14 minSummaryRead it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at cost
Audiobook editionPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What words can hold love when the beloved is far away?
Love's Old Sweet Song gathers love poems chosen by George H. Ellwanger from later poets of the English-speaking tradition. Many voices meet around one subject, yet each brings a different mood. Longing, beauty, parting, and lasting affection give this treasury its range, inviting you to pause wherever a feeling strikes home.
Here, a speaker yearns for someone absent or for affection not yet returned. Elsewhere, a beloved's eyes, voice, and presence find echoes in flowers, stars, birdsong, and morning light. Loss and memory deepen the tenderness. These poems make room for love's pain as well as its warmth, without asking you to follow a single story.
What you’ll discover
- Many voices, one theme Meet different poetic voices whose shared subject opens into a rich variety of feelings.
- The pull of absence Explore the ache of wanting someone distant, or waiting for love to be returned.
- Beauty in familiar things Find flowers, stars, and morning light woven into praise of a beloved's presence.
- Love through loss Discover poems where parting and memory reveal the steadiness beneath tender feeling.
- Words worth sharing Enjoy graceful, musical verse that invites you to read aloud or linger alone.
Who will love it
This book suits readers who love short lyrics, rose-and-moonlight imagery and the music of rhyme, and anyone who keeps a favourite poem for a parting or a quiet evening.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- Love stays new as singers change
- Lasting love needs continuing care
- First love fills the landscape
- Small gestures hold a farewell
- Grief speaks without an answer
- Memory brings the beloved near
- Love can wound as well
- Repeated sounds carry changing feelings
- Ordinary scenes carry whole love stories
Formats and delivery
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- Paperback
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- Hardcover
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- Large print paperback
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print hardcover
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25 languages, side by side
Love's Old Sweet Song in 25 languages, side by side, paragraph by paragraph, once the book texts are online: the way to learn a language with a book you love.
Love's Old Sweet Song
by George H. Ellwanger (Compiler)
Poets from two shores sing of kisses, partings and graves, from a thrush's song to a lover who is gone.
Medium level2–5 hours to read20 languages
Learn a language with medium classicsSpanishFrenchGermanItalianJapanesePortugueseEnglishHow we measure levels
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In short
What does a lover do when the garden he once shared falls silent? One poem in this book has a bereaved lover sit on a bank until the violets come again.
Love's Old Sweet Song at a glance
- Reading time
- About 2 h 40 min2 h 5 min fast, 3 h 10 min slow
- Length
- 37,800 words
- Library level
- Medium longer sentences, everyday words
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). How long the classics take to read · Updated
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
The editor sets out his garden
The book opens with an envoy, a short farewell poem that sets the tone. It says that some songs are sweet and some grave, and that love both charms and blights. Happy lovers never lose love, and broken hearts treat its scars as holy.
Then comes a foreword signed with the editor's initials. Ellwanger explains that every poet in the book is modern and most are living. He says the prevailing note is lyrical and that minor keys run through the whole harmony. He followed his own taste and avoided lines that other anthologies had repeated too often.
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Which edition is right for me
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas of the whole book in about 14 minutes. A good first look, or a refresher.
Details
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 2 h 55 min
- Level
- Medium level
Cite this edition
Love's Old Sweet Song. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/loves-old-sweet-song.
Love's old sweet song. (2026). Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/loves-old-sweet-song
Love's Old Sweet Song. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/loves-old-sweet-song.
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title = {Love's Old Sweet Song},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/loves-old-sweet-song}
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What is Love's Old Sweet Song about?
It is an anthology of love poems by modern British and American poets, gathered by George H. Ellwanger. The poems cover first meetings, waiting, parting, grief, memory and betrayal, with a foreword explaining the editor's taste.
Who are the poets in Love's Old Sweet Song?
They include Tennyson, Swinburne, Browning, Dante Gabriel and Christina Rossetti, Andrew Lang, Matthew Arnold, James Russell Lowell and W. B. Yeats, along with many lesser-known writers of the period.
Are the poems in Love's Old Sweet Song translations?
Most are written in English, but a few are translated from French and Italian, such as Arvers, Musset, Lamartine and Villon. The editor explains that he selected only a few translations.
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