Here’s a special Valentine’s Day gift to you. A new Romance blog-and-more from Macmillan Publishing. Heroes and Heartbreakers.com, featuring occasional blog postings by me and several other familiar names, plus short stories and more. This is what Megan has been working on for months. More from her Friday, I’m sure, but take a peek today!

Valentine’s Day as we celebrate today started in Victorian times, but Regency young men did send love-notes and had assistance from The Young Man’s Valentine Writer, published in 1797.

So, in celebration of Valentine’s Day, here are some vintage Valentines and Regency (and Georgian) verses;

My Luve

O my luve is like a red, red rose,
That’s newly sprung in June:
O my luve is like the melodie,
That’s sweetly played in tune.

As fair art thou, my bonie lass,
So deep in luve am I;
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a’ the seas gang dry

Robert Burns (1794)

Bright Star

Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art —
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like Nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors —
No — yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft swell and fall,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever — or else swoon to death.

She Walks In Beauty

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o’er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling place

Lord Byron (1814)

What is your favorite love poem?