Sometimes expressing how much we love someone is hard.  We try to put it into words, but it doesn’t come out the way it should.   The following are ten classic poems written by some of the greatest writers who have lived on the earth.  Using someone else’s poem to express how you feel is nothing new.  The writers just have a way of expressing how you feel, and why not use it?

“Poem for my love”

By June Jordan

How do we come to be here next to each other

in the night

Where are the stars that show us to our love

inevitable

Outside the leaves flame usual in darkness

and the rain

Falls cool and blessed on the holy flesh

the black men waiting on the corner for

a womanly mirage

I am amazed by peace

It is this possibility of you

asleep

and breathing in the quiet air

“Love is Enough”

By William Morris

Love is enough: though the world be a-waning

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

Though the skies be too dark for dim eyes to

discover

The gold-cups and daisies dair blooming thereunder,

Though the hills be held shadow, and the sea a dark

wonder,

And this day draw a veil over all deeds passed over,

Yet their hands shall not tremble, their feet shall

not falter:

The void shall not weary, the fear shall not alter

These lips and these eyes of the loved and the lover.

“Sonnet 18”

By Williams Shakespeare

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.

Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimmed;

And every fair from fair sometimes declines,

By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimmed;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,

Nor shall death brag thou wand’rest in his shade,

When in eternal lines to Time thou grow’st.

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

“loved you first: but afterward your love”

By Christina Rossetti

I loved you first: but afterwards your love

Outsoaring mine, sang such a loftier song

As drowned the friendly cooings of my dove.

Which owes the most? my love was long,

And yours one moment seemed to wax more strong;

I loved and guessed at you, you construed me

And loved me for what might or might not be –

Nay,  weights and measures do us both a wrong.

For verily love knows not ‘mine’ or ‘thine;’

With separate ‘I’ and ‘thou’ free love has done,

For one is both and both are one in love:

Rich love knows nought of ‘thine that is not mine,’

Voth have the strength and both the length thereof,

Both of us, of the love which makes us one.

“She walks in beauty”

By Lord Byron

She walks in beauty, like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies;

And all that’s best of dark and bright

Meet in her aspect and her;

Thus mellowed to that tender light

Which heaven to gaudy days denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,

Had half impaired the nameless grace

Which waves in every raven tress,

Or softly lightens o’er her face;

Where thoughts serenely sweet express,

How pure, how dear their dwelling-place

And on that cheek, and o’er that brow,

So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,

The smiles that win, the tints that glow,

But tell of days in goodness spent,

A mind at peace with all below,

A heart whose love is innocent!

“Love Philosophy”

By Percy Bysshe Shelley

The fountains mingle with the river

And the rivers with the ocean,

The winds of heaven mix for ever

With a sweet emotion;

Nothing in the world is single;

All things by a law divine

In one spirit meet and mingle.

Why not I with thine?

See the mountains kiss high heaven

And the waves clasp one another;

No sister-flower would be forgiven

If it disdained its brother;

And the sunlight clasps the earth

And the moonbeams kiss the sea:

What is all this sweet work worth

If thou kiss not me?

“A red, red rose”

By Robert burns

O my Luve is like a red, red rose

That’s newly sprung in June;

O my Luve is like the melody

That’s sweetly played in tune.

So fair art thou, my bonnie lass,

So deep in luve am I;

And I will luve thee still, my dear,

Till a’ the seas gang dry.

Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,

And the rocks melt wi’ the sun;

I will luve thee still, my dear,

While the sands o’ life shall run.

And fare thee weel, my only Luve!

And fare thee weel awhile!

And I will come again, my Luve,

Though it were ten thousand miles.

“When you are old”

By W.B. Yeats

When you are old and grey 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 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.

“Sonnet XVII”

By Pablo Neruda

I don’t love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz

Or arrow of carnation that propagates fire:

I love you as certain dark things are loved,

Secretly, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom and carries

Hidden within itself the light of those flowers,

and thanks to your love, darkly in my body

Lives the dense fragrance that rises from earth.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,

I love you simply, without problems or pride:

I love you in this way because I don’t know any other way of loving

But this, in which there is no I or you,

So intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand,

So intimate that when I fall asleep it is your eyes that close

Sonnet 116 

By William Shakespeare

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments, love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove:

O no! It is an ever-fixed mark

That looks on tempest and it never shaken;

It is the star to every wandering bark,

Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken

Love’s not time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle’s compass come:

Love alter not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

If this be error and upon me proved,

I never writ, or no man ever loved.