Soulmate Poetry & Analysis
Selected Soulmate Poems
Love PoemsA Valediction Forbidding Mourning
As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say
“Now his breath goes,” and some say, “No.”
So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;
‘Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.
Moving of th’ earth brings harms and fears;
Men reckon what it did, and meant;
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.
Dull sublunary lovers’ love
Whose soul is sense cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
Those things which elemented it.
But we by a love so much refined
That ourselves know not what it is,
Inter-assurèd of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.
Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to airy thinness beat.
If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two;
Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th’ other do.
And though it in the center sit,
Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.
Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th’ other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.
Overview Short Summary
This poem says that true lovers do not lose each other through distance. Their separation becomes an expansion, not a break.
Core Ideas Main Themes
- Long distance soulmate love: Physical absence cannot divide their spiritual bond.
- Two souls as one: The lovers remain connected even when apart.
- Faithful return: The compass image suggests love always finds its way home.
Craft Literary Devices
- Conceit: The lovers are compared to the two feet of a compass.
- Metaphor: Separation is compared to gold beaten thin, expanding without breaking.
- Contrast: Ordinary physical love is contrasted with refined spiritual love.
The Definition of Love
My Love is of a birth as rare
As ’tis for object strange and high:
It was begotten by despair
Upon Impossibility.
Magnanimous Despair alone
Could show me so divine a thing,
Where feeble Hope could ne’er have flown
But vainly flapped its tinsel wing.
And yet I quickly might arrive
Where my extended soul is fixed,
But Fate does iron wedges drive,
And always crowds itself betwixt.
For Fate with jealous eye does see
Two perfect loves; nor lets them close:
Their union would her ruin be,
And her tyrannic power depose.
And therefore her decrees of steel
Us as the distant poles have placed,
Though Love’s whole world on us doth wheel,
Not by themselves to be embraced.
Unless the giddy heaven fall,
And earth some new convulsion tear;
And, us to join, the world should all
Be cramp’d into a planisphere.
As lines, so loves oblique may well
Themselves in every angle greet:
But ours so truly parallel,
Though infinite, can never meet.
Therefore the love which us doth bind,
But Fate so enviously debars,
Is the conjunction of the mind,
And opposition of the stars.
Overview Short Summary
The speaker describes a rare love held apart by fate. The lovers feel perfectly matched, yet destiny keeps them from joining fully.
Core Idea Main Theme
The theme is soulmate love shaped by fate. It suits searches for soulmate poems about destiny, fate, and two souls that feel meant for each other.
Emotional Effect Tone and Mood
The tone is intellectual and mournful, creating a mood of beautiful impossibility.
Love's Philosophy
The fountains mingle with the river
And the rivers with the ocean,
The winds of heaven mix for ever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single;
All things by a law divine
In one spirit meet and mingle.
Why not I with thine?—
See the mountains kiss high heaven,
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister-flower would be forgiven
If it disdain’d its brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth,
And the moonbeams kiss the sea:
What is all this sweet work worth
If thou kiss not me?
Overview Short Summary
The speaker looks at nature and sees everything joining with something else. He uses that pattern to ask why two loving hearts should remain apart.
Core Idea Main Theme
The main theme is natural union. It fits romantic soulmate poems because it imagines connection as part of the world’s design.
Literary Technique Imagery and Personification
The poem personifies rivers, winds, flowers, sunlight, and moonbeams as if nature itself knows how to love and unite.
A Birthday
My heart is like a singing bird
Whose nest is in a watered shoot;
My heart is like an apple-tree
Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit;
My heart is like a rainbow shell
That paddles in a halcyon sea;
My heart is gladder than all these
Because my love is come to me.
Raise me a dais of silk and down;
Hang it with vair and purple dyes;
Carve it in doves and pomegranates,
And peacocks with a hundred eyes;
Work it in gold and silver grapes,
In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys;
Because the birthday of my life
Is come, my love is come to me.
Overview Short Summary
The speaker describes love’s arrival as the true birthday of life, filling the heart with music, color, richness, and celebration.
Core Idea Main Theme
The theme is joyful fulfillment. It works for soulmate birthday poems and poems about finding the person who makes life feel new.
Literary Technique Imagery and Personification
Birds, fruit, shells, silk, gold, doves, and pomegranates create a rich visual world of celebration and emotional abundance.
Monna Innominata: I Loved You First
I loved you first: but afterwards your love
Outsoaring mine, sang such a loftier song
As drowned the friendly cooings of my dove.
Which owes the other most? my love was long,
And yours one moment seemed to wax more strong;
I loved and guessed at you, you construed me
And loved me for what might or might not be—
Nay, weights and measures do us both a wrong.
For verily love knows not “mine” or “thine”;
With separate “I” and “thou” free love has done,
For one is both and both are one in love:
Rich love knows nought of “thine that is not mine”;
Both have the strength and both the length thereof,
Both of us, of the love which makes us one.
Overview Short Summary
The speaker refuses to measure who loved first or more. True love becomes shared, equal, and beyond possession.
Core Idea Main Theme
The central theme is unity. It strongly supports the “two souls one heart” idea often searched in soulmate poetry.
Emotional Effect Tone and Mood
The tone is thoughtful and generous, while the mood feels intimate and balanced.