20 short love poems with their author

Love is a universal experience that moves us all, yet sometimes we struggle to find the right words to express it. Throughout history, poets have known how to articulate what we all feel in creative and eloquent ways.

Therefore, in this article, we will explore a selection of thirty-seven short love poems by renowned poets that can inspire any heart eager to express itself.

1. “Burning in Your Eyes” by Antonio Machado
   Love wasn’t extensively explored by Antonio Machado, but the following poem is one of those rare, yet happy occasions where the poet dedicates his creative intention to it. In the poem, the lover shows their passion and anxiety towards the mystery of love.
2. “If You Love Me, Love Me Completely” by Dulce María Loynaz
   Love isn’t conditional. Whoever loves must embrace the entirety of the being, both the success and the mistake. Love isn’t about admiration and doesn’t reside solely in good fortune. Love is a decision or simply a giving.
3. “Madrigal” by Amado Nervo
   The eyes of the beloved reveal themselves as a source of absolute life for the lover. No other reality matters more than being recognized in them, like a mirror that reveals our identity.
4. “Sometimes” by Nicolás Guillén
   Nicolás Guillén reminds us that love is simple, direct, and sincere. Its strength allows us to be cheesy, childish, to acknowledge our mortality, if that’s where love sprouts in the beloved.
5. “Simple Present (Trust)” by Pedro Salinas
   For the poet, complete love is only conjugated in the simple present. There’s no past or future, only the grace of loving action, the experience of love.
6. “I Offer You” by Paul Verlaine
   The most concrete expression of love is to offer oneself as a gentle and compassionate gift. This is what the poet Paul Verlaine reminds us of in this text.
7. “With You” by Luis Cernuda
   For the lover, the beloved is the absolute around which everything becomes relative. The beloved is the earth and life, the place of belonging. Their absence, on the other hand, is death.
8. “As If Each Kiss” by Fernando Pessoa
   In this poem, the kiss is presented as both fulfillment and lament. Images of possible endings, feared goodbyes, and a play of possibilities, almost surreal, the lover pleads for the memorable kiss that gives eternal value to a simple moment.
9. “Love” by Salvador Novo
   Sometimes the lover isn’t reciprocated, but if their love is true, they await the grace of being seen by the beloved. The enamored one waits for their chance.
10. “I Don’t Want to Die Without Knowing Your Mouth” by Elsa López
    The enamored soul longs for the experience of a true encounter that gives meaning to its life. Realized love diminishes the power of death because love itself becomes prodigious life.
11. “Song of Too Much Love” by Vinicius de Morais
    Sometimes, the lover loses. But love continues to mark its trace like a painful memory that disturbs the thoughts.
12. “You Have Me and I Am Yours” by Ángela Figuera Aymerich
    For the enamored soul, the surrender is total, intimate, yet it doesn’t unveil the ultimate mystery of personal essence. Each being is a mystery, but in that mystery, love sets up its tent.
13. “Eternal Love” by Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer
    The lover observes transient life while foreseeing an inexhaustible ember in love capable of illuminating eternity. Or is it that love itself is eternity?
14. “Rhyme I” by Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer
    The poet yearns for the chance when, holding the hands of their beloved, they can whisper words of love into their ear.
15. “The Poet Asks His Love to Write to Him” by Federico García Lorca
    The enamored soul eagerly awaits a message from their beloved. A written word of love on paper is a breath of life after the most absolute surrender. The lover suffers in silence and awaits relief.
16. “When You Come to Love” by Rubén Darío
    For the poet Rubén Darío, love is both a source of life and pain. That’s why he warns those who read it that this will be their destiny, but still, there will be no other way to live than by loving.
17. “Intimacy” by Saramago
    For the enamored soul, intimacy finds its way through the subtle details where life shows itself gently and meaningfully. In the smallest, most discreet things, intimacy between two people is constructed.
18. “Love” by Pablo Neruda
    For the enamored soul, love is a hyperbole, an exaggeration, a force that doesn’t fit within common sense or the normality of things. Love overflows.
19. “My Slave” by Pablo Neruda
    Pablo Neruda starts this poem invoking the image of a slave and begging for their love. In doing so, he actually shows us the dialectic of master and slave, in which the master is the true dependent and dominated. True love reverses the terms or, even better, nullifies them. One exists within the other and vice versa.
20. “I Thought of You” by José Martí
    When the soul falls in love, thoughts become the place where it reviews its feelings, the images, and the sensations produced by the beloved. This is what José Martí shows us in the following poem.