Poetry is a beautiful art form that can expand our understanding of the world as well as help us express ourselves. Here at A Grade Ahead, we love poetry and make it a key part of our students’ learning. What better time to study poetry than Valentine’s Day? We went on an adventure this week to explore the long history of love poetry. Here is a brief overview of what we learned.
Does your child love to creatively express themselves? Find out more about our English curriculum here, or take a free assessment to get your child started with educational enrichment today!
Figurative Love: Love Poems in the Ancient World
The world’s first love poem was written about 4,000 years ago in Mesopotamia, which is in modern Iraq. Called the Love Song for Shu-Sin, this ancient poem celebrates a bride’s love for her new husband. Scholars think that this was part of a ritual during which the king symbolically married the goddess Inanna, ensuring another prosperous and fertile year. Other ancient poems, like the Song of Solomon in the Bible, also use the metaphor of marriage to show a loving relationship between a deity and their people.
Metaphors and similes, which compare two unalike things, are important features of most ancient love poems. Ancient Egyptians writing around 1500 BC, for example, compare love and relationships to fishing in the Nile River, which was an essential part of their survival.
A Grade Ahead appreciates the power and importance of figurative language like metaphors and similes, so we start exploring it in our 3rd grade English curriculum.
Singing the Praises of Love
As the title may suggest, poetry and music are linked! Odes, for example, address a person or thing and were originally meant to be sung. The first odes were written in ancient Greco-Roman culture and often praised friendships. The Pindaric odes, or poems written by the Theban poet Pindar about 2,500 years ago, were sung by a chorus accompanying an orchestra, giving meaning to the phrase “to sing someone’s praises.”
Is your child interested in poetry? At A Grade Ahead, we begin exploring figurative language as early as 3rd grade, and students learn about odes in our 7th grade English curriculum.
About the same time Pindar introduced odes in Europe, the first classical Chinese poems were published. These poems, which describe love in addition to many other topics, were meant to be sung as well. The authors focused on the way the syllables sounded rather than whether they were stressed or unstressed, as English poets would later do. Their tonality made the poetry lyrical as well as expressive.
Courtly Love in Poetic Medieval Europe
In Europe in the 1100s and 1200s, love poetry became associated with “courtly love,” which glorified love, nobility, and chivalry. Frequently, it lamented unrequited love or prohibited relationships just as it celebrated true love. These poems were written by troubadours who sang them in royal courts throughout Europe. Eleanor of Aquitaine, who reigned as Queen of first France and later England in the twelfth century, particularly made courtly love popular. These poems eventually became associated with Valentine’s Day and continue to influence our understanding of love and romance.
Does your child get excited by history? Call or visit an A Grade Ahead Academy near you to see if we are offering Time Traveler Tales, or one of our other enrichment camps, in your area!
Love in the English Language
Geoffrey Chaucer, who many consider the first author to write in the English language, also became the first poet to specifically associate love and Valentine’s Day. In A Parliament of Fowls (1382), he describes a dream in which birds choose their mates—all, that is, except one lady eagle who does not choose any of her three suitors. The poem clearly states this event takes place on Valentine’s Day, making it the first reference linking Valentine’s Day to love and romance.
Edmund Spencer’s 1590 epic poem the Fairie Queene, on the other hand, is the first poem to use the iconic words, “Roses are red; violets are blue…” This poem, which celebrates Queen Elizabeth I, describes the fairy queen surrounded by roses and violets. Specifically, he wrote:
She bath’d with roses red, and violets blue,
And all the sweetest flowres, that in the forrest grew.
These lines grew into a famous Valentine’s Day poem in the 1700s:
Roses are red,
Violets are blue
Sugar is sweet
And so are you.
Shakespearean Love
William Shakespeare is perhaps the most famous English author of romantic poetry. His sonnets, most of which were published in 1609, are particularly quoted around Valentine’s Day.
Sonnets are made up of 14 lines of poetry that follow a specific rhyme scheme. In Shakespearian sonnets, the rhyme scheme is ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. Consider the following Shakespearian sonnet.
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
In this famous poem, Shakespeare compares his love to a beautiful summer day, suggesting that his love will remain just as young and beautiful for all time. This love poem is a wonderful example of how poetry can express complex ideas using figurative language.
Want more? A Grade Ahead teaches sonnets in our 6th grade English curriculum!
The Nineteenth Century and Beyond
In the 1800s, romantic poets in Europe returned to themes of love and nature in their poetry but began to reject traditional forms of poetry. The Romantic intellectual tradition wanted to inject emotion and imagination into art, literature, and music as a reaction to the Enlightenment, which they felt stripped the romance from the world. Elizabeth Barret Browning, for example, is best known for her sonnet, “How Do I Love Thee,” written while she and her future husband were courting. This and other poems continued the courtly love tradition.
Later in the century and throughout the 1900s, poets began to experiment with free verse, a form of poetry that does not rely on a set structure or rhyme scheme. E. E. Cummings, for example, experimented with the ways in which poems look and sound. Here, for example, is the first stanza of “[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]” (1952):
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
i fear
no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
Notice that there are no end rhymes, and each line uses punctuation to make it unique.
A Grade Ahead appreciates all types of poetry! Students begin to learn about different poetry types in our 3rd and 4th grade English curriculum, specifically focusing on free verse poetry in our 5th grade English curriculum!
Valentine’s Day 2025: Write Your Own Poem!
Now that you know a little more, consider crafting your own Valentine’s Day poem! In this case, you might praise your loved one or a dear friend.
Once you choose a theme or topic, brainstorm. Think about what the topic or person makes you think of when you contemplate them. Brainstorming will help you generate a list of words and their synonyms that you can use in the poem.
Then, pick a format. Sonnets and odes, as discussed here, follow a specific rhyme scheme and rhythm and include a set number of lines. Free verse, though, can be any length and does not have to rhyme. At A Grade Ahead, we frequently ask our students to write acrostic poems in which each line starts with the next letter of the person or object the poem celebrates.
Finally, as you begin to write, keep in mind the pattern of rhymes if necessary. For more sophisticated poems, you might also consider the rhythm of the poem as it is read aloud.
Looking for more help? A Grade Ahead teaches our students the steps for writing imaginative poems starting as early as 3rd grade!
Exploring the history of poetry is a great way to learn how to appreciate the beauty of poems. It can also teach you how to express deep thoughts with imagination using figurative language. We hope this little overview of the history of love poetry has helped you appreciate the art of writing poetry. We would love to hear your thoughts, your favorite poetry, or your own original poem in the comments!
Author: Susanna Robbins, Teacher and Franchise Assistant at A Grade Ahead
