The Greatest Love Poems of All Time

This afternoon, I've been collecting real love poems for a fictional anthology.

Here's a nugget of Whitman I've been storing in my cheeks, for use ten chapters from now:

As if a Phantom Caress’d Me

As if a phantom caress’d me,
I thought I was not alone, walking here by the shore;
But the one I thought was with me, as now I walk by the shore—the one I loved, that caress’d me,
As I lean and look through the glimmering light—that one has utterly disappear’d,
And those appear that are hateful to me, and mock me.