I previously really enjoyed my top Irish poems list. I featured a new Irish poem every Friday on my weekly dose of Irish. And now, as we move into summer in Ireland, I thought it would be nice to feature some Irish love poems. These Irish love poems are perfect for weddings, and I’ve even included a few Irish love poems as Gaeilge. Many of these are very famous Irish love poems.
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In each of these Irish poems, I will explain what the poem is about and a bit of history behind it.
12 Most Beautiful Irish Love Poems 💓
1. Fand Yields Cúchulainn to Emer, by an unknown Irish poet
This one comes from the early Irish tale The Wasting Sickness of Cú Chulainn, parts of which go back to around the ninth century. Cúchulainn falls for Fand, a woman of the otherworld and wife of the sea god Manannán mac Lir, and his wife Emer turns up to confront her with a band of women carrying knives. In the end Fand steps aside and goes back to Manannán, so that Emer will not be left alone. It is a love poem about letting go as much as holding on.
Not one for the top table at a wedding, unless you want the guests talking. It suits a reading on loyalty, or anyone who has had to walk away from someone they loved.
2. When You Are Old, by William Butler Yeats
Yeats wrote this in 1891, loosely based on a sonnet by the French poet Pierre de Ronsard, and it is widely read as being about Maud Gonne. He asks a woman to picture herself old and grey by the fire, reading his book and remembering the one man who loved “the pilgrim soul in you”. Twelve lines, and not a wasted word in any of them.
A lovely wedding or anniversary reading, and short enough that nerves will not get the better of you. Just know it is really about a love that was not returned, in case anyone at the table did English in college.
3. I Shall Not Die for Thee, by Douglas Hyde
This is Hyde’s English version of an older poem in Irish, and yes, this is the same Douglas Hyde who became the first President of Ireland in 1938. The speaker runs through the charms of a famous beauty, the golden hair, the white neck, the blue eye, and then says plainly that he will not die for any of it. It is a love poem with its arms folded, a refusal to be one more fool pining away.
Perfect for anyone getting over a break-up, or for an anti-Valentine’s night with friends. Keep it well away from the wedding.
4. Moonshine, by Richard Murphy
Richard Murphy (1927 to 2018) packs a lot into sixteen very short lines. The poem plays with thinking and loving, being alone and being together, and keeps flipping them around until the speaker admits that when they are together, they would love to be alone. It is about as honest as a love poem gets.
Great for an anniversary card, or for a couple who have been together long enough to laugh at themselves. At the ceremony itself, the last line may get a laugh you did not plan for.
5. The Planter’s Daughter, by Austin Clarke
From Clarke’s 1929 collection Pilgrimage and Other Poems, this is sixteen lines about the daughter of a well-off planter family. Wherever she goes, the men go quiet and the women start talking. It is love as admiration from a distance, and the closing compliment, comparing her to Sunday, the one day of rest in the week, is one of the best in Irish poetry.
A good one for a first date, a Valentine’s card or a toast to the bride. It is short enough to learn off by heart.
6. Meeting Point, by Louis MacNeice
First collected in Plant and Phantom (1941), Meeting Point puts two people in a coffee shop and stops the clock. The waiter does not come, the world outside can wait, and every stanza begins and ends on the same line, so the poem itself seems to hold still. That feeling of time stopping when you are with the right person is what makes it a love poem.
One or two stanzas work beautifully as a wedding reading. The whole poem suits an anniversary, or a couple remembering where they first met.
7. On Raglan Road, by Patrick Kavanagh
Kavanagh wrote this about Hilda Moriarty, a young medical student he fell for in Dublin in the 1940s, and it was first published in The Irish Press in 1946 as Dark-haired Miriam Ran Away. He saw the danger from the start, walked on anyway, and she did not stay. Set to the old air The Dawning of the Day, it became a song, and Luke Kelly’s version is the one most of us know.
Best sung rather than read, preferably late in the evening. It is made for heartbreak, and given how it ends, think twice before putting it in a wedding booklet.
8. Love, by Eavan Boland
From In a Time of Violence (1994), this poem looks back on Boland’s marriage and the time she and her husband lived in Iowa, where one of their young children was seriously ill and recovered. Love is pictured as something that came to live with them, and years later she asks, “Will we ever live so intensely again?” It is a love poem about a long marriage, honest about what time does to it.
Suits a big anniversary, or a couple who have come through something hard together. It also works in grief, for anyone missing the way things once were.
9. Scaffolding, by Seamus Heaney
Scaffolding is from Death of a Naturalist (1966), Heaney’s first collection, and he married Marie Devlin the year before, so it is no surprise it is read as a poem for her. In ten lines he compares a relationship to the scaffolding masons test carefully and then take down once the wall is standing. The message is simple: if things wobble now and then, the wall is built.
A favourite wedding reading, and it is easy to see why. It is just as good for an anniversary or a couple going through a rough patch.
10. The Rose of Battle, by William Butler Yeats
Yes, Yeats again. This comes from his 1892 collection The Countess Kathleen and Various Legends and Lyrics, and it is one of his rose poems, where the rose stands for a beauty and an ideal worth chasing. It calls together “The sad, the lonely, the insatiable”, the ones who go off to wage God’s battles in the long grey ships, so it is a love poem in the big, mystical sense rather than the hand-holding one.
Not one for the wedding, unless the guests are in for a long sit. Best read quietly on your own, or at a remembrance for someone who was always chasing something.
11. For Rita With Love, by Pat Ingoldsby
Pat Ingoldsby, the Dublin poet and broadcaster who died in 2025, wrote this to Rita, who comes home from school on a special bus and loves everyone she meets without holding back. The poem worries about how the world will treat her, and then turns it around and says the rest of us have it wrong: “Your way is right”. It is a love poem about love with no guard up at all, and it is my own favourite on this list.
Lovely for a family occasion, a birthday or a christening, or for remembering someone who loved like that. Have a tissue handy.
12. Ephemera, by William Butler Yeats
Yeats number three, from his first collection, The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems (1889). Two lovers walk by a lake in autumn, with the yellow leaves falling, and admit that their love is fading. It ends with the line that their souls “Are love, and a continual farewell”, and it is hard to put it better than that.
For the end of a relationship, or for grief, when you want something honest rather than something comforting. Also a good one for Valentine’s if you are the type who finds roses a bit much.
And while you are busy quoting famous Irish love poems at a wedding, you can also use this line from my romantic Irish sayings.
Is maith an bhean í ach níor bhain sí a bróga di go fóill. Translation: She is a good wife, but she has not taken off her shoes yet. (she hasn’t been tested yet)
Yes, before you say it, Yeats is mentioned three times on this list, but honestly, with Yeats, I could have filled this whole list with one of his love poems and still have some left over.
Do you have a favourite Irish love poem? I think that my list above features a pretty varied look at Irish love poems. My personal favourite is For Rita With Love, by Pat Ingoldsby
Thanks for stopping by, and be sure to bookmark this page for future updates.
Stephen
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