Lost for words on how to express your love this Valentine's Day? Dedicate some of these Valentine's Day poems and make the person you care about feel loved.
President Barack Obama and the First Lady, Michelle Obama recently traded poems to express their love for each other. You can certainly do so. Here are five poems to let all those raging emotions pour out of you:
1. For the one you are sure you love and loves you back
Title: I loved you first: but afterwards your love . . .
by Christina Rossetti (1830 - 1894)
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 other 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;'
Both have the strength and both the length thereof,
Both of us, of the love which makes us one.
2. For the person you are courting and whose love you want the most this Valentine's Day
Valentine
by Carol Ann Duffy (1955- )
The poem begins:
Not a red rose or a satin heart.
I give you an onion.
It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.
It promises light
like the careful undressing of love.
Here.
It will blind you with tears
like a lover.
It will make your reflection
a wobbling photo of grief...
3. For the person you love since forever
A Glimpse
by Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892)
A glimpse through an interstice caught,
Of a crowd of workmen and drivers in a bar-room around the stove late of a winter night, and I unremark'd seated in a corner,
Of a youth who loves me and whom I love, silently approaching and seating himself near, that he may hold me by the hand,
A long while amid the noises of coming and going, of drinking and oath and smutty jest,
There we two, content, happy in being together, speaking little, perhaps not a word.
4. For the one who cannot care less about Valentine's, but believes in love nonetheless.
Another Valentine
by Wendy Cope (1945 - )
Today we are obliged to be romantic
And think of yet another valentine.
We know the rules and we are both pedantic:
Today's the day we have to be romantic.
Our love is old and sure, not new and frantic.
You know I'm yours and I know you are mine.
And saying that has made me feel romantic,
My dearest love, my darling valentine
5. For yourself, if you do not have anyone to love on Valentine's Day but revel on your single hood and independence after breaking up.
Love after Love
by Derek Walcott (1930 - )
The poem ends:
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
Happy Valentine's Everyone!
