1 ‘What the heart is like’
Thomas Middleton 18 Love
Miroslav Holub 18 What the heart is like
Robert Bridges 20 ‘So sweet love seemed that April morn’
Linda France 20 If Love Was Jazz
Penelope Shuttle 21 Looking for Love
Anne Sexton 23 Just Once
Wendy Cope 23 Flowers
Wislawa Szymborska 24 Family Album
2 ‘What is to be given’
James Fenton 26 In Paris with You
W.B. Yeats 27 A Drinking Song
William Wordsworth 27 ‘She was a Phantom of delight’
Hilaire Belloc 28 Juliet
Anonymous 28 When Molly Smiles
James S. Martinez 29 My Little Lize
Louis MacNeice 30 Meeting Point
Sir John Suckling 31 Song
Sappho 33 ‘It seems to me that man is equal to the gods’
Thomas Hardy 34 Faintheart in a Railway Train
Edwin Denby 34 The Subway
Victor Tapner 35 Coffee Shop
Delmore Schwartz 36 What is to be Given
Fernando Pessoa 36 The Leaves’ Audible Smile
William Blake 37 Song
Adrienne Rich 37 The Loser
Austin Clarke 39 The Planter’s Daughter
Patrick Kavanagh 39 On Raglan Road
Hugo Williams 40 The Water Bearer
Oodgeroo 41 Gifts
Brian Patten 41 A Blade of Grass
Liz Lochhead 42 I Wouldn’t Thank You for a Valentine
Emily Dickinson 43 ‘The Way I read a Letter’
Federico García Lorca 44 The Poet speaks to the loved one
Robert Frost 44 The Telephone
Jackie Kay 45 Lovesick
C.K. Williams 46 Love: Beginnings
Selima Hill 47 Dewpond and Black Drain-pipes
Ted Hughes 48 Snow and Snow
3 ‘What are all these kissings worth’
Stevie Smith 50 Conviction IV
Coventry Patmore 50 The Kiss
Sara Teasdale 50 The Look
Percy Bysshe Shelley 51 Love’s Philosophy
Anne Haverty 52 In the Country
Anonymous 52 A Love-Song
Ruth Padel 52 Being Late to Meet You at the Station
Leigh Hunt 53 Jenny Kissed Me
Catullus 53 ‘Time to live and let love, Lesbia’
Naomi Mitchison 54 Old Love and New
Tracy Ryan 54 Bite
Stevie Smith 55 The Frog Prince
Judith Wright 57 ‘Dove-Love’
Chris Wallace-Crabbe 57 The Amorous Cannibal
Jo Shapcott 58 Muse
4 ‘Let lovers go fresh and sweet to be undone’
Simon Armitage 60 Night Shift
Christopher Reid 60 At the Wrong Door
Carol Ann Duffy 61 Steam
D.H. Lawrence 62 Gloire de Dijon
Sujata Bhatt 62 Love in a Bathtub
Edward Thomas 63 Like the Touch of Rain
John Montague 63 All Legendary Obstacles
Richard Wilbur 64 Love Calls Us to the Things of This World
Anne Haverty 66 Do
Anonymous 67 Scarborough Fair
Anonymous 68 The Shirt of a Lad
Rita Dove 68 His Shirt
Nigel Jenkins 70 Shirts
Pete Morgan 71 The Shirt of a Lad
Henry Nutter 72 The Girl in the Calico Dress
Michael Longley 73 The Linen Industry
Yehuda Amichai 74 It was Summer, or the End of Summer
5 ‘And our mouths run over with luscious smiles’
Rita Ann Higgins 76 It’s Platonic
Ben Jonson 76 Song: to Celia
John Agard 77 Get Down Ye Angels
Omar Khayyam 77 from The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
Thomas Moore 78 The Young May Moon
Edmund Waller 78 Song
Andrew Marvell 79 To His Coy Mistress
Christopher Marlowe 80 The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
Sir Walter Ralegh 81 The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd
Langston Hughes 82 When Sue Wears Red
King James Bible 83 from The Song of Solomon
Michael Ondaatje 84 Women Like You
Helen Dunmore 86 Wild strawberries
Thomas Lynch 87 A Note on the Rapture to His true Love
Grace Nichols 88 The Way Your Sleeping Hand
Edith Södergran 88 Revelation
David Constantine 89 Mistress
Dave Smith 90 Walking Under a Spruce with My Love
Frank O’Hara 92 Having a Coke with You
James Fenton 92 I’ll Explain
Robert Herrick 92 Her Bed
6 ‘Wild Nights – Wild Nights!’
