13 *Passionate* Quotes From Poems That’ll Make Your Toes Curl!

There is no better way to express your emotions than with the written world. While we often resort to prose, there is something super hot about poetry as well. Here are 13 quotes from erotic poems that will leave you craving for your partner’s touch!

1. ‘The quivering flanks, hair smelling of the south,

The bright light feet, the splendid supple thighs

And glittering eyelids of my soul’s desire.’

– Love and Sleep, Algernon Charles Swinburne

2. ‘I kissed the back of her neck, an elbow,

this woman whose forgetting is a plot against forgetting,

naked in her galoshes she waltzed.’

– American Tourist, Ilya Kaminsky

3. ‘Once in civics class, he touched my

blouse like it was a page he wanted

to turn. For a second, I went trans-

parent, lightheaded: a whiff of

helium or ether, a sheet of tracing

paper or a tea leaf; slight as the

exhalation it takes to say my name.’

– Christine, Amy Grestler

4. ‘And yet one arrives somehow,

finds himself loosening the hooks of

her dress

in a strange bedroom –

feels the autumn

dropping its silk and linen leaves

about her ankles.

The tawdry veined body emerges

twisted upon itself, like a winter wind.’

– Arrival, William Carlos Williams

5. ‘Methought her long small legs and thighs

I with my tendrils did surprise;

Her belly, buttocks, and her waist

By my soft nervelets were embraced.’

– The Vine, Robert Herrick

6. ‘Licence my roving hands, and let them go,

Before, behind, between, above, below.’

– To His Mistress Going To Bed, John Donne

7. ‘When the apocalypse does come,

I will rebuild our city with my tongue.

I will suck this world’s ashes from your fingers.

I will refuse to let the fires of this hell

be the only thing that makes us sweat.

When the apocalypse comes,

so will we.’

– When The Apocalypse Comes, Sierra DeMulder

8. ‘I love your lips when they’re wet with wine

And red with a wild desire;

I love your eyes when the lovelight lies

Lit with a passionate fire.

I love your arms when the warm white flesh

Touches mine in a fond embrace;

I love your hair when the strands enmesh

Your kisses against my face.’

– I Love You, Ella Wheeler Wilcox

9. ‘Straddling my legs a little I inserted his divine

Person between and closed on it tight as I could.

The upright warmth of his belly lay all along mine.

Nude, glued together for a minute, we stood.’

– The Platonic Blow, W.H. Auden

10. ‘My sweetheart has the hungriest lips,

They seek and press unsparingly;

They probe until she almost slips

Among her kisses into me.’

– Almost, Louis Untermeyer

11. ‘Your breasts, your knees and feet! I feel that we

Are a bonfire of oneness, me flame flung leaping around you

You the core of the fire, crept into me.’

– Wedlock, D.H. Lawrence

12. ‘Tasting your neck so sweet, so soft,

And slowly lowering my kiss.

Over pert nipples, across your navel,

And finally into pure bliss.’

– More!, Michael Anderson

13. ‘And tear at your strange flesh with crazy fingers,

And drink with mouth gone mad your eyes’ wild wine,

And cleave to you, body with breathless body,

Till bestial were exalted to divine…’

– Discordants, Conrad Aiken

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