20 Romantic Love Poems for Your Spouse

"Echo" by 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.”

"I Will Wait for You Forever" by Diana J. Briones

“The days are cold, the nights are long,
but my love for you stays strong.
I hold you in my heart
and have you on my mind.
I’ll wait for you; however long,
my love for you is blind.
You are my lover and my friend,
you are my everything.
I shall remain here waiting,
even if for eternity.”

"The New Beginning" by Olufunke Kolapo

“Like the warmth of the morning sun,
So do thoughts of you embrace me,
Revealing how alive I am
A glorious light of the new day,
so is your presence in my life,
relieving it of its shadows,
and marking the start of a new beginning.”

"Poem to First Love" by Matthew Yeager

“To have been told 'I love you' by you could well be, for me,
the highlight of my life, the best feeling, the best peak
on my feeling graph, in the way that the Chrysler building
might not be the tallest building in the NY sky but is
the best, the most exquisitely spired, or the way that
Hank Aaron’s career home-run total is not the highest
but the best, the one that signifies the purest greatness.
So improbable! To have met you at all and then
to have been told in your soft young voice so soon
after meeting you: 'I love you.' And I felt the mystery
of being that you, of being a you and being
loved, and what I was, instantly, was someone
who could be told 'I love you' by someone like you.
I was, in that moment, new; you were 19; I was 22;
you were impulsive; I was there in front of you, with a future
that hadn't yet been burned for fuel; I had energy;
you had beauty; and your eyes were a pale blue,
and they backed what you said with all they hadn't seen,
and they were the least ambitious eyes I'd known,
the least calculating, and when you spoke and when
they shone, perhaps you saw the feeling you caused.
Perhaps you saw too that the feeling would stay.”

"For My Husband" by Susan Loughlin

“Loving you has no end and no beginning
Loving you is everything
It is infinite in time
And limitless in magnitude
Beyond even my own comprehension

Your love brings me home
Enfolds me and warms me
In its eternal embrace
Endless and palpable
Beyond all life’s storms

A connection like no other
Twenty years long
But timeless in our hearts
Deep and true
Til’ death us do part.”

"I Love You" by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

“I love your lips when they’re wet with wine 
And red with a wild desire;
I love your eyes when the lovelight lies 
Lit with a passionate fire. 
I love your arms when the warm white flesh
Touches mine in a fond embrace; 
I love your hair when the strands enmesh
Your kisses against my face. 

Not for me the cold, calm kiss
Of a virgin’s bloodless love; 
Not for me the saint’s white bliss, 
Nor the heart of a spotless dove. 
But give me the love that so freely gives 
And laughs at the whole world’s blame, 
With your body so young and warm in my arms,
It sets my poor heart aflame. 

So kiss me sweet with your warm wet mouth,
Still fragrant with ruby wine,
And say with a fervor born of the South
That your body and soul are mine.
Clasp me close in your warm young arms,
While the pale stars shine above,
And we’ll live our whole young lives away
In the joys of a living love.”

"Variations on the Word Love" by Margaret Atwood

“This is a word we use to plug
holes with. It's the right size for those warm
blanks in speech, for those red heart-
shaped vacancies on the page that look nothing
like real hearts. Add lace
and you can sell
it. We insert it also in the one empty
space on the printed form
that comes with no instructions. There are whole
magazines with not much in them
but the word love, you can
rub it all over your body and you
can cook with it too. How do we know
it isn't what goes on at the cool
debaucheries of slugs under damp
pieces of cardboard? As for the weed-
seedlings nosing their tough snouts up
among the lettuces, they shout it.
Love! Love! sing the soldiers, raising
their glittering knives in salute.

Then there's the two
of us. This word
is far too short for us, it has only
four letters, too sparse
to fill those deep bare
vacuums between the stars
that press on us with their deafness.
It's not love we don't wish
to fall into, but that fear.
this word is not enough but it will
have to do. It's a single
vowel in this metallic
silence, a mouth that says
O again and again in wonder
and pain, a breath, a finger
grip on a cliffside. You can
hold on or let go.” 

