35 Short & Sweet Love Poems for Romantics

For centuries, poets have used words and lyrics to convey the most beautiful feelings of adoration. Their short love poems are like love letters from the soul – each one packed with meaning and emotion.

Love poems can take many forms – some are funny, some serious – but they’re always meaningful.

If you’re searching for the perfect love poems for your wedding day, a romantic occasion, love poems for cards or to simply express your feelings, this collection of 35 timeless short love poems will inspire you. These verses, crafted by poets from all different eras and traditions, offer something for every kind of love story.

Happy reading!

The Best Short Love Poems for Cards, Wedding Vows & More

Our collection of short love poems features words from some of the world’s greatest legends of literature – from Shakespeare to Yeats and Keats, as well as modern wordsmiths like the iconic Maya Angelou – offering a timeless blend of classic and contemporary expressions of love.

• Short Love Poems for Her
• Short Love Poems for Him
• Short Love Poems for Cards
• Short Love Poems for Vows
• Wedding Love Poems for Readings

Short Love Poems for Her

These short love poems for her are about inner beauty, expressions of grace and the unique ways in which love presents itself. Share these verses with the one you love to make her feel truly cherished.

1. Close Your Eyes – Elizabeth Smith

Close your eyes and think of me
Close your eyes and try to see
Our hearts together and what could be
Our love forever as destiny.

2. Ode – Arthur O'Shaughnessy

We are the music makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.

3. When You Come – by Maya Angelou

When you come to me, unbidden,
Beckoning me
To long-ago rooms,
Where memories lie.
Offering me, as to a child, an attic,
Gatherings of days too few.
Baubles of stolen kisses.
Trinkets of borrowed loves.
Trunks of secret words,
I cry.

4. On Love – Kahlil Gibran

Love has no other desire but to fulfil itself.
But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:
To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love’s ecstasy;
To return home at eventide with gratitude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.

5. Song to Celia – Ben Jonson

Drink to me only with thine eyes,
And I will pledge with mine;
Or leave a kiss but in the cup,
And I’ll not look for wine.
The thirst that from the soul doth rise
Doth ask a drink divine;
But might I of Jove’s nectar sup,
I would not change for thine.
I sent thee late a rosy wreath,
Not so much honouring thee
As giving it a hope that there
It could not withered be;
But thou thereon didst only breathe,
And sent’st it back to me;
Since when it grows, and smells, I swear,
Not of itself, but thee.

6. Echo – Carol Ann Duffy

I think I was searching for treasures or stones in the clearest of pools
When your face . . .
When your face,
Like the moon in a well
Where I might wish…
Might well wish
For the iced fire of your kiss;
Only on water my lips, where your face…
Where your face was reflected, lovely,
Not really there when I turned
To look behind at the emptying air…
The emptying air.

7. I Carry Your Heart With Me – 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).

8. She Walks in Beauty – Lord Byron

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes;
Thus mellow’d to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impair’d the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o’er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.
And on that cheek, and o’er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!

9. When You Are Old – W.B. Yeats

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

Short Love Poems for Him

Our selection of short love poems for him captures the strength, passion and tenderness that defines love. These verses articulate the ways love can inspire, comfort and connect us – share them with the man you adore to honour the bond between you and make him feel truly appreciated.

10. The Kiss – Sara Teasdale

I hoped that he would love me,
And he has kissed my mouth,
But I am like a stricken bird
That cannot reach the south.
For though I know he loves me,
Tonight my heart is sad;
His kiss was not so wonderful
As all the dreams I had.

11. Love Song – Dorothy Parker

My own dear love, he is strong and bold
And he cares not what comes after.
His words ring sweet as a chime of gold,
And his eyes are lit with laughter.
He is jubilant as a flag unfurled –
Oh, a girl, she’d not forget him.
My own dear love, he is all my world –
And I wish I’d never met him.
My love, he’s mad, and my love, he’s fleet,
And a wild young wood-thing bore him!
The ways are fair to his roaming feet,
And the skies are sunlit for him.
As sharply sweet to my heart he seems
As the fragrance of acacia.
My own dear love, he is all my dreams –
And I wish he were in Asia.

