For Anne Gregory

The day after Valentine, another love poem, the wistful, desperate lyric For Anne Gregory by W B Yeats.  I can't think of anything clever to say about this poem, except that if you don't get it, you've never been a young man yearning after a beautiful girl.  I imagine the experience of young women is exactly parallel, but whom am I to say?  It were otiose to remark that gentlemen prefer blondes (and it isn't true, anyway).

'Never shall a young man,

Thrown into despair

By those great honey-coloured

Ramparts at your ear,

Love you for yourself alone

And not your yellow hair.'

'But I can get a hair-dye

And set such colour there,

Brown, or black, or carrot,

That young men in despair

May love me for myself alone

And not my yellow hair.'

'I heard an old religious man

But yesternight declare

That he had found a text to prove

That only God, my dear,

Could love you for yourself alone

And not your yellow hair.'

Comments

[glo]

Oh, Mr Bagshaw, you are much mistaken (to borrow an expression to Miss Austen). Of course, there are plenty of happy love poems but many of them will certainly sound rather erotic, as Dark Puss seems to suggest.
Poets have such a soft spot for sadness and despair and these feelings are more inspiring for them. As a consequenece, there are probably more sad than happy love poems. Besides, poets are so sensitive people that once they are in love they will immediately start being jealous or fearing to lose the loved one.
Following Dark Puss's idea, you should eventually consider having a contest - between you and your readers - for the happiest love poem.

[Peter the flautist]

OK, this is slightly cheating (as it reflects love for a child) but here is a happy love poem in my view!

"I have a child, a lovely one,
In beauty like the golden sun,
Or like sweet flowers of earliest bloom;
And Claïs is her name, for whom
I Lydia's treasures, were they mine,
Would glad resign." Sappho (trans J. H. Merivale)

or how about

"Kupris, hither
Come, and pour from goblets of gold the nectar
Mixed for love's and pleasure's delight with
dainty
Joys of the banquet." Sappho (trans J. A. Symonds, 1883)

The cat who loves Sappho

[Peter the flautist]

Some of the Sapphic fragments? Dark Puss

[Lindsay]

Are there any happy love poems?

[glo]

Why not try a HAPPY love poem?