Customer Reviews

Great Love Poems (Dover Thrift Editions)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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

This book has some of the best love poems ever written in it. I would recommend it to anyone who likes Love poems or wants to see a really good collection for the price.

Also Recommended: Quotes, Poems, and Words That Flow by Kevin Grommersch

I would not consider myself a big fan of poetry, in fact this is the first book of poetry I've ever read. But I would highly recommend this book because it contains many classic love poems and authors. There are many poems in this little collection that will move anyone who has experienced love.

This is an excellent collection of love poetry. You won't easily find this many classic gems under a single volume for such a low price. The only thing I regret is I would have liked to have seen some love poems from the second half of the 20th century too. But this collection, spaning 4 centuries, includes most of the greatest romantic verse ever penned by the likes of Shakespeare, Donne, Blake, Burns, Byron, Poe, Browning, Yeats, Dickinson, Whitman, and so on. A worthy addition to any poetry lover's collection.

David Rehak
author of "Poems From My Bleeding Heart"

This book has love poems by every poet you can think of and some you wont. I would say you should own this even if you dont enjoy love poems, it can only come in handy. All around great stuff and there is even a drinking song in side.

This anthology of poems is one of the best I have ever come across. As a whole it is lovely read and continues to delight from begining to end. It's inclusion of many early modern poets really adds most of the greatness of this collection. To read poems from centuries ago and see how the story and feeling of love has remained the same experience is quite a treat. It demstrates love's eternal presence in the human heart.

For the person who doesn't readd much poetry this would be a great introduction, as it's poems are very personal and expressive making it hard to the reader not to be moved. Many of the poems linger long after you have read them and thus add beauty and comfort to your days. It will inspire you to search for more anthologies, as this one is merely a sampling of all the great love poems written through the ages. It as flows well as any good anthology and is a good collection to return to again and again. I have remembered it better than most anthologies and so I recommend it to all readers.

This anthology has some of the greatest love poems in it. But it also fails to include many great love poems, including those of Wallace Stevens. It too should have stated that it confines itself to English Language poems only. It too has poems of the greatest quality ( the selections of Shakespeare, Donne, Wordsworth) and poems of much lesser value. I too believe that within many individual authors it could have had poems of higher quality.

I ordered this (as a start to Christmas shopping) for my dad. I recieved it today, in excellent condition.

I flipped through the book, it's rather short, but then again poems aren't very long to begin with (some exceptions, of course). It seems they focus more on traditional love poetry mostly from England. There are many famous love poems included in this collection.

My dad was looking for a book on love poems, and I saw this and figured it would be a nice book to have for that. It's a very nice book for the price and many famous poems from some of the greats: the Brownings, Percy Shelley, Robert Burns, Emily Bronte, Poe, Shakespeare and many more!