Hello Keith,
You?re certainly right about having to wade through a lot of useless
stuff to find anything good, and I did indeed field quite a few
commercial (and commercially annoying) sites, but take heart. There
are a lot of very good, serious sites with beautiful love poetry,
ranging from classic to modern and even one with ancient Egyptian love
poems. Here?re some of the best:
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General love poetry sites and links
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?The World?s Oldest Love Poem:? It is possible that this poem, titled
"Istanbul 2461, is the oldest expression of love and intimacy. It was
written approximately 4000 B.C. It is interesting that in Arabian
poetry we find a freedom of expression toward the erotic as well as
expressions of love that lasts beyond this lifetime."
http://www.sexualrecords.com/Istanbul2461.html
Three love poems from ancient Egypt:
http://homepage.powerup.com.au/~ancient/love.htm or
http://www.virtual-egypt.com/newhtml/texts/love.htm
Love is Online has a selection of Ancient love poems:
http://www.love-is-online.com/early_love_poems.html
Classical love poems:
http://www.love-is-online.com/classic_love_poems.html
and Modern love poems:
http://www.love-is-online.com/modern_love_poems.html
?Lion Heart? is a wonderful site that has, in their words, an
extensive ?collection of love poems, spanning four centuries of
literature in English, has been taken from our English, American and
African-American Poetry databases.? The collection is searchable by
author, title and subject or keyword. Here is the link to the main
page:
http://lionheart.chadwyck.co.uk/ and this is to their help page that
tells you how to use the various search functions:
http://lionheart.chadwyck.co.uk/help/search.htm#browse
?Poetry.com?s? ?100 Greatest Love Poems Ever Written? is admittedly a
subjective compilation. But it does contain some beautiful love
poetry, arranged in categories of ?In Love,? ?Wanting Love,? ?Lost
Love,? ?Love of Life,? ?Love of Friends,? and ?Power of Love.? It
doesn?t have a search function, but you can browse by category and
even listen to some poems in audio. Check it out here:
http://www.poetry.com/greatestpoems/listlove.asp
This list of classic love poems links directly to online text of some
of the most beautiful poems ever written:
http://www.infoplease.com/spot/lovepoems1.html
Here is a delightful site that has not only famous and classic love
poems by category, but also a collection of over 20,000 user-submitted
love poems that you can browse. As its name suggests, it?s dedicated
to love poetry, and does its best to provide both quality and
quantity:
http://www.best-love-poems.com/
The ?Blender of Love Digest? has a good list of love poems and sonnets, here:
http://www.loveblender.com/poetry/
This site has an eclectic collection of published and submitted love
poems, browsable by category: http://www.lovepoetry.com/
There is a large collection of poetry archives here:
http://www.emule.com/poetry/ where a search on ?love? turns up an
extensive list ? 470 poems to be exact. The blue text is clickable
and will take you to the full poem.
?Best Loved Poems Network? has a large, browsable collection of many types of
love poems: http://www.bestlovepoems.net/index.php
Modern romantic love poems ? quite an extensive list:
http://www.romantic-lyrics.com/lovepoems.shtml
Short love poems: http://www.short-love-poem.com/iloveyou.html
Links to more love poems: http://results.about.com/love_poems/#3
?A Selection of New, Original and Inspiring Love Poems from the East:?
http://www.geocities.com/jacangco/
Here from ?Go Ask Alice? is a selection of her favorite poems, along
with recommendations for romantic poets and other places to find love
poems:
http://www.goaskalice.columbia.edu/1443.html
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Indices
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http://www.Bartleby.com has one of the most extensive literature
collections on the web, and by using its search function to search
?all verse? (scroll down in the subject field) combined with any
keyword such as ?love,? or ?beloved,? or similar, you can find a great
many wonderful poems.
