Classic Love Poems

Amy Lowell

Amy Lowell (1874-1925) was an American poet and wealthy business woman. In addition to her own work, she often published the work of other writers. Though she sometimes wrote sonnets, she was an early adherent to “free verse” and one of the major champions of the method. Her love poems in the volume, Two Speak Together, were said to have been inspired by Mormon actress Ada Dwyer Russell whom she met in 1909. In 1912, Lowell and Russell entered into along-term relationship, or “Boston marriage” (the term used in the 19th century for romantic female relationships), that lasted until Lowell’s death in 1925. Lowell posthumously won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1926 for her collection, What’s O’Clock.

The Letter

Little cramped words scrawling all over the paper
Like draggled fly’s legs,
What can you tell of the flaring moon
Through the oak leaves?
Or of my uncertain window and the bare floor

Spattered with moonlight?
Your silly quirks and twists have nothing in them
Of blossoming hawthorns,
And this paper is dull, crisp, smooth, virgin of loveliness
Beneath my hand.

I am tired, Beloved, of chafing my heart against
The want of you;
Of squeezing it into little inkdrops,
And posting it.
And I scald alone, here, under the fire
Of the great moon.

The Bungler

You glow in my heart
Like the flames of uncontrolled candles.
But when I go to warm my hands,
My clumsiness overturns the light,
and then I stumble
Against the tables and chairs.

Decade

When you came, you were like red wine and honey,
And the taste of you burnt my mouth with its sweetness.
Now you are like morning bread,
Smooth and pleasant.
I hardly taste you at all for I know your savour,
But I am completely nourished.

Opal

You are ice and fire,
The touch of you burns my hands like snow.
You are cold and flame.
You are the crimson of amaryllis,
The silver of moon-touched magnolias.
When I am with you,
My heart is a frozen pond
Gleaming with agitated torches.

The Taxi

When I go away from you
The world beats dead
Like a slackened drum.
I call out for you against the jutted stars
And shout into the ridges of the wind.
Streets coming fast,
One after the other,
Wedge you away from me,
And the lamps of the city prick my eyes
So that I can no longer see your face.
Why should I leave you,
To wound myself upon the sharp edges of the night?