Ancient Love Poetry...
First Line and Order of Poems on This Page
• Your kiss is laced with birdlime.
• My image is stamped on your molten heart.
• I know only one utterly beautiful thing.
• I run to you as the traveller runs towards shade…
• It was not the cavalry…
• Some say that the most beautiful thing…
• The day love crossed your path…
• ‘Iuventius, if I was allowed to kiss those honey eyes of yours…
• Two would in the wind free to go; Free to fly.
• Sweet Apple: You’re just like the sweet apple reddening at the highest branch
• Your love has penetrated all within me.
• It is a joy to walk where meadows are in bloom.
• Even when I’m gone, I shall pursue you with dark fires.
• Come to me, beautiful boy, see how the nymphs…
• Your body is all grace; Your eyes, honey.
• I live here miserable and broken with desire.
• My lips are too small, they know not to kiss.
• How well she knows to cast the noose.
• Sa’am plants here summon us.
• He whose indefatigable eyes are sun and moon.
• Goddess of Love, you hold sway over the unbending hearts of…
• So seize the day! hold holiday!
• For love is as strong as death…
• The song of all songs that was Solomon’s. May he smother me with kisses.
• I come to you on bended knee, Queen.
• Your kiss is laced with birdlime.
• My image is stamped on your molten heart.
• I know only one utterly beautiful thing.
• I run to you as the traveller runs towards shade…
• It was not the cavalry…
• Some say that the most beautiful thing…
• The day love crossed your path…
• ‘Iuventius, if I was allowed to kiss those honey eyes of yours…
• Two would in the wind free to go; Free to fly.
• Sweet Apple: You’re just like the sweet apple reddening at the highest branch
• Your love has penetrated all within me.
• It is a joy to walk where meadows are in bloom.
• Even when I’m gone, I shall pursue you with dark fires.
• Come to me, beautiful boy, see how the nymphs…
• Your body is all grace; Your eyes, honey.
• I live here miserable and broken with desire.
• My lips are too small, they know not to kiss.
• How well she knows to cast the noose.
• Sa’am plants here summon us.
• He whose indefatigable eyes are sun and moon.
• Goddess of Love, you hold sway over the unbending hearts of…
• So seize the day! hold holiday!
• For love is as strong as death…
• The song of all songs that was Solomon’s. May he smother me with kisses.
• I come to you on bended knee, Queen.
Meleager / The Greek Anthology V.96
Your kiss is laced with birdlime,
And your eyes, Timarion, with fire.
Look at me, and I burn,
Touch me and I am caught.
My image is stamped on your molten heart...
Your beauty is engraved on my soul.
Paulos Silentiarius
The Greek Anthology V. 274
Your beauty is engraved on my soul.
Paulos Silentiarius
The Greek Anthology V. 274
Meleager The Greek Anthology XII, 106
I know only one utterly beautiful thing,
My ravenous eye knows only one thing:
...That is to at Mysikos.
To everything else, I am blind.
Theokritos, Idyll XII
"I run to you as the traveller runs towards shade
when scorched by the sun"
The Anakreontea / Poem 26
It was not the cavalry,
Or the infantry,
... Or even the navy,
But another strange kind of army
That destroyed me,
Striking me down with her eyes.
Sappho / fragment 16
Some say that the most beautiful thing on this dark earth is a host of horsemen,
others that it is an army of foot-soldiers,
and others that it is a fleet of ships;
But, I say it is what you love.
Letter from Babylon 2000 B.C.
Let me be your shield and the skin you wear.
Like this, you will be always inside me.
I would like to be the wind,
So that as you walked along the seashore..
You could bare your breasts and let me caress you with my breath.
Unknown Greek Poet
So that as you walked along the seashore..
You could bare your breasts and let me caress you with my breath.
Unknown Greek Poet
Eros /Meleagros (140-70 B.C.)
From all the offspring
Of the Earth and Heaven
Love is most precious
LETTER FROM BABYLON 2000 B.C.
The day love crossed your path you never could rest again.
But, you would have never read the stars,
spoke with the wind,
and prayed in such wonder, if you had turned your face away.
Catullus / poem 48
Iuventius, if I was allowed to kiss those honey eyes of yours
As much as I'd like to,
I'd kiss them three hundred thousand times,
And still not have my fill,
Not even if that kissing was planted thicker
Than curved corn husks in a field.
Letter from Babylon 2000 B.C.
"Two would in the wind free to go,
free to fly...
The wisdom of the earth in a kiss
and everything else in your eyes.
...
How far do you see beloved?
I can be everything now...
See far, what others call infinity..only one step away"
Sweet Apple
I
...You’re
Just like the sweet apple reddening at the highest branch
and missed by the apple pickers –
No,
They did not miss you!
They just couldn’t reach so high.
II
And,
You’re just like the mountain Hyacinth,
trodden by the shepherds
next to the purple blossoms
Sappho / B93 & B94
Ancient Egyptian Love Poetry
Your love has penetrated all within me
Like honey plunged into water,
Like an odor which penetrates spices,
As when one mixes juice in …
Nevertheless you run to seek your sister,
Like the steed upon the battlefield,
As the warrior rolls along on the spokes of his wheels.
For heaven makes your love
Like the advance of flames in straw,
And its longing like the downward swoop of a hawk.
Your love has penetrated all within me
Like honey plunged into water,
Like an odor which penetrates spices,
As when one mixes juice in …
Nevertheless you run to seek your sister,
Like the steed upon the battlefield,
As the warrior rolls along on the spokes of his wheels.
For heaven makes your love
Like the advance of flames in straw,
And its longing like the downward swoop of a hawk.
THE ANAKREONTEA
It is a joy to walk
Where meadows are in bloom,
Where gentle Zephyros exhales his sweet breath,
To look on the vines of Backchos,
...
