow of An unarmorial age, a trough Of smoke in slow suspended skeins Above their scrap of history, Only an attitude remains: Time has transfigured them into Untruth. The stone fidelity They hardly meant has come to be Their final blazon, and to prove Our almost-instinct almost true: What will survive of us is love.

Oh thats a hard question for me. There are just so many. This was always a favorite of mine though. Dante Gabriel Rossetti Severed Selves. Two separate divided silences, Which, brought together, would find loving voice; Two glances which together would rejoice In love, now lost like stars beyond dark trees; Two hands apart whose touch alone gives ease; Two bosoms which, heart-shrined with mutual flame, Would, meeting in one clasp, be made the same; Two souls, the shores wave-mocked of sundering seas:-- Such are we now. Ah! may our hope forecast Indeed one hour again, when on this stream Of darkened love once more the light shall gleam? An hour how slow to come, how quickly past, Which blooms and fades, and only leaves at last, Faint as shed flowers, the attenuated dream.

Time does not bring relief; you all have lied Who told me time would ease me of my pain! I miss him in the weeping of the rain; I want him at the shrinking of the tide; The old snows melt from every mountain-side, And last year's leaves are smoke in every lane; But last year's bitter loving must remain Heaped on ... Read Moremy heart, and my old thoughts abide. There are a hundred places where I fear To go - so with his memory they brim. And entering with relief some quiet place Where never fell his foot or shone his face I say, 'There is no memory of him here!' And so stand stricken, so remembering him.