Great Love Poems (Dover Thrift Editions) [Paperback]

Shane Weller (Editor)

Book Description

Series: Dover Thrift Editions | Publication Date: October 8, 1992

Treasury of over 150 familiar poems by English and American poets, including a selection of Shakespeare's sonnets, John Donne's "The Ecstasy," William Blake's "The Garden of Love," as well as works by W. B. Yeats, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, John Keats, John Milton, Robert Frost, and many more.

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 14 and up
  
• Paperback: 128 pages
• Publisher: Dover Publications (October 8, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0486272842
• ISBN-13: 978-0486272849
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #310,357 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #5 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Literature & Fiction > Poetry > Love Poems
  • #52 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Literature & Fiction > Poetry > Anthologies

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars As good as a collection of Love Poems gets, May 19, 2000

By 

Travis Cottreau (Wellington, New Zealand) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Great Love Poems (Dover Thrift Editions) (Paperback)

I got this as a stocking stuffer for my girlfriend a few years ago. There are some excellent poems, especially Browning and Shakespeare.

I did find out by reading this poetry collection that I'm just not a big fan of love poetry. All the best is here, but except for four or five poems, it just doesn't move me.

If you are a lover of romantic poetry however, you can scarcely go wrong with this collection. It contains all the classics and many more. The price is just right too, obviously not published by someone out to make money, but by someone who wanted to share the poetry.

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good, March 10, 2001

By 

John (United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Great Love Poems (Dover Thrift Editions) (Paperback)

I am giving this collection five stars because is a wonderful collection for its price. Dover really does put out some great books for around a dollar. This collection has all of the usual love poems which appear in every love anthology like Shakespeare's "Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day," Jonson's "To Celia," Browning's "How Do I Love Thee," and Poe's "Annabel Lee." The thing that impressed me about this collection were some of the little-known poems which did find their way into this book. I've always loved the poems of Thomas Campion, Thomas Moore, Walter Savage Landor, and John Clare, and each had a number of poems in the book. Any lover of love poems should buy this anthology. It is easily worth the dollar it takes to buy it. I would also recommend the anthology "Love Poems" selected and edited by Peter Washington for Everyman Library for anyone who wants to buy a collection of love poems.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Inexpensive Collection of Classic Selections, March 10, 2005

By 

Rebecca Johnson "The Rebecca Review" (Washington State) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Great Love Poems (Dover Thrift Editions) (Paperback)

Come to me in my dreams, and then
By day I shall be well again.
For then the night will more than pay
The hopeless longing of the day.
~Matthew Arnold (1822-1888)

Great Love Poems is an inexpensive collection of classic selections. This anthology is a collection of poems from four centuries of literary creation.

Many of the poems are classic in themes of longing and loss. There are poems of great sorrow and poems of great passion. Most of the poems either reflect on the nature of love or seem to be written from the perspective of a lover.

I have recently discovered the effects of mood on the reading of poetry. These poems may seem overly dreary on an evening when you are missing the person you love or they can be seen more creatively in the light of day.

As you read poetry, the beauty is often in recognizing the reflection of your own emotions in the mirror of the poet's world. While reading Edmund Spenser's One Day I Wrote Her Name upon the Strand, we can look back at love lost and see how our attempts at permanence are washed away by the waves of time itself.

To die in dust, but you shall live by fame:
My verse your virtues rare shall eternize,
And in the heavens write your glorious name,

You may recognize many famous poems throughout this work, although many were new to me. When we studied Andrew Marvell's "The Definition of Love" in school, how could the poem have meant as much in such an innocent state. Now, years later we understand impossibility, fate's jealous eye, the parallel lines that never meet. So, it is worth reading many of these poems again with new eyes and a more experienced heart.

Does Thomas Campbell's poem speak too much truth about love or is he simply focusing on infatuation and the fires of love?

Love's a fire that needs renewal
Of fresh beauty for its fuel:
Love's wing moults when caged and captured,
Only free, he soars enraptured.

In this tiny book, you will find Edgar Allan Poe's "To One in Paradise" and Robert Browning's beautiful "Meeting at Night" with images of a gray sea and a moon large and low. I love the images of miles of warm sea-scented beach and fields the lover must cross to hear the voice of his true love. D. H. Lawrence's Gloire de Dijon was a definite find. I also found quite a few poems with water images, which I love.

~The Rebecca Review