How Do I Love Thee: Famous Love Poems and Quotes

To paraphrase a line from a famous love poem, "How do I say I love thee let me think of ways." For some reason a lot of us get tongue-tied when it comes to expressing our love for another person. I think this is because we assume we need fancy, flowery words to communicate our love. However, much as all the proponents of Valentines Day would have you believe this is not the case. Sometimes the simplest words are the best. Few of us have Shakespeare's way with words but that does not mean we cannot borrow from him and the other masters of poetic expression. This hub is filled with flowery words of love from famous love poems and Valentines Quotes feel free to use them the next time you get tongue-tied.

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,
And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.
(William Shakespeare)

I love thee - I love thee,
'Tis all that I can say
It is my vision in the night,
My dreaming in the day.
(Thomas Hood)

Doubt thou the stars are fire;
Doubt that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt I love.
(William Shakespeare)

Oh, innocent victims of Cupid,
Remember this terse little verse;
To let a fool kiss you is stupid,
To let a kiss fool you is worse
(E.Y. Harburg)

In melody divine,
My heart it beats to rapturous love,
I long to call you mine.
(Author Unknown)

So long as I can breathe or I can see
so long lives your love which gives life to me.
(William Shakespeare)

1. A hundred hearts would be too few; To carry all my love for you. - Author Unknown
2. Oh, if it be to choose and call thee mine, love, thou art every day my Valentine! - Thomas Hood
3. When I saw you I fell in love, and you smiled because you knew. - Arrigo Boito
4. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach.  -Elizabeth Barrett Browning
5. Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies. – Aristotle
6. Love me and the world is mine.  -David Reed
7. I've fallen in love many times... always with you.  - Author Unknown
8. Where there is love there is no darkness. - African Proverb
9. Lovers don't finally meet somewhere. They're in each other all along. - Rumi
10. We are, each of us angels with only one wing; and we can only fly by embracing one another. - Luciano de Crescenzo
11. Come live with me and be my love; and we will all the pleasures prove. - Christopher Marlowe
12. Some Cupid kills with arrows, some with traps. – Shakespeare
13. A man is not where he lives, but where he loves.  - Latin Proverb
14. The best part of happiness lies in the secret heart of a lover. - African Proverb
15. One thread for the needle, one love for the heart. – Sudanese Proverb
16. Poetry spills from the cracks of a broken heart, but flows from one which is loved. - Christopher Paul Rubero
17. At the touch of love, everyone becomes a poet.  - Plato
18. Let your love be like the misty rain, coming softly, but flooding the river. – African Proverb
19. Love goes toward love. - William Shakespeare

Famous Love Poem
by ee 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 the 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)

Famous Love Poem for Husband
by Anne Bradstreet

If ever two were one, then surely we.
If ever man were lov'd by wife, then thee;
If ever wife was happy in a man,
Compare with me ye women if you can.
I prize thy love more then whole Mines of gold,
Or all the riches that the East doth hold.
My love is such that Rivers cannot quench,
Nor ought but love from thee, give recompence.
Thy love is such I can no way repay,
The heavens reward thee manifold I pray.
Then while we live, in love let's so persever,
That when we live no more, we may live ever.

Valentine Love Poems for Wife
by Eugene Field

Accept, dear girl, this little token,
And if between the lines you seek,
You'll find the love I've often spoken
The love my dying lips shall speak.
Our little ones are making merry
O'er am'rous ditties rhymed in jest,
But in these words (though awkward very)
The genuine article's expressed.
You are as fair and sweet and tender,
Dear brown-eyed little sweetheart mine,
As when, a callow youth and slender,
I asked to be your Valentine.
What though these years of ours be fleeting?
What though the years of youth be flown?
I'll mock old Tempus with repeating,
"I love my love and her alone!"
And when I fall before his reaping,
And when my stuttering speech is dumb,
Think not my love is dead or sleeping,
But that it waits for you to come.
So take, dear love, this little token,
And if there speaks in any line
The sentiment I'd fain have spoken,
Say, will you kiss your Valentine?

Famous Love Poem
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 everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
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.