There are so many wonderful poems to choose from it is difficult to know where to make a start! We have therefore devised a Top 20 List of our favourite poems. It was an extremely difficult task and obviously our choice, in the end, was based on personal preferences! We hope that the list will provide our readers with as much pleasure that these famous verses have given to us. A good knowledge of these famous verses will provide all students and children with a good grounding of the subject. Each poet has a different style of writing making expert use of the English language. We have been asked on many occasions which is our favourite poem. Impossible! Writing styles, subject matter and even childhood memories influence choices, so we gave up and endeavoured to, at least, compile a list of our top twenty famous and favourite poems! The first line of the famous verse has been included to jog the memory! Please refer to the Index for the Top 20 list! We can, however give examples of some lovely verses from a selection of the most popular love poems ever written: William Shakespeare Sonnet 18 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; And every fair from fair sometime 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. Because She Would Ask Me Why I Loved Her a Love poem by Christopher Brennan
If questioning would make us wise No eyes would ever gaze in eyes; If all our tale were told in speech No mouths would wander each to each.
Were spirits free from mortal mesh And love not bound in hearts of flesh No aching breasts would yearn to meet And find their ecstasy complete.
For who is there that lives and knows The secret powers by which he grows? Were knowledge all, what were our need To thrill and faint and sweetly bleed?.
Then seek not, sweet, the "If" and "Why" I love you now until I die. For I must love because I live And life in me is what you give. "If thou must love me, let it be for nought" a famous love poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning If thou must love me, let it be for nought Except for love's sake only. Do not say "I love her for her smile her look her way Of speaking gently, for a trick of thought That falls in well with mine, and certes brought A sense of ease on such a day" For these things in themselves, Beloved, may Be changed, or change for thee, and love, so wrought, May be unwrought so. Neither love me for Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheek dry, A creature might forget to weep, who bore Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby! But love me for love's sake, that evermore Thou may'st love on, through love's eternity. |