Best Deep Love Poems 

Below, readers can explore a few of the best deep love poems ever written. They come from diverse poets, such as Riyas Quarana, Pablo Neruda, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Each takes a different approach to love, but they are united through their interest in the emotion and its most profound experiences. 

Love After Love by Derek Walcott 

‘Love After Love’ is likely Walcott’s best-known poem. It is also an excellent example of a profound love poem. It offers advice to someone who is distressed—the distress caused by a bad relationship that has ended or should have ended. The speaker suggests that the overalls state of this person’s life is going to improve in time; they just have to be strong. Here are a few lines: 

The time will come

when, with elation

you will greet yourself arriving

at your own door, in your own mirror

and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

One day, they will be happy again since only in embracing who they are can they fully be content. 

Discover more Derek Walcott poems.

Love is Not a Word by Riyas Qurana

In this poem, the poet personifies love and dives into the notion of love and what is needed to maintain it in relationships. This is a wonderful piece for anyone looking for deep love poems. The first stanza emphasizes love as a forest. The poet writes: 

I am a forest

When I smile,

It goes near the pond

And is growing as a mountain

They continue on, describing how love is connected to secrecy or humor. It will create circumstances that could easily be described as whirlwinds. The speaker says that when love is mixed with secrecy, humor, or both, it creates a messy scenario causing society’s standards to complicate and amplify the already complex emotion of love.

Read more Riyas Qurana poems. 

Love of My Flesh, Living Death by Lorna Dee Cervantes

This is a symbolic poem about a speaker’s mind and her love. Her mind has been transformed by a number of circumstances. Consider these lines as the speaker talks about their feelings for their partner. She compares him to a bird: 

Once I wasn’t always so plain.

I was strewn feathers on a cross

of dune, an expanse of ocean

at my feet, garlands of gulls.

Readers might also take a different approach to this poem and consider how the lines relate to the speaker’s mind. The fear of losing a loved one does appear to be the central theme of this poem, though. 

Explore other Lorna Dee Cervantes poems. 

Sonnet 43: How do I love thee? by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

This is one of Browning’s most famous poems and one of the most famous love poems ever written. It describes the love that one speaker, usually considered to be Browning herself, has for her husband (Robert Browning). She confesses her ending passion through the lines. Consider these: 

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.

Read more Elizabeth Barrett Browning poems. 

Love is Enough by William Morris 

‘Love is Enough’ is a short poem that speaks on the power of love in the face of humankind’s most depressing, darkest experiences. The speaker begins the poem by stating that love is enough in the face of darkness. It has the power to make lovers fearless. Here are a few lines: 

Love is enough: though the World be a-waning,

And the woods have no voice but the voice of complaining,

   Though the sky be too dark for dim eyes to discover

The gold-cups and daisies fair blooming thereunder,

Though the hills be held shadows, and the sea a dark wonder

   And this day draw a veil over all deeds pass’d over,

In the last lines, he concludes by saying that the lover and the loved one can confront all of these things and more and not flinch away. They are strong enough together to overcome anything.

Read more poems by William Morris.

Love Calls Us to the Things of This World by Richard Wilbur

This beautiful love poem is a great example of Wilbur’s verse. The content is incredibly relatable. In this particular piece, he talks about waking up in the morning, something that everyone experiences every day. He explores the power of the soul as well as the waking and sleeping world.

The eyes open to a cry of pulleys,

And spirited from sleep, the astounded soul   

Hangs for a moment bodiless and simple   

As false dawn.

                     Outside the open window   

The morning air is all awash with angels.

The soul rises, he stats, and looks are the world around it. The poem concludes with the speaker describing how the soul rejoins the body but speaking openly about its admiration for human beings despite their flaws. 

Discover more Richard Wilbur poems.

Love Sonnet XI by Pablo Neruda 

‘Love Sonnet XI’ is a powerful and deeply sensuous love poem that compares a speaker’s desire to the hunger of a prowling puma. This is one of Neruda’s better-known poems. In the first few lines he writes: 

I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.

Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.

Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day

I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.

These lines are followed by a simile comparing the speaker to a puma prowling through the jungle looking for a much-needed meal. 

Read more Pablo Neruda poems.

Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare 

This well-loved and commonly quoted love sonnet attempts to justify the speaker’s beloved’s beauty by comparing it to a summer’s day and other beautiful sights. The speaker comes to the conclusion that his beloved is far superior to each of these. For example: 

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimmed,

Read more William Shakespeare poems. 

Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe 

In this unique and passionate love poem, the speaker describes his love for Annabel Lee. He also notes how, in jealousy, the angels took her away from him. Their love was too strong and pure to exist on earth. Here are a few of the most famous lines: 

It was many and many a year ago

In a kingdom by the sea

That a maiden there lived whom you may know

by the name of Annabel Lee

And this maiden she lived with no other thought

than to love and be loved by me

Discover more Edgar Allan Poe poems. 

The Love Poem by Carol Ann Duffy 

Through this poem, the poet talks about the difficulty of writing a love poem. This is like a modern-day sonnet sequence. It is also suggestive of the difficulties of deep love affairs. 

Till love exhausts itself, longs

for the sleep of words –

my mistress’ eyes –

to lie on a white sheet, at rest

in the language –

let me count the ways –

She continues to speak about how she can’t find appropriate expressions while she tries to write a love poem.

Discover more Carol Ann Duffy poems. 

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