We’ve plumped up our anthology of classic love poems for Valentine’s Day this year, so you’re sure to find a great poem to declare your heart to the one you love. Here are the new additions:

• “To Anthea Who May Command Him Anything, ” by Robert Herrick (1648)

  Bid me to live, and I will live
     Thy protestant to be;
  Or bid me love, and I will give
     A loving heart to thee....



• “Answer to a Child’s Question, ” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1802)

  ....he sings, and he sings; and for ever sings he—
  ‘I love my Love, and my Love loves me!’



• “Love’s Philosophy, ” by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1819)

  ....the sunlight clasps the earth
     And the moonbeams kiss the sea:
  What is all this sweet work worth
     If thou kiss not me?



• “I Do Not Love Thee, ” by Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton (1829)

  I do not love thee!—no! I do not love thee!
  And yet when thou art absent I am sad;
     And envy even the bright blue sky above thee,
  Whose quiet stars may see thee and be glad....



• “A Birthday, ” by Christina Rossetti (1861)

  My heart is like a singing bird
     Whose nest is in a water’d shoot;
  My heart is like an apple-tree
     Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit;...



• “In Excelsis, ” by Amy Lowell (1922)

  You—you—
  Your shadow is sunlight on a plate of silver;
  Your footsteps, the seeding-place of lilies;
  Your hands moving, a chime of bells across a windless air....



• “To Earthward, ” by Robert Frost (1923)

  Love at the lips was touch
  As sweet as I could bear;
  And once that seemed too much;
  I lived on air....

Amy Lowell was born in Massachusetts 138 years ago today, and in her honor we have selected a few choice poems to add to our Lowell library:

• A sonnet of tortured love, “A Fixed Idea,” first published in Poetry magazine in 1910
• Her Imagist aphorism “A Lover,” dating to 1917
• An elegy for the beautiful world broken by war, “September, 1918”
• Her singular distilled image of the sun-struck and stunned lover, “Carrefour”

More on Amy Lowell:
Amy Lowell, “Mother of Us All”
The Politics of Modernist Poetics: Ezra Pound, Amy Lowell and Imagism
Biographical profile of Amy Lowell
Poems by Amy Lowell in our library
“Amy Lowell,” biographical poem by Joan Joffe Hall

Today marks the 110th anniversary of the birth of James Mercer Langston Hughes, the unofficial poet laureate of Black American life and culture, a radical democrat at the center of the Harlem Renaissance, lyrical poet incorporating the traditions of Black music—jazz and blues—in his poems, humorous storyteller, political activist and playwright, passionate advocate of African American pride, civil rights and artistic freedom. What more fitting way to mark the beginning of Black History Month than to read some of his best-loved poems:

• “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” (1921)
• “The Weary Blues” (1921)
• “Harlem” (1951)

Years ago, in gathering our anthology of Classic Love Poems for Valentine’s Day, we focused on straightforward declarations of love, poems of seduction and promise, celebrating the beauties and virtues of the beloved and forging the love-bond between two people. But of course, this leaves out the many great love poems of other kinds, the poems of unrequited or forbidden or lost love. For example, from Robert Burns we chose his best-known “Song—A Red, Red Rose” and left out his despairing farewell between two lovers who cannot stay together, “Ae Fond Kiss.”

We’d like to expand our collection to include the best of these “other” kinds of love poems, with your help, Dear Readers. Please visit our collection of readers’ favorite love poems and tell us about yours, especially if it’s a poem about lost or forbidden love.