"The Good-Morrow" by John Donne

“I wonder by my troth, what thou and I
Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then?
But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?
Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers’ den?
‘Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be.
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desired, and got, ’twas but a dream of thee.

And now good-morrow to our waking souls,
Which watch not one another out of fear;
For love all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room an everywhere.
Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone;
Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown;
Let us possess one world; each hath one, and is one.

My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
And true plain hearts do in the faces rest;
Where can we find two better hemispheres,
Without sharp north, without declining west?
Whatever dies, was not mixed equally;
If our two loves be one, or, thou and I
Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die."

"To My Dear and Loving Husband" by 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 persevere,
That when we live no more, we may live ever.”

"I Carry Your Heart With Me (I Carry It in My Heart)" by 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)"

"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?
That 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.”

"Yours" by Daniel Hoffman

“I am yours as the summer air at evening is
Possessed by the scent of linden blossoms,

As the snowcap gleams with light
Lent it by the brimming moon.

Without you I'd be an unleafed tree
Blasted in a bleakness with no Spring.

Your love is the weather of my being.
What is an island without the sea?”

"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.” 

"Close Your Eyes" by 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.”

"For Him" by 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.”

"When You Are Old" by William Butler 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."

"Meet Me in the Green Glen" by John Clare

"Love, meet me in the green glen,
Beside the tall elm-tree,
Where the sweetbriar smells so sweet agen;
There come with me.
Meet me in the green glen.

Meet me at the sunset
Down in the green glen,
Where we’ve often met
By hawthorn-tree and foxes’ den,
Meet me in the green glen.

Meet me in the green glen,
By sweetbriar bushes there;
Meet me by your own sen,
Where the wild thyme blossoms fair.
Meet me in the green glen.

Meet me by the sweetbriar,
By the mole-hill swelling there;
When the west glows like a fire
God’s crimson bed is there.
Meet me in the green glen."

"Heart to Heart" by Rita Dove

"It’s neither red
nor sweet.
It doesn’t melt
or turn over,
break or harden,
so it can’t feel
pain,
yearning,
regret.

It doesn’t have 
a tip to spin on,
it isn’t even
shapely—
just a thick clutch
of muscle,
lopsided,
mute. Still,
I feel it inside
its cage sounding
a dull tattoo:
I want, I want—

but I can’t open it:
there’s no key.
I can’t wear it
on my sleeve,
or tell you from
the bottom of it
how I feel. Here,
it’s all yours, now—
but you’ll have
to take me,
too."

"Meeting the Light Completely" by Jane Hirshfield

"Even the long-beloved
was once
an unrecognized stranger.

Just so,
the chipped lip
of a blue-glazed cup,
blown field
of a yellow curtain,
might also,
flooding and falling,
ruin your heart.

A table painted with roses.
An empty clothesline.

Each time,
the found world surprises—
that is its nature.

And then
what is said by all lovers:
'What fools we were, not to have seen.'"

"You, Therefore" by Reginald Shepherd

For Robert Philen

"You are like me, you will die too, but not today:   
you, incommensurate, therefore the hours shine:   
if I say to you 'To you I say,' you have not been   
set to music, or broadcast live on the ghost   
radio, may never be an oil painting or
Old Master’s charcoal sketch: you are
a concordance of person, number, voice,
and place, strawberries spread through your name   
as if it were budding shrubs, how you remind me   
of some spring, the waters as cool and clear
(late rain clings to your leaves, shaken by light wind),   
which is where you occur in grassy moonlight:   
and you are a lily, an aster, white trillium
or viburnum, by all rights mine, white star   
in the meadow sky, the snow still arriving
from its earthwards journeys, here where there is   
no snow (I dreamed the snow was you,
when there was snow), you are my right,
have come to be my night (your body takes on   
the dimensions of sleep, the shape of sleep   
becomes you): and you fall from the sky
with several flowers, words spill from your mouth
in waves, your lips taste like the sea, salt-sweet (trees   
and seas have flown away, I call it
loving you): home is nowhere, therefore you,   
a kind of dwell and welcome, song after all,   
and free of any eden we can name"