Poetry & Meaning
Selected Teasing Poems
Love PoemsA Ditty
My true-love hath my heart, and I have his,
By just exchange one to the other given:
I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss,
There never was a better bargain driven:
My true-love hath my heart, and I have his.
His heart in me keeps him and me in one,
My heart in him his thoughts and senses guides:
He loves my heart, for once it was his own,
I cherish his because in me it bides:
My true-love hath my heart, and I have his.
Overview Short Summary
The speaker asks love to leave the beloved’s lips and eyes and move into her heart, where affection can become deeper and more lasting.
Core Ideas Main Themes
Beauty, lips, eyes, inward love, desire, and emotional depth.
Playful Reading Why It Feels Teasing
The poem begins by noticing outward charms, then gently redirects them inward. It sounds like a flirtation that wants to become something more meaningful.
Emotional Effect Tone and Mood
Musical, admiring, persuasive, and tender.
The White Rose
The red rose whispers of passion,
And the white rose breathes of love;
O, the red rose is a falcon,
And the white rose is a dove.
But I send you a cream-white rosebud
With a flush on its petal tips;
For the love that is purest and sweetest
Has a kiss of desire on the lips.
Overview Short Summary
Red roses are linked with passion, while the white rose stands for a quieter and purer form of love.
Core Ideas Main Themes
Romantic symbols, hidden feeling, purity, passion, and contrast.
Playful Reading Why It Feels Teasing
The poem makes readers choose between two kinds of romantic message. That symbolic choice gives it the feel of a sweet teasing poem for a crush.
For Texts and Cards Best Reader Use
Its short length makes it useful for a playful romantic card, caption, or message.
Love’s Secret
Never seek to tell thy love,
Love that never told can be;
For the gentle wind doth move
Silently, invisibly.
I told my love, I told my love,
I told her all my heart,
Trembling, cold, in ghastly fears.
Ah! she did depart!
Soon after she was gone from me,
A traveller came by,
Silently, invisibly:
He took her with a sigh.
Overview Short Summary
The speaker warns that openly declaring love can cause it to disappear, then describes losing the beloved after revealing too much.
Core Ideas Main Themes
Secret love, confession, restraint, vulnerability, and romantic uncertainty.
Playful Reading Why It Feels Teasing
The poem turns silence into part of courtship. It suggests that a little mystery can protect attraction, even though too much secrecy carries its own risk.
Emotional Effect Tone and Mood
Whispered, cautionary, bittersweet, and intimate.
I Hid My Love
I hid my love when young till I
Couldn’t bear the buzzing of a fly;
I hid my love to my despite
Till I could not bear to look at light:
I dare not gaze upon her face
But left her memory in each place;
Where’er I saw a wild flower lie
I kissed and bade my love good-bye.
I met her in the greenest dells
Where dewdrops pearl the wood bluebells;
The lost breeze kissed her bright blue eye,
The bee kissed and went singing by;
A sunbeam found a passage there,
A gold chain round her neck so fair;
As secret as the wild bee’s song
She lay there all the summer long.
I hid my love in field and town
Till e’en the breeze would knock me down;
The bees seemed singing ballads o’er,
The fly’s bass turned a lion’s roar;
And even silence found a tongue,
To haunt me all the summer long;
The riddle nature could not prove
Was nothing else but secret love.
Overview Short Summary
The speaker tries to hide love from people, nature, and even the beloved, but the feeling becomes too powerful to conceal.
Core Ideas Main Themes
Hidden attraction, shyness, confession, emotional pressure, and longing.
Playful Reading Why It Feels Teasing
The beloved is kept guessing while the speaker struggles to speak. That uncertainty suits teasing poems for a boyfriend, girlfriend, or secret crush.
Literary Technique Imagery and Personification
Nature appears to notice the hidden feeling: flowers, winds, birds, and even the sky seem involved in the secret.
To Celia: Ask Me No More
Ask me no more where Jove bestows,
When June is past, the fading rose;
For in your beauty’s orient deep
These flowers, as in their causes, sleep.
Ask me no more whither do stray
The golden atoms of the day;
For in pure love heaven did prepare
Those powders to enrich your hair.
Ask me no more whither doth haste
The nightingale when May is past;
For in your sweet dividing throat
She winters, and keeps warm her note.
Ask me no more where those stars light
That downwards fall in dead of night;
For in your eyes they sit, and there
Fixed become as in their sphere.
Ask me no more if east or west
The phoenix builds her spicy nest;
For unto you at last she flies,
And in your fragrant bosom dies.
Overview Short Summary
The speaker answers imagined questions about flowers, birds, stars, and beauty by tracing every wonder back to Celia.
Core Ideas Main Themes
Praise, beauty, imagined conversation, nature, attraction, and playful answers.
Playful Reading Why It Feels Teasing
Each stanza begins as though Celia has asked another question. The speaker’s exaggerated answers turn admiration into a graceful romantic exchange.
For Her Best Reader Use
This suits teasing poems for her when the tone should feel poetic, flattering, and light rather than openly passionate.
Continue Reading
Related Poems & Articles
More selected reading from Love Poems.