Petronius 94 ‘Good God, what a night that was’
Emily Dickinson 94 ‘Wild Nights’
Billy Collins 95 Taking Off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes
Sonia Sanchez 96 Blues
Selima Hill 97 The Ram
Fleur Adcock 98 Coupling
Cole Porter 98 Night and Day
James McAuley 99 Aubade
Kenneth Rexroth 100 Marichiko: ‘Making love with you’
Grace Nichols 100 Configurations
Judith Wright 101 Woman to Man
Michael Donaghy 102 Pentecost
Penelope Shuttle 103 Act of Love
John Donne 105 The Good Morrow
Anonymous 106 Plucking the Rushes
King James Bible 106 from The Song of Solomon
André Breton 107 Freedom of Love
Elizabeth Smart 109 from By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept
Ted Hughes 109 Lovesong
John Donne 111 The Ecstasy
Michael Ondaatje 113 The Cinnamon Peeler
Deborah Randall 115 Ballygrand Widow
Francis Stuart 116 Homecoming
Sarah Maguire 116 Spilt Milk
A.D. Hope 117 The Wandering Islands
John Berryman 118 Dream Songs, 142
C.K. Williams 119 The Lover
William Shakespeare 119 ‘Th’expense of spirit in a waste of shame’
Jo Shapcott 120 Vegetable Love
Anonymous 121 John Anderson, My Jo
James Berry 123 Flame and Water
James Berry 124 Earth and Air
Alan Brownjohn 125 At the Time
Yehuda Amichai 125 A Pity. We Were Such a Good Invention
Michael Longley 126 Swans Mating
7 ‘How do I love thee?’
Omar Khayyam 128 from The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
Adrian Mitchell 128 Celia Celia
Anonymous 129 Alisoun
Anonymous 130 The Lovely Étan
Ian Duhig 130 From the Irish
John Wain 130 Apology for Understatement
Elizabeth Barrett Browning 131 ‘How do I love thee?’
John Dowland 132 ‘Fine knacks for ladies’
William Shakespeare 133 ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’
W.B. Yeats 133 He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
Paul Durcan 134 Cleaning Ashtrays
Deryn Rees-Jones 135 Calcium
Primo Levi 136 11 February 1946
Nessie Dunsmuir 137 The White Word
W.S. Graham 137 I Leave This at Your Ear
Elizabeth Bishop 138 Late Air
Anonymous 138 I Will Give My Love an Apple
Robin Robertson 139 Static
Padraic Colum 140 She Moved Through the Fair
‘Ephelia’ 141 To one that asked me why I lov’d J.G.
Shane Leslie 141 Bog Love
William Shakespeare 142 ‘My Mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun’
Edmund Blunden 142 Lonely Love
Samuel Daniel 143 ‘When men shall find thy flower’
William Shakespeare 144 ‘When forty winters shall besiege thy brow’
Pierre de Ronsard 144 ‘Since she’s all winter’
Sir John Betjeman 145 In a Bath Teashop
Adrian Mitchell 145 Giving Potatoes
E.E. Cummings 146 ‘somewhere i have never travelled’
Li Po 147 The River Merchant’s Wife: A Letter
W.H. Auden 148 Lullaby
Christopher Logue 150 Air for the Witness of a Departure
Dorothy Parker 151 Love Song
Rainer Maria Rilke 152 ‘You who never arrived’
8 ‘I will love thee until my death’
Delmore Schwartz 154 The Beautiful American Word, Sure
John Keats 154 ‘Bright star, would I were as stedfast as thou art’
Alice Oswald 155 Ballad of a Shadow
John Donne 156 A Valediction: forbidding Mourning
Edna St Vincent Millay 157 Modern Declaration
William Shakespeare 158 ‘Let me not to the marriage of true minds’
Leo Marks 158 Code Poem
Samuel Taylor Coleridge 159 Answer to a Child’s Question
Sir John Suckling 159 Song
Christopher Brennan 160 It is so long ago!
