10 Beautiful Poems About Love to Melt Your Heart

10 Beautiful Poems About Love to Melt Your Heart

The unique and beautiful diversity in poetry, from haikus to free verse, reflects the beautiful voices that speak them. This article celebrates and honors the diversity in those voices through discovery of poems on self love that warm the soul.

Self love encourages us to embrace our worth and take joy in who we are.

What poem better embraces self-worth than Phenomenal Woman by Maya Angelou? None that we know of. Lean into yourself and be empowered by who you are. The rewards are profound and moving.

"Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s size   
But when I start to tell them,
They think I’m telling lies.
I say,
It’s in the reach of my arms,
The span of my hips,   
The stride of my step,   
The curl of my lips.   
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,   
That’s me.

I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,   
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.   
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.   
I say,
It’s the fire in my eyes,   
And the flash of my teeth,   
The swing in my waist,   
And the joy in my feet.   
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.

Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.

Men themselves have wondered   
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can’t touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them,   
They say they still can’t see.   
I say,
It’s in the arch of my back,   
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.

Now you understand
Just why my head’s not bowed.   
I don’t shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.   
When you see me passing,
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It’s in the click of my heels,   
The bend of my hair,   
the palm of my hand,   
The need for my care.   
’Cause I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal womn,
That’s me."

The goosebumps say it all! This is a love poem that embraces oneself to the footings of our foundations of who we are.

Rupi Kaur emphasizes that how you love yourself is how you teach others to love you.

Rupi Kaur elegantly captures the essence of the value of self love in her book Milk and Honey. Her modern, minimalist poems often explore themes of self-worth, healing, and empowerment, resonating deeply with contemporary readers.

"how you love yourself is
how you teach others
to love you"

This simple and striking quote reflects the core of self-love — that the way we treat and value ourselves sets the standard for how others will treat us.

Self love is necessary for personal growth and well-being.

Seed of Love by Laura Fuller artistically compares a blooming flower to ones well-being. The body of oneself must be nourished with self love in-order for flower to prosper.

"The flower of life
produced from the seed above
brought forth in the eyes of beauty
renders happiness
when watered"

This poem on self love is obtainable and understandable. Ones lifeforce grows when nourished with the energy of self care.

Poems about self love often inspire readers to cherish themselves.

Mary Oliver uniquely describes inner peace and self acceptance in her poem Wild Geese. Connecting nature with our body's natural elements, we are consoled into our own way.

"You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting–
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things."

You do not have to be perfect. You are enough. Yell your truth down upon the wind like geese singing to the grass.

Self love is linked to self-acceptance and confidence.

Self acceptance and confidence are proudly proclaimed through vulnerability in Audre Lorde's Love Poem.

"Speak earth and bless me with what is richest
make sky flow honey out of my hips
rigis mountains
spread over a valley
carved out by the mouth of rain.

And I knew when I entered her I was
high wind in her forests hollow
fingers whispering sound
honey flowed
from the split cup
impaled on a lance of tongues
on the tips of her breasts on her navel
and my breath
howling into her entrances
through lungs of pain.

Greedy as herring-gulls
or a child
I swing out over the earth
over and over
again."

Love Poem poetically finds inner peace through desire, embracing the physicality with vulnerability of love between women in 1978.

Self-love encourages us to be at peace with who we are.

"Love After Love" by Derek Walcott is a powerful and awe inciting poem that encourages its readers to embrace oneself. Its message is, you are worthy of love, attention, and celebration. It also identifies the importance of self-acceptance so that oneself may heal and love again.

"The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life."

Walcott’s poem is cherished up and down because its soft and warm tone reminds us that true happiness and personal growth begins with an intimate reunion with ourselves.

Self love forms the foundation of personal growth and happiness.

Accept Yourself as a Work in Progress by Reyna Biddy is a powerful affirmation of self love and personal growth. This poem on self love belongs on bookshelves and stages being pumped through amplifiers by motivational speakers.

"Accept yourself as a work in progress the continue
to build yourself into the person you’re dreaming to be;
the person you have all the potential to be
accept your flaws, accept your truths. accept your past.

and make light of them. no one can tear you down if
you make peace with who you are and where you’ve
been. if you are going to focus on the negative at all,
focus on turning them into positives. focus on growing.

sometimes, often times, our minds are the scariest
place to sit. it’ll trick you into comparing yourself
to others and it’ll trick you into believing you aren’t
good enough. but you are. you have always been

and you always will be. you’re much more powerful
when you believe in yourself. if you don’t love
all of you, who will?
give yourself time to blossom.

The overarching theme of this poem is through self love nothing can tare you down. Not your past, not a person, and not the words of a cynic. This stability is the core of your personal growth and happiness.

Celebrated poets have beautifully captured the essence of self love in their verses.

Walt Whitman wrote Song of Myself. In it, he explores individualism, interconnectedness, nature and democracy.

Here is an excerpt from Song of Myself:

"I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
and what I assume you shall assume,
for every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you."

Self-love poems remind us that we are all unique and deserve respect.

Jennifer Healey captures the essence of self love and respect then sets it free as I Am Enough.

There is a wholeness that’s already mine.
It’s already ours.
I am not just the seed,
I am the rain that waters the flower.
It’s a reality that’s already there,
That I am enough.
I take on faith
That wholeness is already mine,
That I need do nothing to deserve,
That my worthiness is based only on my being.

I am wise enough to let go,
And I am strong enough to remember the truth
Of who I really am.
I can encounter the world
In such a way
That I remember who I am.

I am the rest inside the unrest.
I am the depth of the sky,
And the light piercing the sea.
I am the crest of a wave.
All that I need to be,
I am.

There is no problem to solve in this moment.
There is no plan to make,
No failure to be feared,
No other place to be.
This moment is enough.
This place is enough.
This imperfection is enough.
I am patient enough for my life to unfold in divine timing.

I feel the fullness of my life in this moment.
I feel the richness of my life in this space.
I am loved beyond thought,
And I have nothing to prove.
There is no one to impress.
I receive the message
That being is enough.

I am wise enough to see magic through a child’s eyes.
I am resilient enough to see past the pain.
I am kind enough to realize
That my worth has been with me
This whole time.

Beyond the shadows
That I have created,
The message remains:
I am the same.
I have always been enough,
Simply by being here.
Simply by being.

It only takes a moment,
And I remember this again.

There is only one you in the world. You are unique. You deserve respect.

Self-love allows us to view our struggles as part of our growth journey.

The Journey by Mary Oliver takes a stand for self discovery by knowing the value of ones self worth and unapologetically pursuing it through fear of alienation from ones peers.

"One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice—
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do—
determined to save
the only life you could save."

The beauty of saving yourself with self love is inspiring. It is reminiscent of a phenix and the transformation of a caterpillar.

William Ernest Henley

Invictus is the poem on self love. It embodies self care with heroic reserve. Love can persist without suffering; However, the two are so intertwined and connected that the joy of one is made greater by the space in the other.

"Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeoning of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul."

The beauty in the resolve and without fear or explanation in this poem is the way the masculine may show and embrace self love.