12. How Do I Love Thee – 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.

13. Wild Nights – Wild Nights! – Emily Dickinson

Wild Nights – Wild Nights!
Were I with thee Wild Nights should be
Our luxury!
Futile – the Winds –
To a Heart in port –
Done with the Compass –
Done with the Chart!
Rowing in Eden –
Ah – the Sea!
Might I but moor –
Tonight –
In Thee!

14. Love's Farewell – Michael Drayton

Since there’s no help, come let us kiss and part,
Nay, I have done, you get no more of me;
And I am glad, yea, glad with all my heart,
That thus so cleanly I myself can free.
Shake hands for ever, cancel all our vows,
And when we meet at any time again,
Be it not seen in either of our brows
That we one jot of former love retain.
Now at the last gasp of love’s latest breath,
When, his pulse failing,
Passion speechless lies,
When Faith is kneeling by his bed of death,
And Innocence is closing up his eyes,
Now, if thou would’st, when all have given him over,
From death to life thou might’st him yet recover.

15. Love’s Coming – Ella Wheeler Wilcox

She had looked for his coming as warriors come,
With the clash of arms and the bugle’s call;
But he came instead with a stealthy tread,
Which she did not hear at all.

She had thought how his armour would blaze in the sun,
As he rode like a prince to claim his bride:
In the sweet dim light of the falling night
She found him at her side.

She had dreamed how the gaze of his strange, bold eye
Would wake her heart to a sudden glow:
She found in his face the familiar grace
Of a friend she used to know.

She had dreamed how his coming would stir her soul,
As the ocean is stirred by the wild storm’s strife:
He brought her the balm of a heavenly calm,
And a peace which crowned her life.

16. To My Dear and Loving Husband – Anne Bradstreet 

If ever two were one, then surely we.
If ever man were loved 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 than 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 recompense.
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.

17. For Him – Rupi Kaur

No, 
it won’t 
be love at 
first sight when 
we meet it’ll be love 
at first remembrance 
‘cause i’ve recognized you 
in my mother’s eyes when she tells me, 
marry the type of man you’d want to raise your son to be like.

18. Come, And Be My Baby – Maya Angelou

The highway is full of big cars going nowhere fast
And folks is smoking anything that’ll burn
Some people wrap their lies around a cocktail glass
And you sit wondering where you’re going to turn
I got it.
Come. And be my baby.
Some prophets say the world is gonna end tomorrow
But others say we’ve got a week or two
The paper is full of every kind of blooming horror
And you sit wondering
What you’re gonna do.
I got it.
Come. And be my baby.

Short Love Poems for Cards

Whether it’s to write in an anniversary card or for a handwritten letter on the morning of your wedding, if you’re looking for romantic short poems to write to your love, these verses could be the perfect finishing touch. 

19. Love Comes Quietly – by Robert Creeley

Love comes quietly,
finally, drops
about me, on me,
in the old ways.
What did I know
thinking myself
able to go
alone all the way.

20. Love is Anterior to Life – Emily Dickinson

Love is anterior to life,
Posterior to death,
Initial of creation, and
The exponent of breath.

21. I Love You – Tyler Knott Gregson

I love you,
in ways you’ve never been loved,
for reasons you’ve never been told,
for longer than you think you deserved
and with more than you will ever know
existed inside me.

22. Let Me Put It This Way – Simon Armitage

Let me put it this way:
if you came to lay
your sleeping head
against my arm or sleeve,
and if my arm went dead,
or if I had to take my leave
at midnight, I should rather
cleave it from the joint or seam
than make a scene
or bring you round.
There,
how does that sound?

Short Love Poems for Vows

The sweetest, most timeless short poems, perfect for injecting a touch of romance into your wedding vows. 

23. Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven – W.B. Yeats

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

24. Why I Love Thee? – Sadakichi Hartmann

Why I love thee?
Ask why the seawind wanders,
Why the shore is aflush with the tide,
Why the moon through heaven meanders;
Like seafaring ships that ride
On a sullen, motionless deep;
Why the seabirds are fluttering the strand
Where the waves sing themselves to sleep
And starshine lives in the curves of the sand!

25. Sonnet 29 – William Shakespeare

Yet in these thoughts my self almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

26. For Keeps – by Joy Harjo

Sun makes the day new.
Tiny green plants emerge from earth.
Birds are singing the sky into place.
There is nowhere else I want to be but here.
I lean into the rhythm of your heart to see where it will take us.
We gallop into a warm, southern wind.
I link my legs to yours and we ride together,
Toward the ancient encampment of our relatives.
Where have you been? they ask.
And what has taken you so long?
At night after eating, singing, and dancing
We lay together under the stars.
We know ourselves to be part of mystery.
It is unspeakable.
It is everlasting.
It is for keeps.

27. Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day? – 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 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.

28. The Life That I Have – Leo Marks

The life that I have
Is all that I have
And the life that I have
Is yours

The love that I have
Of the life that I have
Is yours and yours and yours.

A sleep I shall have
A rest I shall have
Yet death will be but a pause
For the peace of my years
In the long green grass
Will be yours and yours and yours.

29. Love – Roy Croft

I love you,
Not only for what you are,
But for what I am
When I am with you.
I love you,
Not only for what
You have made of yourself,
But for what
You are making of me.
I love you for the part of me
That you bring out;
I love you
For putting your hand Into my heaped-up heart,
And passing over
All the foolish, weak things
That you can't help
Dimly seeing there,
And for drawing out
Into the light
All the beautiful belongings
That no one else had looked
Quite far enough to find.

Wedding Love Poems for Readings

These romantic short poems make incredibly heartfelt wedding readings, as well as being perfect for an anniversary celebration or engagement party.

30. The One – Unknown

When the one whose hand you’re holding,
Is the one one who holds your heart,
When the one whose eyes you gaze into,
Gives your hopes and dreams their start,
When the one you think of first and last
Is the one who holds you tight,
And the things you plan together,
Make the whole world seem just right,
When the one whom you believe in,
Puts their faith and trust in you,
You’ve found the one and only love,
You’ll share your whole life through.

31. Sonnet 116 – William Shakespeare

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 wandering 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 proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

32. A Dream Within a Dream – Edgar Allan Poe

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow–
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.
I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand–
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep–while I weep!
O God! Can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! Can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

33. Love is Friendship Set on Fire – Laura Hendricks

Love is friendship caught fire;
It is quiet, mutual confidence, sharing and forgiving.
It is loyalty through good and bad times.
It settles for less than perfection, and makes allowances for human weaknesses.
Love is content with the present, hopes for the future, and does not brood over the past.
It is the day-in and day-out chronicles of irritations, problems, compromises, small disappointments, big victories, and working toward common goals.
If you have love in your life, it can make up for a great many things you lack.
If you do not have it, no matter what else there is,
It is not enough.

34. Love is Enough – William Morris

Love is enough: though the world be a-waning,
And the woods have no voice but the voice of complaining,
Though the sky be too dark for dim eyes to discover
The gold-cups and daisies fair blooming thereunder,
Though the hills be held shadows, and the sea a dark wonder,
And this day draw a veil over all deeds passed over,
Yet their hands shall not tremble, their feet shall not falter;
The void shall not weary, the fear shall not alter
These lips and these eyes of the loved and the lover.

35. Bright Star – John Keats

Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art –
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night,
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like Nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors–
No–yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever–or else swoon to death.

How to Write a Short Love Poem

There are no set rules to poetry – all poems are expressions of feelings and reflections. You can write anything from a few lines to a whole verse or two. It doesn’t have to be a mammoth piece of literature! So, if you are wondering how to write a short love poem, the main aim is to craft something that reflects deep emotions in a few powerful words.

Think about what you want to say and the tone you want to set in your short love poem. How you met, or what makes your love unique is a great starting point. Jot down thoughts, words and memories, then focus on simplicity and clarity.

Once you’ve written a draft, read it aloud to help refine the rhythm and flow of your love poem. Don’t hesitate to draw inspiration from the short love poems in this article – the examples demonstrate the power of words

What is a Short Love Poem?

A short love poem is a compact yet powerful expression of affection, designed to convey emotions in just a few lines. Short love poems focus on simplicity and impact; they are often rich in imagery and metaphors that evoke deep feelings.

Short poems about love are timeless and versatile. They can be romantic, playful or poignant, depending on the mood or occasion. Whether it’s a tender confession, a playful ode, or a heartfelt declaration, mini love poems can be the most romantic declaration.

Because they are short, it makes them perfect for readings at special occasions like weddings or anniversaries, or to write in a card remind someone how much you love them. 

For more romantic inspiration, check out our favourite love quotes.