"Have I Told You Lately" is a song written and recorded by Northern Irish singer and songwriter Van Morrison for his nineteenth studio album Avalon Sunset (1989). It is a romantic ballad that is often played at weddings, although it was originally written as a prayer.
Rod Stewart covered the song for his album Vagabond Heart (1991). A live version from his album Unplugged...and Seated (1993) was released as a single, becoming a number-five hit in the US. Another live version by Stewart from his 2013 performance at The Troubadour, West Hollywood was included on the deluxe edition of his album Time.
Composed as a love ballad and built on the framework of "Someone Like You", it is preceded on Avalon Sunset by the song, "I'd Love to Write Another Song" proclaiming "In poetry I'd carve it well/ I'd even make it rhyme." Then, in the words of Brian Hinton what follows is:
One of the finest love songs of the century, which I remember devastated me when I first heard it, as it seemed both something never quite said before, and yet a song I felt I had known forever. Earthly love transmutes into that for God, just like in Dante, 'there's a love that's divine and it's yours and it's mine.' The morning sun has set by the end of the song, suggesting love shading into death, but subtly.
Some of the other known covers of the song are by Kenny Rogers, Barbara Mandrell, Michael Ball, Della Reese, Engelbert Humperdinck, Andy Williams and Barry Manilow.
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