133 Sensual Poems About Kisses

“The Kiss” by Thomas Moore

Grow to my lip, thou sacred kiss,
On which my soul’s beloved swore
That there should come a time of bliss,
When she would mock my hopes no more.
And fancy shall thy glow renew,
In sighs at morn, and dreams at night,
And none shall steal thy holy dew
Till thou’rt absolved by rapture’s rite.
Sweet hours that are to make me blest,
Fly, swift as breezes, to the goal,
And let my love, my more than soul,
Come blushing to this ardent breast.
Then, while in every glance I drink
The rich overflowing of her mind,
Oh! let her all enamored sink
In sweet abandonment resigned,
Blushing for all our struggles past,
And murmuring, “I am thine at last!”

“Returning, We Hear the Larks” by Isaac Rosenberg

Sombre the night is:
And, though we have our lives, we know
What sinister threat lurks there.

Dragging these anguished limbs, we only know
This poison-blasted track opens on our camp—
On a little safe sleep.

But hark! Joy—joy—strange joy.
Lo! Heights of night ringing with unseen larks:
Music showering on our upturned listening faces.

Death could drop from the dark
As easily as song—
But song only dropped,
Like a blind man’s dreams on the sand
By dangerous tides;
Like a girl’s dark hair, for she dreams no ruin lies there,
Or her kisses where a serpent hides.

“Departure” by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

With many a thousand kiss not yet content,
At length with One kiss I was forced to go;
After that bitter parting’s depth of woe,
I deem’d the shore from which my steps I bent,
Its hills, streams, dwellings, mountains, as I went,
A pledge of joy, till daylight ceased to glow;
Then on my sight did blissful visions grow
In the dim-lighted, distant firmament,
And when at length the sea confined my gaze,
My ardent longing fill’d my heart once more;
What I had lost, unwillingly I sought.
Then Heaven appear’d to shed its kindly rays:
Methought that all I had possess’d of yore
Remain’d still mine that I was reft of nought.

“The Kiss” by Thomas Stanley

When on thy lip my soul I breathe,
Which there meets thine,
Freed from their fetters by this death,
Our subtle forms combine:
Thus without bonds of sense they move,
And like two cherubim converse by love.

Spirits to chains of earth confin’d
Discourse by sense;
But ours, that are by flames refin’d,
With those weak ties dispense.
Let such in words their minds display:
We in a kiss our mutual thoughts convey.

But since my soul from me doth fly,
To thee retir’d,
Thou canst not both retain; for I
Must be with one inspir’d;
Then, Dearest, either justly mine
Restore, or in exchange let me have thine.

Yet if thou dost return mine own,
O tak’t again!
For ’tis this pleasing death alone
Gives ease unto my pain.
Kill me once more, or I shall find
Thy pity than thy cruelty less kind.

“The Falling of the Leaves” by W. B. Yeats

Autumn is over the long leaves that love us,
And over the mice in the barley sheaves;
Yellow the leaves of the rowan above us,
And yellow the wet wild-strawberry leaves.

The hour of the waning of love has beset us,
And weary and worn are our sad souls now;
Let us part, ere the season of passion forget us,
With a kiss and a tear on thy drooping brow.

“Three Songs” by William Shakespeare

Come unto these yellow sands,
And then take hands:
Court’sied when you have, and kiss’d,–
The wild waves whist–
Foot it featly here and there;
And, sweet sprites, the burthen bear.
Hark, hark!
Bow, wow,
The watch-dogs bark:
Bow, wow.
Hark, hark! I hear
The strain of strutting chanticleer
Cry, Cock-a-diddle-dow!