Sir Thomas Wyatt 160 ‘Forget not yet the tried intent’
Gwen Harwood 161 Meditation on Wyatt II
James McAuley 162 One Thing at Least
John Gower 162 ‘O thou my sorwe and my gladnesse’
Richard Lovelace 163 To Althea, From Prison
Elizabeth Barrett Browning 164 ‘If thou must love me’
9 ‘If ever two were one, then surely we’
Philip Larkin 166 Wedding-Wind
Alice Oswald 166 Wedding
George Meredith 167 ‘By this he knew she wept with waking eyes’
Richard Crashaw 168 An Epitaph upon Husband and Wife
who died and were buried together
Stevie Smith 168 Marriage I Think
Una Marson 169 To Wed or Not to Wed
Katherine Philips 170 An Answer to another perswading a Lady to Marriage
Edna St Vincent Millay 171 Sonnet
Kate Clanchy 172 For a Wedding
Anne Bradstreet 172 To My Dear and Loving Husband
Sir Philip Sidney 173 A Ditty
Rainer Maria Rilke 173 Love Song
Conrad Aiken 174 The Quarrel
Robert Creeley 175 Love Comes Quietly
Sharon Olds 175 True Love
David Campbell 176 We Took the Storms to Bed
Jonathan Davidson 177 Happy Together
E.B. White 177 Natural History
Kit Wright 178 From Cheshire
Henry Treece 178 The Heart’s Wild Geese
Carol Ann Duffy 179 Anne Hathaway
Robert Crawford 180 Home
William Stafford 181 Passing Remark
Seamus Heaney 181 The Underground
Lavinia Greenlaw 182 Underworld
Edward Lear 182 The Owl and the Pussy-Cat
Gillian Allnutt 182 Ode
Michael Laskey 185 Bike
Paul Muldoon 186 Long Finish
W.S. Graham 189 To My Wife at Midnight
Thom Gunn 191 The Hug
Fleur Adcock 192 Kissing
Robert Lowell 193 Elizabeth
Jackie Kay 193 Snap
Judith Herzberg 194 Old Age
Philip Larkin 194 Talking in Bed
Solveig von Schoultz 195 Conversation
Pierre de Ronsard 195 ‘When you are old’
W.B. Yeats 196 When You Are Old
Jonathan Swift 196 Stella’s Birthday
Esther Johnson 197 To Dr Swift on his Birthday
Theodore Roethke 198 I Knew a Woman
Maurice Riordan 199 The Table
Andrew Motion 200 On the Table
Michael Laskey 200 The Knife
Christina Rossetti 201 Autumn Violets
Tess Gallagher 202 Black Violets
Charlotte Mew 203 Rooms
Edward Thomas 203 And You, Helen
U.A. Fanthorpe 204 Atlas
10 ‘I am no good at love’
Dorothy Parker 206 Comment
Isobel Campbell 206 A Learned Mistress
Marina Tsvetaeva 207 I’ve dissolved for you
Eleanor Brown 208 Bitcherel
Geoffrey Chaucer 209 from The Wife of Bath’s Tale
Lesbia Harford 209 The Folk I Love
Alicia Stubbersfield 210 Unsuitable Shoes
William Shakespeare 211 ‘Sigh no more, Ladies’
A.E. Housman 211 from A Shropshire Lad
W.B. Yeats 212 The Pity of Love
Marvin Bell 212 Being in Love
William Shakespeare 213 ‘When my love swears that she is made of truth’
Francis Ledwidge 214 The Sorrow of Love
Hugo Williams 214 The Ribbon
Sir Philip Sidney 215 ‘With how sad steps, O Moon’
Vicki Feaver 216 The Crack
Kamau Brathwaite 217 Schooner
Thomas Hardy 218 At Castle Boterel
Dermot Healy 219 O Woman
H.D. 220 ‘Never more will the wind’
Catullus 221 Odi et amo
Adrienne Rich 221 The Parting: II
Walter de la Mare 222 When Love Flies
Sir Philip Sidney 222 from Astrophil and Stella
Thomas Campion 223 ‘Thrice toss these oaken ashes in the air’
