Poems about Love

Poems about Love

1. "Love"

Author: Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer (1836-1870)

The sun may cloud forever;

The sea;

The axis of the earth may be broken

Like a weak crystal.

Everything will happen! May death

Cover me with the funereal of his crepe;

But it can never be turned off in me

The flame of your love.

About the author and the poem

Gustavo Adolfo Becquer He was a Spanish poet and narrator of the 19th century, belonging to the literary current of Post-Romanticism. His most famous work, Rhymes and legends, is a compilation of his poems published in different Madrid newspapers of the time, published posthumously, and is one of the most widely read books in Hispanic literature.

This love poem is part of the shorter texts of Bécquer, who used to say that "the best poetry written is that which is not written ”. In the few lines of him the poet promises an eternal love, comparing his end with other situations impossible or remote, and even with the death of the poet itself: all this will happen before his love be extinguished. It is also a poem that evidences the simple intimacy of the poetry of the moment in which Bécquer wrote, when Realism was the dominant literary movement.

1. "That love does not admit strings of reflections"

Author: Rubén Darío (1867-1916)

Lady, love is violent

and when it transfigures us

the thought ignites us

The madness.

Don't ask my arms for peace

that they have prisoners of yours:

my hugs are of war

and my kisses are of fire;

and it would be vain attempt

turning my mind dark

if the thought turns me on

The madness.

Clear is my mind

of flames of love, lady,

as the store of the day

or the palace of dawn.

And the perfume of your ointment

my luck pursues you,

and it ignites my thought

The madness.

My joy your palate

rich honeycomb concept,

as in the holy Song:

Mel et lac sub lingua tua.

The delight of your breath

in such a fine glass hurries,

and it ignites my thought

The madness.

About the author and the poem

Ruben Dario is the pseudonym of Félix Rubén García Sarmiento, a Nicaraguan poet, journalist and diplomat born in 1867. He is the highest representative of the Latin American poetic movement known as Modernism, which was characterized by its refinement and elevated style, with which they sought to renew poetry in Spanish. Rubén Darío's work was perhaps the best known and most celebrated of the 20th century in terms of poetry in Spanish, which is why he was known as “the prince of Castilian letters”.

In this poem, Rubén Darío characterizes love as a war or a fire, fierce and uncontrollable images, similar to the way of thinking about love in Romanticism (s. XVIII-XIX), who compared it to delirium and madness. In the poem you can also see the typical cultisms of Modernism, even a Latin verse taken from the Song of songs and that can be translated as "honey and milk under your tongue."

1. "Two words"

Author: Alfonsina Storni (1892-1938)

Tonight in my ear you have said two words to me

common. Two tired words

to be said. Words

that old are new.

Two words so sweet that the moon that walked

filtering between the branches

it stopped in my mouth. So sweet two words

that an ant walks around my neck and I don't try

move to kick her out.

So sweet two words

I say without meaning to - oh, how beautiful, life! -

So sweet and so meek

that odorous oils spill on the body.

So sweet and so beautiful

how nervous, my fingers,

They move towards the sky imitating scissors.

Oh my fingers would like

cut out stars.

About the author and the poem

Alfonsina Storni she was a Swiss-born Argentine poet and writer. Her work, linked to the Modernism current, consisted of poems, prose and plays, and reflected to some extent her feminist thinking of hers. Storni was a friend and lover of the also writer Horacio Quiroga, and she committed suicide at the age of 46 by throwing herself into the sea in the city of Mar del Plata. The tragic end of it has inspired many later works, such as the song “Alfonsina y el mar”.

This poem describes two words spoken by the lover, without ever naming them, but making it clear to the attentive reader that it is "I love you" or "I love you." It is also important to note in the first lines the rupture of the verse, which denotes a separation between what is written and what is read, between the word and the sound.

1. "Love"

Author: Pablo Neruda (1904-1973)

Woman, I would have been your son, for drinking you

the milk of the breasts like a spring,

for looking at you and feeling you by my side and having you

in the golden laugh and the crystal voice.

