8 Enchanting Italian Poems Of Love In English

Italian pomes of love have been providing comfort and romance for couples and heart-broken people for centuries. We collected some of the most beautiful Italian poems in English to help you quickly find the right quote or words you’ve been looking for.

We also wanted to introduce some of the most popular and most famous Italian poets to you. While Italian artists are most well known for their paintings and sculptures there are plenty of outstanding poets you should know.

Italy is one of the most enchanting countries filled with history, culture, and so much art that some of their cities rather feel like an open-air museum than a normal city. Reading more Italian poetry can help you understand and feel closer to this fascinating and beautiful culture.

While there are many amazing poems out there, some of the most well-known ones are about love, loss, and life. Here you’ll find a few thought-provoking, melancholic, and romantic Italian poems that are perfect weddings or love letters for that special someone.

Read beguiling famous Italian Poems translated to English

8| Delirium by Antonia Pozzi

Antonia Pozzi (1912-1938) was a poet and photographer and is considered one of the most original voices in modern Italian literature. Despite her short life, she wrote over 300 poems none of which were published during her lifetime.

Unfortunately, many of her work was heavily edited by her father following her suicide in 1938. He didn’t approve of her romance with her teacher so he edited out some of the more erotic content and anything that referred to their affairs. However, he later regretted these edits, and Antonia Pozzi’s unedited poetry was finally published in 1943.

Delirium by Antonia Pozzi

I saw it, at that moment. You were playing
your violin, with your head down:
your eyelashes marking on your face
two streaks of shadow. I was quivering, perhaps,
in time with the strings, in the sobs
that the soul was engraving in your hand
and I met you at the tips of your fingers.
Or perhaps I was playing on your hair
together with the sharp sea breeze.
Maybe I faded in the cluster,
soft and compact, of the gillyflower.
And one day you resumed again your music;
took up again, crying, your instrument:
Death had bound it tightly to you
with its black velvets. I saw you,
brother, at that moment. But I don’t know where I was.
Perhaps I was only a dense, bristly branch
of prickly pear, behind an old wall.

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7| Celestial Love by Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni

Michelangelo (1475-1564) needs no introduction. While he was mainly known as a sculptor and painter he also wrote some of the most beautiful Italian poems. He was a polymath just like Leonardo da Vinci. Michelangelo was a sculptor, painter, architect, and poet of the High Renaissance born in the Republic of Florence.

Michelangelo had a long and fruitful life filled with love, heartbreaks, and art. Reading his poetry can give you another way to get to know this fascinating figure that shaped and influenced millions of artists around the world for centuries. If you want to read Italian poems written by a master of arts then pick up one of his poem and letter collections.

Celestial Love by Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni

I saw no mortal beauty with these eyes
When perfect peace in thy fair eyes I found;
But far within, where all is holy ground,
My soul felt Love, her comrade of the skies:
For she was born with God in Paradise;
Else should we still to transient loves be bound;
But, finding these so false, we pass beyond
Unto the Love of Loves that never dies.
Nay, things that die, cannot assuage the thirst
Of souls undying; nor Eternity
Serves Time, where all must fade that flourisheth.
Sense is not love, but lawlessness accurst:
This kills the soul; while our love lifts on high
Our friends on earth–higher in heaven through death.

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6| You Have, In You, The Leaves And Flowers by Guido Cavalcanti

Guido Cavalcanti (1255-1300) is one of the most well-known Italian poets born in Florence. He is considered to be one of the originators of the dolce stil nuovo, or sweet new style of the late 13th-century Italian poetry.

Almost all his poetry was about love, however, he often painted it more darkly and violently. His technique of personified spirits was adopted by many other poets most famously by Dante.

You Have, In You, The Leaves And Flowers by Guido Cavalcanti

You have, in you, the leaves and flowers
All that shines and all that’s sweet to see:
Greater than the sun your face in splendour,
Who sees you not can never worthy be.
In this world there is no creature
So pleasing or so full of beauty:
And he is led, who holds love in terror,
By your face, to desire such inwardly.

Each woman who is with you pleases me,
Through the love you show towards her:
And I pray to her, of her courtesy,
She who can do so best does you most honour.
And shows great care for your sovereignty,
For you are queen of all who are there.

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5| Life of my life, you seem to me by Torquato Tasso

Torquato Tasso (1544-1595) is considered to be one of the greatest Italian poets of the late Renaissance. He is most known for his heroic epic poem Gerusalemme liberata and until the 20th century he remained one of the most popular and widely read poets around Europe.