Amy Levy 223 To Lallie (Outside the British Museum)
Kamau Brathwaite 225 Blues
W.B. Yeats 226 Down by the Salley Gardens
James Fenton 227 I Know What I’m Missing
Anne Sexton 228 That Day
Thomas Hardy 229 The Voice
Bhartrhari 230 ‘She who is always in my thoughts’
Robert Herrick 230 Impossibilities to his Friend
A.E. Housman 231 ‘He would not stay for me’
Wendy Cope 231 Another Unfortunate Choice
Noel Coward 231 I Am No Good at Love
Robert Graves 232 Love without Hope
Carol Ann Duffy 232 Warming Her Pearls
Charlotte Mew 233 The Farmer’s Bride
Freda Downie 235 A Plain Girl
Roger McGough 236 Vinegar
Sir Thomas Wyatt 236 ‘Whoso list to hunt’
Elizabeth Jennings 237 Delay
Gjertrud Schnackenberg 237 Snow Melting
Vikram Seth 238 Across
Lorna Goodison 238 Lepidopterist
Paul Muldoon 239 The Train
Peter Sansom 240 K563
Bob Dylan 241 Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right
W.B. Yeats 242 No Second Troy
11 ‘The end of love ’
Lord Byron 244 ‘So we’ll go no more a-roving’
Bob Dylan 244 I Threw It All Away
Matthew Arnold 245 Separation
Sir Thomas Wyatt 246 Farewell
John Keats 247 La Belle Dame sans Merci
Nina Cassian 248 Of No Use
Samuel Beckett 249 ‘I would like my love to die’
Sir Thomas Wyatt 249 ‘They flee from me that sometime did me seek’
Geoffrey Chaucer (?) 250 Merciles Beaute
Sophie Hannah 251 The End of Love
Michael Drayton 252 ‘Since there’s no help’
James K. Baxter 252 I have cut from my heart
C.K. Williams 253 Love: The Dance
Elizabeth Smart 253 from By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept
Xu Zhi Mo 254 Don’t Pinch Me, Hurts
Federico García Lorca 255 Sonnet of the Sweet Complaint
Sheila Wingfield 255 Winter
Peter Dale 256 Retrospect
James Fenton 257 Out of Danger
James Wright 258 A Breath of Air
12 ‘What will survive of us is love’
Traditional 260 She’s Like the Swallow
Anonymous 260 Frankie and Johnny
Anonymous 263 Donal Og
W.H. Auden 264 Funeral Blues
Mark Doty 265 Where you are
Peter Jolliffe 266 Lacuna
Vikram Seth 267 All You Who Sleep Tonight
Frances Cornford 267 She Warns Him
Frances Cornford 268 All Soul’s Night
Percy Bysshe Shelley 268 Music, When Soft Voices Die
Edmund Spenser 269 One Day I Wrote Her Name Upon the Strand
John Clare 269 Love lives beyond the Tomb
J.M. Synge 270 A Question
R.S. Thomas 271 Madrigal
Charles Baudelaire 271 I Dreamt that you were not Dead
Eibhlín Dhubh Ní Chonaill 272 The Lament for Arthur O’Leary
Christina Rossetti 283 Remember
Pablo Neruda 284 Dead Woman
Langston Hughes 285 Song for a Dark Girl
Robert Graves 286 Lost Love
Oscar Wilde 286 Requiescat
Dora Sigerson 287 I want to talk to thee
Theodore Roethke 288 The Apparition
John Dowland 289 Me, Me, and None But Me
Louis MacNeice 289 The Sunlight on the Garden
Robert Penn Warren 290 In Moonlight, Somewhere, They Are Singing
Elizabeth Barrett Browning 291 ‘Belovèd, my Belovèd’
Raymond Carver 292 Late Fragment
Philip Larkin 292 An Arundel Tomb
296 Acknowledgements
301 Index of poets and translators
304 Index of titles and first lines