For feeling in my veins like God in the rivers

and worship you in the sad bones of dust and lime,

because your being will pass without pain by my side

and came out in the stanza -clean of all evil-.

How would I know how to love you, woman, how would I know

love you, love you like no one ever knew!

Die and still

love you more.

And yet

love you more

and more.

About the author and the poem

Pablo Neruda is the pseudonym of Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto, Chilean maximum poet and one of the most celebrated authors of the literature in Spanish. Dedicated in his country to politics and diplomacy, Neruda was a communist militant and a close friend of Federico García Lorca. His vast work covers different stylistic periods, some strongly committed to the so-called Socialist Realism, and in 1971 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

This poem is part of the many love and erotic poems that Neruda wrote, and belongs to his collection of poems Twilight from 1923. In it you can see many of the typical resources of Neruda's work, such as the use of certain verb tenses (the pluperfect of the subjunctive in the opening verses) to express a desire, a longing that cannot be satisfy. In the poem the limits between the body of the poet and that of his loved one are also blurred, as if seeking merge, and ends with the typical declaration of love for all eternity, that is, beyond the death.

1. "Absence"

Author: Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986)

I will raise the vast life
that even now is your mirror:
every morning I will have to rebuild it.
Since you walked away
how many places have become vain
and meaningless, equal
to lights in the day.

Afternoons that were niche of your image,
music in which you always waited for me,
words of that time,
I will have to break them with my hands.
In what hollow will I hide my soul
so I don't see your absence
that like a terrible sun, without setting,
shines definitive and ruthless?

Your absence surrounds me
like the rope to the throat,
the sea to which it sinks.

About the author and the poem

Jorge Luis Borges He was an Argentine writer, poet and essayist, considered one of the great authors not only of the Spanish language, but also of world literature. His fantastic tales, full of labyrinths, dreams and references to books and invented historical figures marked a before and after in 20th century literature. At 55 he was almost entirely blind, but even so he continued to create, and was an eternal nominee for the Nobel Prize in Literature, which he never received, however.

In this poem, Borges approaches love from the perspective of the abandoned, that is, of spite, and sings not to the beloved but to her absence. The lack of his beloved is perceived by the poet as something immense, overwhelming, present in all things: music, places, the very words with which he writes. Unlike many other poems by Borges, this one is written in free verse, without respecting metrics or stanzas, and emphasizing the metaphors that describe the way in which the poet lives what is described.

1. "Sometimes"

Author: Nicolás Guillén (1902-1989)

Sometimes I feel like being corny

to say: I love you madly.

Sometimes I feel like being a fool

to scream: I love her so much!

Sometimes I want to be a child

to cry curled up in her bosom.

Sometimes I feel like I'm dead

to feel, under the moist earth of my juices,

that a flower grows breaking my chest,

a flower, and say: This flower,

for you.

About the author and the poem

Nicolas Guillén He was a Cuban poet and journalist, considered the national poet of his country. His work focuses on what he called “the Cuban color,” that is, the complex processes of miscegenation and the Afro-American heritage that are typical of Cuban and Caribbean culture. Popular culture also has a lot of presence in his poetry, which is why many understand it as a poetry committed to the political and social.

In this love poem, the poet uses the resource of repetition ("Sometimes" is the title and the beginning of four verses) to insist from different points of view on the description of his love, as well as the resource of orality, since the poet expresses what he would like to say, as if he wanted to quote himself. In the final verses of him death appears, that gloomy and fabulous image at the same time that it accompanies lovers, since the poet would not mind dying and that a flower germinated from his body, as long as he could give it to his loved.

References:

• "Romantic poems" in Poems of the Soul.
• "Rubén Darío" in Wikipedia.
• "Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer" in Wikipedia.
• "Alfonsina Storni" in Wikipedia.
• "Pablo Neruda" in Wikipedia.
• "Nicolás Guillén" in Wikipedia.
• "Jorge Luis Borges" in Wikipedia.

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