"Sonnet XVII

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way than this:

where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep. "
— Pablo Neruda

"Love is not all: It is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain,
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
and rise and sink and rise and sink again.
Love cannot fill the thickened lung with breath
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
pinned down by need and moaning for release
or nagged by want past resolution's power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It may well be. I do not think I would."
— Edna St. Vincent Millay

"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.
-How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43)"
— Elizabeth Barrett Browning

"I got lost in the night, without the light
of your eyelids, and when the night surrounded me
I was born again: I was the owner of my own darkness."
— Pablo Neruda

"As an unperfect actor upon the stage
Who with much fear is put besides his part
Or some fierce thing, replete with too much rage
Whose strengths abundance weakens his own heart
So I, for fear of trust, forget to say
The perfect ceremony of love's rite
And in mine own love's strength seem to decay
O'ercharged with burthen of my own love's might
o, let my books be then the eloquence
And dumb presagers of my speaking breast
Who plead for love, and look for recompense
More than that tongue that more hath express'd.
O, learn to read what silent love hath writ
To hear with eyes belongs to love's fine wit."
— William Shakespeare (Shakespeare's Sonnets)

"Just let me wait a little while longer,
Under your window in the quite snow.
Let me stand here and shiver,
I’ll be stronger if I can see your light before I go.
All through the weeks I’ve tried to keep my balance.
Leaves fell, then rain, then shadows,
I fell too.
Easy restraint is not among my talents,
Fall turned to Winter and I came to you.
Kissed by the snow I contemplate your face.
Oh, do not hide it in your pillow yet!
Warm rooms would never lure me from this place,
If only I could see your silhouette.
Turn on your light, my sun, my summer love.
Zero degrees down here, July above.
"
— Polly Shulman (Enthusiasm)

"Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom. "
— William Shakespeare

"When, in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least,
Yet in these thoughts myself 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.
"
— William Shakespeare

"When I do count the clock that tells the time,
And see the brave day sunk in hideous night;
When I behold the violet past prime,
And sable curls all silver'd o'er with white;
When lofty trees I see barren of leaves
Which erst from heat did canopy the herd,
And summer's green all girded up in sheaves
Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard,
Then of thy beauty do I question make,
That thou among the wastes of time must go,
Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake
And die as fast as they see others grow;
And nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make defence
Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence."
— William Shakespeare (Shakespeare's Sonnets)

"Therefore I lie with her and she with me,
And in our faults by lies we flatter'd be.
"
— William Shakespeare

"A sonnet might look dinky, but it was somehow big enough to accommodate love, war, death, and O.J. Simpson. You could fit the whole world in there if you shoved hard enough."
— Anne Fadiman (Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader)

"No longer mourn for me when I am dead
than you shall hear the surly sullen bell
give warning to the world that I am fled
from this vile world with vilest worms to dwell:
nay, if you read this line, remember not
the hand that writ it, for I love you so,
that I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot,
if thinking on me then should make you woe.
O! if, I say, you look upon this verse
when I perhaps compounded am with clay,
do not so much as my poor name rehearse;
but let your love even with my life decay;
lest the wise world should look into your moan,
and mock you with me after I am gone.
"
— William Shakespeare (Sonnets by Shakespeare)