?Over 150,000 love poems, browsable by category:
http://library.lovingyou.com/poetry/
RomanticPoetry.com Poetry Index page:
http://www.romanticpoetry.com/ddmenu.htm
?Poems for the People ? Poems by the People:?
http://www.netpoets.com/poems/love/index.htm
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Individual poets
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Pablo Neruda ?the winner of the 1971 Nobel Prize for Literature writes
the kind of poetry that literally takes your breath away. Although one
of the poets best known world wide, few students in the U.S. have
heard of him, possibly due to his political connections. His words
live for those in love.? Here is a link to some of his poems:
http://boppin.com/neruda.html Be sure to scroll down to the link
?More poems by Pablo Neruda.? (Note: I found the above two links at
a separate site, which has additional information you might like to
check out:
http://results.about.com/love_poems/#3 ).
The love poetry of Rumi: ?The name Mowlana Jalaluddin Rumi stands for
Love and ecstatic flight into the infinite. Rumi is one of the great
spiritual masters and poetical geniuses of mankind and was the founder
of the Mawlawi Sufi order, a leading mystical brotherhood of Islam.?
Read the poems here:
http://www.khamush.com/love_poems.html
Excerpts from ?The Love Poems of Marichiko,? translated from the
Japanese by Kenneth Rexroth:
http://www.madinkbeard.com/readings/rexpoem2.html
http://www.swcp.com/~thall/marichiko/
More Rexroth ?
From ?100 Poems from the Japanese:?
http://www.madinkbeard.com/readings/rexpoem3.html
From ?Poems from the Greek Anthology:?
http://www.madinkbeard.com/readings/rexpoem4.html
Love poems of Patricia Scott, the ?Voice of Kenya Africa:?
http://www.kenyabeach.com/patricia/patricia2.html
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International love poetry
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Irish love poems:
http://www.hylit.com/info/Poetry/Irishlovepoems.html
?Six Albanian Love Poems? (translated into English):
http://www.beyond-the-pale.co.uk/albanian5.htm
Spanish love poems:
http://www.donquijote.org/spanishlanguage/love/love.poems.asp
This site has ?Love Poems From Around the World,? and while some of
them are quite nice, be aware that it?s a bit of a ?frou-frou? site
that will play music when you open a poem. It can be annoying, but if
you have a little time and can put up with it, there are some nice
poems here:
http://www.edysnet.com/lovepoems.html
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Erotic poetry
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?Songs of Longing, Dreams of Hope? has a large selection of a variety
of romantic and erotic poems: http://www.wwiaviation.com/longing/
?Erotic Poems of the Ancient Tamil cankam:?
http://www.penkatali.org/cankam.html
Beautifully illustrated collection of erotic poetry, but be warned,
this one is rather on the kinky side, so don?t read it if that sort of
thing offends you:
http://www.rootgarden.com/
Personal site with links to free books of published erotic poetry:
http://www.angelfire.com/journal/eroticpoetry/eroticpoetry2.index.html
(Be aware that with angelfire sites, there is sometimes a popup window
to deal with.)
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Books
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Here is a link to a very good list of romantic, erotic and love poetry
of various kinds. Each book on the list is further linked to
Amazon.com, which has a new tool that lets you ?search inside the
book.? Look at the upper left-hand side of the Amazon page, just
under the tabs for the green link. You can use it to see if the book
actually has what you?re looking for, probably as close as you can
actually come online to holding a book in your hand and browsing
through it as if you were in a bookstore.
http://hot.ee/seduction/love_poetry.htm To find more, I?d suggest
searching Amazon.com ?Books? using keywords love, love poetry,
romantic poetry, erotic poetry, etc.
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I do hope these links meet your needs and will be a good foundation
for a ?Love Poetry? web (and/or book) collection for you. I have
tried to weed out those that annoy with commercial pitches or popups,
though as I mentioned, one or two personal sites may still do so. If
I have left them in the list, it is because I thought the poems they
contained were worth the minor inconvenience of closing a popup. If
anything needs clarification or you have any problems with any links,
please use the ?Request Clarification? feature to ask for further
assistance before rating and closing the question. Thank you for a
very enjoyable challenge. Have fun with the poems! I did. :-)
Best wishes,
Byrd
Search terms used:
love poems OR poetry
"love poems" ethnic OR international OR world
?love poetry?
?romantic poetry? OR ?romantic poems?
"love poems" erotic OR sensual OR passion (Note: to get the links I
did when searching on this term, you?ll need to make sure your
filtering preference is set to ?off.?) |