And then to enter under the blanket of their leaves,
In your arms a silky girl,
Every inch of her redolent
Of the essences of Kypris.
Dido to Aeneas (Virgil, Aeneid IV)
"Even when I’m gone,
I shall pursue you with dark fires,
And when cold death tears my soul from my body,
Wherever you are,
My ghost will be there too."
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Virgil / Eclogue 2
Come to me, beautiful boy;
see how the nymphs bring you lilies in heaped baskets,
How for you the fair water-nymph,
plucking pale violets and the heads of poppies
mixes narcissus and sweet-smelling fennel-flower;
Then, entwining them with cassia and other delicious herbs,
she embroiders the delicate hyacinth with the golden marigold.
I myself will gather quinces pale with down, and chestnuts, which my Amaryllis loved.
...SAPPHO
YOUR BODY IS ALL GRACE
YOUR EYES.....HONEY,
THE LOVE FLOWS INTO
YOUR LONGED-FOR FACE.
Sappho (6th Century B.C.)
I live here miserable and broken with desire,
Pierced through, to the bones,
By bitterness of this god given painful love.
O friends, this passion makes my limbs limp
And tramples over me.
Kissing has been recorded for at least the last five millennia.
The earliest literate civilization in the world, Sumer, mentions both lip and tongue kissing in its poetry:
My lips are too small, they know not to kiss.
My precious sweet, lying by my heart,
one by one "tonguemaking," one by one.
When my sweet precious, my heart, had lain down too,
each of them in turn kissing with the tongue, each in turn.
The earliest literate civilization in the world, Sumer, mentions both lip and tongue kissing in its poetry:
My lips are too small, they know not to kiss.
My precious sweet, lying by my heart,
one by one "tonguemaking," one by one.
When my sweet precious, my heart, had lain down too,
each of them in turn kissing with the tongue, each in turn.
How well she knows to cast the noose,
And yet not pay the cattle tax!
She casts the noose on me with her hair,
She captures me with her eye;
She curbs me with her necklace,
She brands me with her seal ring.
Third Stanza, from The Nakht-Sobak Cycle of Papyrus Chester Beatty I
And yet not pay the cattle tax!
She casts the noose on me with her hair,
She captures me with her eye;
She curbs me with her necklace,
She brands me with her seal ring.
Third Stanza, from The Nakht-Sobak Cycle of Papyrus Chester Beatty I
Saam-plants here summon us,
I am your sister, your best one;
I belong to you like this plot of ground
That I planted with flowers
And sweet-smelling herbs.
Sweet is its stream,
Dug by your hand,
Refreshing in the north wind.
A lovely place to wander in,
Your hand in my hand.
My body thrives, my heart exults
At our walking together;
Hearing your voice is pomegranate wine,
I live by hearing it.
Each look with which you look at me
sustains me more than food and drink.
Poem 2, from IIc, The Third Collection, Papyrus Harris 500
I am your sister, your best one;
I belong to you like this plot of ground
That I planted with flowers
And sweet-smelling herbs.
Sweet is its stream,
Dug by your hand,
Refreshing in the north wind.
A lovely place to wander in,
Your hand in my hand.
My body thrives, my heart exults
At our walking together;
Hearing your voice is pomegranate wine,
I live by hearing it.
Each look with which you look at me
sustains me more than food and drink.
Poem 2, from IIc, The Third Collection, Papyrus Harris 500
for the god, Agathos Daimon
Jan Assmann, Ägypten, Theologie und Frömmigkeit einer frühen Hochkultur, p.281
Re, the Sungod, Greek Helios
He whose indefatigable eyes are sun and moon
whose head is the heaven,
whose body is the air,
whose feet are the earth,
the water surrounding thee is the ocean:
...He who creates all good and nourishes and multiplies
The whole inhabited earth and the whole cosmos.
Euripides / Hippolytos
From an old song by the chorus on the play's central theme:
the deadly dangers of ignoring the power of Aphrodite.
Goddess of Love, you hold sway over
The unbending hearts of Gods and mortals,
And with you soars Eros, enfolding them all
In his swift and dappled wings.
He flies over the earth
...And over the melodious brine-filled sea.
And he spreads his enchantment,
Setting fires in maddened hearts
With his flickering golden wing...
Dating from about 1160 B.C., this poem was found on the tomb of Inherkhau,
a supervisor of workers at the royal burial ground in the ancient city of Thebes:
The Harper's Song for Inherkhau
(Excerpt)
So seize the day! hold holiday!
Be unwearied, unceasing, alive
you and your own true love;
Let not the heart be troubled during your sojourn on Earth,
but seize the day as it passes!
(Translated by J.L. Foster)
Song Of Solomon Chapter 8
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The words of the ecstatic bride of the Semitic king Shu-Sin (about 2,000 BCE), in first extract below, with the first four verses of the Song of Songs:
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-- Homer / Odyssey VI
From the speech of Odysseus, delivered dressed only in an improvised loin-cloth, to
the beautiful Nausicaa, daughter of King Alcinous.
I come to you on bended knee, Queen.
Are you god or mortal?
....
If you are one of the immortals who hold sway over the immense Heavens,
I think that in beauty, stature and nature,
You are most like Artemis, daughter of mighty Zeus.
But, if you are one of the mortals who live on the earth,
Three-times-blessed are your father and your revered mother,
Three-times-blessed are your brothers and sisters.
Their hearts must always warm with happiness,
When they watch you, their rosebud just opening, enter the dance.
But blessed beyond all others is the man who courts you
With nuptial gifts and leads you to his home.
Never have I set my eyes upon such beauty, in either man or woman.
I look at you and I am bedazzled...
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