Love. The only true constant in this world, where everything is changeable, all is temporary and love is perhaps, the only possible intangible which a person holds onto, beyond life unto eternity. It also happens to be one of those fluids onto which the bloodline of life runs and drives. True, nothing is possible in life, without love.

Sach kaha hai kisi ne-Saanson ki zaroorat hai jaise, zindagi ke liye, Bas ek Sanam chahiye, Aashiqui ke liye…

Bhai Ishq aur Aashiqui ke liye toh har kisiko chahiye Sanam iss Valentine’s day. This is that one day of the year when we simply want to celebrate and be with that special loved one.

In fact, February being the month of love, we here at Booxoul thought why not celebrate it in a manner which will please our readers as well as all those who love a celebration of true literary art in its purest form. A compilation of some of the best romantic poems you can readout for your loved one this Valentine’s day and give them the quintessential happiness and moment of pure, unadulterated joy they deserve on this special day.

I know we all here are surely spoilt for choice, thanks to such an array of options we have from the Masters themselves. Yes, Love indeed, has been one of those emotions which have been described so poignantly and in such a varied voice, by poets across the world, over the period of time. 

Just to let you guys know huh, this is your definitive go-to list, to read out to your loved ones this Valentine’s day, making them fall for you over again. We have compiled them keeping in mind one simple thing-Pyaar Zindagi hai!! Nahi samjhe?

READ: 10 Best Poetries Everyone Should Read

Love, the truly uncompromised, innocent, tender emotion that rules the heartstrings of the world across. So let’s dive head straight into these juices of emotional escapades:

As If a Phantom Caress’d Me

By Walt Whitman

As if a phantom caress’d me,
I thought I was not alone walking here by the shore;
But the one I thought was with me as now I walk by the shore, the
one I loved that caress’d me,
As I lean and look through the glimmering light, that one has
utterly disappear’d.
And those appear that are hateful to me and mock me.

famous philosophical piece, ideal for lovers who have been missing their loved ones, this one is kinda “feel me I am right here”

How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43)

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.

This one speaks about love beyond life, unto eternity. Well, isn’t loving beyond life epic by itself?

I Carry Your Heart With Me (i carry it in]

By E. E. Cummings

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)
i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
 i fear
no fate(for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

Sentiments layered in a unique literary style, a refreshing one to dive into and bask in with your loved one.

Love Sonnet XI

by Pablo Neruda

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.

I hunger for your sleek laugh,
your hands the color of a savage harvest,
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.

I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,
the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,
I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,

and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunting for you, for your hot heart,
like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.

Probably love created for the sake of love by Neruda, the metaphors created, uff, I tell ya’…

Valentine

by Carol Ann Duffy

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.

I am trying to be truthful.

Not a cute card or a kissogram.

I give you an onion.
Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips,
possessive and faithful
as we are,
for as long as we are.

Take it.
Its platinum loops shrink to a wedding ring,
if you like.
Lethal.
Its scent will cling to your fingers,
cling to your knife.

The way the poet has offered an onion comparing it initially to the moon wrapped in brown paper, then onwards to different metaphors, is simply astounding.

Unending Love

by Rabindranath Tagore

I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times…
In life after life, in age after age, forever.
My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs,
That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms,
In life after life, in age after age, forever.

Whenever I hear old chronicles of love, its age-old pain,
Its ancient tale of being apart or together.
As I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge,
Clad in the light of a pole-star piercing the darkness of time:
You become an image of what is remembered forever.

You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount.
At the heart of time, love of one for another.
We have played alongside millions of lovers, shared in the same
Shy sweetness of meeting, the same distressful tears of farewell-
Old love but in shapes that renew and renew forever.

Today it is heaped at your feet, it has found its end in you
The love of all man’s days both past and forever:
Universal joy, universal sorrow, universal life.
The memories of all loves merging with this one love of ours –
And the songs of every poet past and forever.

Written by perhaps the most noted Bengali poet of our times, the way this one culminates, in the end, merging all is simply like wow to the power of infinity right?

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 love 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 mile.

Well, this one is like a deep-rooted piece conveying the true ergonomics of a long term relationship…

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.

Not fair na, but can’t help it as this is again one of the best love sonnets of all time. Want to pay your lover a superbly metaphoric compliment. This one, please!!

Variations on the word Love

by Margaret Atwood

This is a word we use to plug
holes with. It’s the right size for those warm
blanks in speech, for those red heart-
shaped vacancies on the page that look nothing
like real hearts. Add lace
and you can sell
it. We insert it also in the one empty
space on the printed form
that comes with no instructions. There are whole
magazines with not much in them
but the word love, you can
rub it all over your body and you
can cook with it too. How do we know
it isn’t what goes on at the cool
debaucheries of slugs under damp
pieces of cardboard? As for the weed-
seedlings nosing their tough snouts up
among the lettuces, they shout it.
Love! Love! sing the soldiers, raising
their glittering knives in salute.

Then there’s the two
of us. This word
is far too short for us, it has only
four letters, too sparse
to fill those deep bare
vacuums between the stars
that press on us with their deafness.
It’s not love we don’t wish
to fall into, but that fear.
this word is not enough but it will
have to do. It’s a single
vowel in this metallic
silence, a mouth that says
O again and again in wonder
and pain, a breath, a finger
grip on a cliffside. You can
hold on or let go.

This is a word we use to plug
holes with. It’s the right size for those warm
blanks in speech, for those red heart-
shaped vacancies on the page that look nothing
like real hearts. Add lace
and you can sell
it. We insert it also in the one empty
space on the printed form
that comes with no instructions. There are whole
magazines with not much in them
but the word love, you can
rub it all over your body and you
can cook with it too. How do we know
it isn’t what goes on at the cool
debaucheries of slugs under damp
pieces of cardboard? As for the weed-
seedlings nosing their tough snouts up
among the lettuces, they shout it.
Love! Love! sing the soldiers, raising
their glittering knives in salute.

Then there’s the two
of us. This word
is far too short for us, it has only
four letters, too sparse
to fill those deep bare
vacuums between the stars
that press on us with their deafness.
It’s not love we don’t wish
to fall into, but that fear.
this word is not enough but it will
have to do. It’s a single
vowel in this metallic
silence, a mouth that says
O again and again in wonder
and pain, a breath, a finger
grip on a cliffside. You can
hold on or let go.

I personally love how this poem shows the multiple meanings of love and how it also fails to depict its true meaning in the entirety of the concept.

Mad Girl’s Love Song

by Sylvia Plath

“I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell’s fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan’s men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you’d return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)”

A superb piece describing the struggle of coming to terms with unrequited love, this is an interesting take on love as well as breakups in modern-day poetry.

Hope you guys loved reading our top pick of 10 Beautiful Romantic Poems You Can Read To Your Loved One This Valentine’s Day

So you guys might be having some more to add to this list. Do drop in your picks in the comments below. Remember, a poem is the best you can give in the manner of a gift to your loved one people.

Have a lovely valentine’s day and keep tuning in for more exciting content.

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Love You Infinito peeps!!

This article is written as a part of The Bloggers League conducted by Vidhya Thakkar Neelam Sharma and Siddhi Palande powered by Penguin India, Dreamland Publications and Acclidesign should not be repurposed, republished or used otherwise.