How to Write a Love Poem (Tips and Examples)

If you want to learn how to write a love poem, gather some of your favorite love poems and observe what they have in common.

How to Write a Love Poem

The finest love poems express more than just “I love you.” They frequently convey a certain feature of being in love and have a universality that extends beyond one person.

After reading several romantic poems, you might utilize creative writing strategies to compose your own poetry for a loved one.

Here are several poems to get you started, as well as some suggestions on how to write a love poem to help you get that first line on the page.

Tips on How to Write a Love Poem

1. Concentrate on Form

Keeping a collection of your best love poems will help you decide whether to compose sonnets like William Shakespeare and Pablo Neruda, sestinas like William Butler Yeats, or free poetry like Maya Angelou. You may always try out different literary styles to see what works best for you.

2. Look for a Commanding Picture

The majority of poems use imagery and sensory description to create a vision for their viewers. Iconography, symbolism, and figurative language are extremely significant in love poetry.

An inanimate item or natural phenomenon is frequently used as a symbol of love. On the other hand, romantic love itself may function as a metaphor for other subjects, such as patriotism or the life of an artist, in poems that appear to be love poems but are actually about something else.

Whether your poetry is an extended metaphor or imagery, most love poems will benefit from some physical foundation.

3. Be You

It’s easier said than done, but be loyal to yourself when writing. Learning how to compose a love poem isn’t about making your writing seem excessively sentimental or romantic or rhymey.

Be genuine, and be yourself with all of your great personality. It may seem cheesy, but the finest love poems are ones that are written from the heart.

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Examples of Love Poems

After going through the tips above, here are some great examples of love poems carefully selected that you can learn from as well.

1. Bird-Understander (by Craig Arnold)

These are your own words

your way of noticing

and saying plainly

of not turning away

from hurt

you have offered them

to me I am only

giving them back

if only I could show you

how very useless

they are not

2. How Do I Love Thee? (by Elizabeth Barrett Browning)

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.

I love thee to the level of every day’s

Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.

I love thee freely, as men strive for right.

I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.

I love thee with the passion put to use

In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.

I love thee with a love I seemed to lose

With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,

Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,

I shall but love thee better after death.

3. To find a kiss of yours (by Federico García Lorca)

Translated by Sarah Arvio

To find a kiss of yours

what would I give

A kiss that strayed from your lips

dead to love

My lips taste

the dirt of shadows

To gaze at your dark eyes

what would I give

Dawns of rainbow garnet

fanning open before God—

The stars blinded them

one morning in May

And to kiss your pure thighs

what would I give

Raw rose crystal

sediment of the sun

4. Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? (by William 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.

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.

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5. I Do Not Love You Except Because I Love You (by Pablo Neruda)

I do not love you except because I love you;

I go from loving to not loving you,

From waiting to not waiting for you

My heart moves from cold to fire.

I love you only because it’s you the one I love;

I hate you deeply, and hating you

Bend to you, and the measure of my changing love for you

Is that I do not see you but love you blindly.

Maybe January light will consume

My heart with its cruel

Ray, stealing my key to true calm.

In this part of the story I am the one who

Dies, the only one, and I will die of love because I love you,

Because I love you, Love, in fire and blood.

6. Love Song (by William Carlos Williams)

I lie here thinking of you:—

the stain of love

is upon the world!

Yellow, yellow, yellow

it eats into the leaves,

smears with saffron

the horned branches that lean

heavily

against a smooth purple sky!

There is no light

only a honey-thick stain

that drips from leaf to leaf

and limb to limb

spoiling the colors

of the whole world—

you far off there under

the wine-red selvage of the west!

7. Heart to Heart(by Rita Dove)

It’s neither red

nor sweet.

It doesn’t melt

or turn over,

break or harden,

so it can’t feel

pain,

yearning,

regret.

It doesn’t have

a tip to spin on,

it isn’t even

shapely—

just a thick clutch

of muscle,

lopsided,

mute. Still,

I feel it inside

its cage sounding

a dull tattoo:

I want, I want—

but I can’t open it:

there’s no key.

I can’t wear it

on my sleeve,

or tell you from

the bottom of it

how I feel. Here,

it’s all yours, now—

but you’ll have

to take me,

too.

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8. Golden Anniversary(by Wislawa Szymborska)

They must have been different once,

fire and water, miles apart,

robbing and giving in desire,

that assault on one another’s otherness.

Embracing, they appropriated and expropriated each other

for so long

that only air was left within their arms,

transparent as if after lightning.

One day the answer came before the question.

Another night they guessed their eyes’ expression

by the type of silence in the dark.

Gender fades, mysteries molder,

distinctions meet in all-resemblance

just as all colors coincide in white.

Which of them is doubled and which missing?

Which one is smiling with two smiles?

Whose voice forms a two-part canon?

When both heads nod, which one agrees?

Whose gesture lifts the teaspoon to their lips?

Who’s flayed the other one alive?

Which one lives and which has died

entangled in the lines of whose palm?

They gazed into each other’s eyes and slowly twins emerged.

Familiarity breeds the most perfect of mothers—

it favors neither of the little darlings,

it scarcely can recall which one is which.

On this festive day, their golden anniversary,

a dove, seen identically, perched on the windowsill.

We hope this article on how to write a love poem has been helpful and has made your first step easy and smooth. Please endeavor to share this article with family, friends, and colleagues. Cheers.

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How to Write a Love Poem (Tips and Examples)