The Best Short (And Sweet) Love Poems

Over 90 Ranker voters have come together to rank this list of The Best Short (And Sweet) Love Poems
Voting Rules
Vote up the best short love poems that are worth committing to memory so you can properly praise your beloved at whim.

What better way to show your amore how much you care than with a love poem? These short love poems get right to the heart of the matter and are easy to memorize. Here are the best short poems in 25 lines or less. No list of famous short love poems is complete without a couple of selections from William Shakespeare. However, there are also several under the radar offerings that may not have the pedigree of a Shakespearean work of art but still manage to convey a deep sentiment of romance. 

A love poem doesn't have to be long to show the depth of your feelings. Show your partner how much you love them by learning one of these short romantic poems. Or, write it out on a card and send the poem along with their favorite flowers. A kind, romantic gesture goes a long way. 

 

Photo: John William Waterhouse - Art Renewal Center / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain

  • 1
    27 VOTES

    Sadness

    The sun is ever full and bright,
    The pale moon waneth night by night.
    Why should this be?

    My heart that once was full of light
    Is but a dying moon to-night.

    But when I dream of thee apart,
    I would the dawn might lift my heart,
    O sun, to thee!

    • Author: Confucius
    27 votes
  • 2
    21 VOTES

    How Do I Love Thee

    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.

    • Author: Elizabeth Barrett Browning
    21 votes
  • 3
    28 VOTES

    If Not For You

    If not for you, I wouldn’t know
    What true love really meant.
    I’d never feel this inner peace;
    I couldn’t be content.

    If not for you, I’d never have
    The pleasures of romance.
    I’d miss the bliss, the craziness,
    Of love’s sweet, silly dance.

    I have to feel your tender touch;
    I have to hear your voice;
    No other one could take your place;
    You’re it; I have no choice.

    If not for you, I’d be adrift;
    I don’t know what I’d do;
    I’d be searching for my other half,
    Incomplete, if not for you.

    • Author: Joanna Fuchs
    28 votes
  • 4
    23 VOTES

    Let me not to the marriage of true minds
    Admit impediments. Love is not love
    Which alters when it alteration finds,
    Or bends with the remover to remove.
    O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
    That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
    It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
    Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
    Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
    Within his bending sickle's compass come;
    Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
    But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
    If this be error and upon me prov'd,
    I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.

    • Author: William Shakespeare
    23 votes
  • 5
    15 VOTES

    I Carry Your Heart With Me 

    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)

    • Author: E. E. Cummings
    15 votes
  • 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 owest;
    Nor shall Death brag thou wanderest in his shade,
    When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
    So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
    So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

    • Author: William Shakespeare
    19 votes