Tasso had a complicated life that included imprisonment in Ferrara. Later on, he struggled more with mental illness and unfortunately was never fully able to recover.

Life of my life, you seem to me by Torquato Tasso

Life of my life, you seem to me
Like some pallid olive tree
Or the faded rose I see:
Nor do you lack beauty,
But pleasing in every way to me,
In shyness or in flattery,
Whether you follow me or flee,
Consume, destroy me softly.

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4| The beautiful night by Giuseppe Ungaretti

Giuseppe Ungaretti (1888–1970) was a poet, journalist, essayist, academic, civil servant and was one of the most prominent contributors to 20th-century Italian literature.

His life was quite adventurous and he lived and studied in Egypt, France, and Italy. His art was influenced by symbolism and futurism. His most known and beloved works were first published during World War I.

Later on, he introduced Hermeticism and became a Professor of Modern Literature at the University of Rome.

The beautiful night by Giuseppe Ungaretti

What song has risen tonight
and woven
the crystal echo of a heart
into the stars

What sudden holiday
of this reveling heart

I had been
a pool of dark

Now I bite
space
like a child the breast

Now I am
universe-drunk

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3| Sonetto by Giovanni Boccaccio

Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375) was an Italian writer and poet who is most known for the Decameron also known as the “Human Comedy”.

Decameron is one of the most important historical records of the physical and psychological effects on society of the aggressive spread of the plague that decimated the European population.

Boccaccio Renaissance humanist and he is one of the “Three Crowns” of Italian literature together with Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch) and Dante Alighieri.

Sonetto by Giovanni Boccaccio

Beside a fountain in a little grove
That fresh green fronds and pretty flowers did grace,
Three maidens sat and talked methinks of love.
Mid golden locks, o’ershadowing each sweet face,
For coolness was entwined a leaf-green spray,
And all the while a gentle zephyr played
Through green and golden in a tender way,
Weaving a web of sunshine and of shade.
After a while, unto the other two
One spoke, and I could hear her words: “Think you
That if our lovers were to happen by
We would all run away for very fright?”
The others answered her: “From such delight
She were a little fool who’d wish to fly!”

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2| I find no peace, and yet I make no war by Francesco Petrarch (Petrarca)

Francesco Petrarca anglicized as Petrarch (1304-1374) is one of the most well-known Italian poets and is one of the earliest humanists of early Renaissance Italy.

Petrarca is celebrated for his Lyric poetry and is considered one of the greatest love poets of world literature. So, if you’re looking for beautiful Italian poems of love you should read his works.

I find no peace, and yet I make no war by Francesco Petrarch

I find no peace, and yet I make no war:
and fear, and hope: and burn, and I am ice:
and fly above the sky, and fall to earth,
and clutch at nothing, and embrace the world.
One imprisons me, who neither frees nor jails me,
nor keeps me to herself nor slips the noose:
and Love does not destroy me, and does not loose me,
wishes me not to live, but does not remove my bar.
I see without eyes, and have no tongue, but cry:
and long to perish, yet I beg for aid:
and hold myself in hate, and love another.
I feed on sadness, laughing weep:
death and life displease me equally:
and I am in this state, lady, because of you.

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1| Love And The Gentle Heart by Dante Alighieri

Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) is possibly the most-known Italian poet, writer, and philosopher. His work The Divine Comedy is considered the greatest Italian literary work of all time.

He was not only crucial in establishing the literature of Italy but his works influenced generations of essay writers, novelists, and all types of artists throughout centuries.

Dante also wrote beautiful poems many to his famous love; Beatrice. If you’re looking for a classic Italian poem about love you should pick up one of his poetry books.

Love And The Gentle Heart by Dante Alighieri

Love and the gentle heart are one thing,
just as the poet says in his verse,
each from the other one as well divorced
as reason from the mind’s reasoning.

Nature craves love, and then creates love king,
and makes the heart a palace where he’ll stay,
perhaps a shorter or a longer day,
breathing quietly, gently slumbering.

Then beauty in a virtuous woman’s face
makes the eyes yearn, and strikes the heart,
so that the eyes’ desire’s reborn again,
and often, rooting there with longing, stays,

Till love, at last, out of its dreaming starts.
Woman’s moved likewise by a virtuous man.

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