Love by Samuel Taylor Coleridge is one of the greatest love poems that express the pure emotions of love. Comprising twenty-four stanzas, this lengthy love poem is everything you need to make you smile and glisten. The speaker in this poem tries to woo a lady called Genevieve by telling her a story about true love. Filled with powerful and pure emotions of love, these love verses are profound poetic beauty.
Even though the poem Love by Samuel Taylor Coleridge ends on a sorrowful note, it still successfully intrigues a reader, stirring them inside-out. Throughout the poem, the speaker talks about how he used all his might to woo Genevieve, and ultimately, despite his unfortunate death, he’s ultimately able to call her his wife.
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Love by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
A Love Poem of Pure Emotions
All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
All are but ministers of Love,
And feed his sacred flame.
Oft in my waking dreams do I
Live o’er again that happy hour,
When midway on the mount I lay,
Beside the ruined tower.
The moonshine, stealing o’er the scene
Had blended with the lights of eve;
And she was there, my hope, my joy,
My own dear Genevieve!
She leant against the arm{‘e}d man,
The statue of the arm{‘e}d knight;
She stood and listened to my lay,
Amid the lingering light.
Few sorrows hath she of her own,
My hope! joy! my Genevieve!
She loves me best, whene’er I sing
The songs that make her grieve.
Important Questions to Ask Before Marriage
I played a soft and doleful air,
I sang an old and moving story—
An old rude song, that suited well
That ruin wild and hoary.
She listened with a flitting blush,
With downcast eyes and modest grace;
For well she knew, I could not choose
But gaze upon her face.
I told her of the Knight that wore
Upon his shield a burning brand;
And that for ten long years he wooed
The Lady of the Land.
I told her how he pined: and ah!
The deep, the low, the pleading tone
With which I sang another’s love,
Interpreted my own.
She listened with a flitting blush,
With downcast eyes, and modest grace;
And she forgave me, that I gazed
Too fondly on her face!
But when I told the cruel scorn
That crazed that bold and lovely Knight,
And that he crossed the mountain-woods,
Nor rested day nor night;
That sometimes from the savage den,
And sometimes from the darksome shade,
And sometimes starting up at once
In green and sunny glade,—
There came and looked him in the face
An angel beautiful and bright;
And that he knew it was a Fiend,
This miserable Knight!
And that unknowing what he did,
He leaped amid a murderous band,
And saved from outrage worse than death
The Lady of the Land!
And how she wept, clasped his knees;
And how she tended him in vain—
And ever strove to expiate
The scorn that crazed his brain;—
And that she nursed him in a cave;
And how his madness went away,
When on the yellow forest-leaves
A dying man he lay;—
His dying words—but when I reached
That tenderest strain of all the ditty,
My faltering voice and pausing harp
Disturbed her soul with pity!
All impulses of soul and sense
Had thrilled my guileless Genevieve;
The music and the doleful tale,
The rich and balmy eve;
And hopes, and fears that kindle hope,
An undistinguishable throng,
And gentle wishes long subdued,
Subdued and cherished long!
She wept with pity and delight,
She blushed with love, and virgin-shame;
And like the murmur of a dream,
I heard her breathe my name.
Her bosom heaved—she stepped aside,
As conscious of my look she stepped—
Then suddenly, with timorous eye
She fled to me and wept.
She half enclosed me with her arms,
She pressed me with a meek embrace;
And bending back her head, looked up,
And gazed upon my face.
‘Twas partly love, and partly fear,
And partly ’twas a bashful art,
That I might rather feel, than see,
The swelling of her heart.
I calmed her fears, and she was calm,
And told her love with virgin pride;
And so I won my Genevieve,
My bright and beauteous Bride.
Love by Samuel Taylor Coleridge is power-packed with several emotions of not just love but also kindness, romance, sorrow, and a lot more. Read it out to someone you love or save it to remind yourself that true love exists in poetry, and so you can find it in life too. Either way, this love poem is worthy of going down in the books of the greatest love poems in history.
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