When it comes to love, we all have different perspectives. Some of us have been hurt before, while others have never been in a relationship. No matter what your experience is, there is one thing that we can all agree on: love is complicated.
There are happy love poems and then there are sad love poems. The latter tend to be the ones that resonate with us the most because they remind us of our own complicated relationships.
Poetry has the ability to touch our hearts and souls like no other form of writing. Sometimes the simplest words can have the deepest meaning.
Sad love poems are always popular, and for good reason. They can be a great way to express your feelings and share your emotions with someone else.
However, finding the best sad love poems can be a challenge. There are so many different ones out there, and it can be hard to know which ones are the best. But don’t worry, we’ve got you covered.
In this collection of the best sad love poems that make you cry, we explore the pain and heartache of love lost. From unrequited love to soul-crushing breakups, these poems capture the emotions we all feel when love goes wrong. If you’re looking for a good cry, grab a tissue and settle in for some of the saddest love poetry around.
Best Sad Poetry About Love
Choice by Angela Morgan
I’d rather have the thought of you
To hold against my heart,
My spirit to be taught of you
With west winds blowing,
Than all the warm caresses
Of another love’s bestowing,
Or all the glories of the world
In which you had no part.
I’d rather have the theme of you
To thread my nights and days,
I’d rather have the dream of you
With faint stars glowing,
I’d rather have the want of you,
The rich, elusive taunt of you
Forever and forever and forever unconfessed
Than claim the alien comfort
Of any other’s breast.
O lover! O my lover,
That this should come to me!
I’d rather have the hope of you,
Ah, Love, I’d rather grope for you
Within the great abyss
Than claim another’s kiss-
Alone I’d rather go my way
Throughout eternity.
Time Does Not Bring Relief by Edna St. Vincent Millay
Time does not bring relief; you all have lied
Who told me time would ease me of my pain!
I miss him in the weeping of the rain;
I want him at the shrinking of the tide;
The old snows melt from every mountain-side,
And last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane;
But last year’s bitter loving must remain
Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide.
There are a hundred places where I fear
To go,—so with his memory they brim.
And entering with relief some quiet place
Where never fell his foot or shone his face
I say, “There is no memory of him here!”
And so stand stricken, so remembering him.
Ebb by Edna St. Vincent Millay
I know what my heart is like
Since your love died:
It is like a hollow ledge
Holding a little pool
Left there by the tide,
A little tepid pool,
Drying inward from the edge.
Mad Girl’s Love Song by Sylvia Plath
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
God topples from the sky, hell’s fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan’s men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I fancied you’d return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
When You Are Old by William Butler Yeats
When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
To A Young Girl by William Butler Yeats
My dear, my dear, I know
More than another
What makes your heart beat so;
Not even your own mother
Can know it as I know,
Who broke my heart for her
When the wild thought,
That she denies
And has forgot,
Set all her blood astir
And glittered in her eyes.
I Shall Not Care by Sara Teasdale
When I am dead and over me bright April
Shakes out her rain-drenched hair,
Though you should lean above me broken-hearted,
I shall not care.
I shall have peace, as leafy trees are peaceful
When rain bends down the bough,
And I shall be more silent and cold-hearted
Than you are now.
A Fallen Leaf by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
A trusting little leaf of green,
A bold audacious frost;
A rendezvous, a kiss or two,
And youth for ever lost.
Ah, me!
The bitter, bitter cost.
A flaunting patch of vivid red,
That quivers in the sun;
A windy gust, a grave of dust,
The little race is run.
Ah, me!
Were that the only one.
Wind And Window Flower by Robert Frost
Lovers, forget your love,
And list to the love of these,
She a window flower,
And he a winter breeze.
When the frosty window veil
Was melted down at noon,
And the cagèd yellow bird
Hung over her in tune,
He marked her through the pane,
He could not help but mark,
And only passed her by,
To come again at dark.
He was a winter wind,
Concerned with ice and snow,
Dead weeds and unmated birds,
And little of love could know.
But he sighed upon the sill,
He gave the sash a shake,
As witness all within
Who lay that night awake.
Perchance he half prevailed
To win her for the flight
From the firelit looking-glass
And warm stove-window light.
But the flower leaned aside
And thought of naught to say,
And morning found the breeze
A hundred miles away.
Lone Gentleman by Pablo Neruda
The gay young men and the love-sick girls,
and the abandoned widows suffering in sleepless delirium,
and the young pregnant wives of thirty hours,
and the raucous cats that cruise my garden in the shadows,
like a necklace of pulsating oysters of sex
surround my lonely residence,
like enemies lined up against my soul,
like conspirators in bedroom clothes
who exchange long deep kisses to order.
The radiant summer leads to lovers
in predictable melancholic regiments,
made of fat and skinny, sad and happy pairings:
under the elegant coconut palms, near the ocean and the moon,
goes an endless movement of trousers and dresses,
a whisper of silk stockings being caressed,
and womens breasts that sparkle like eyes.
The little employee, after it all,
after the weeks boredom, and novels read by night in bed,
has definitively seduced the girl next door,
and carried her away to a run-down movie house
where the heroes are studs or princes mad with passion,
and strokes her legs covered with soft down
with his moist and ardent hands that smell of cigarettes.
The seducers afternoons and married peoples nights
come together like the sheets and bury me,
and the hours after lunch when the young male students
and the young girl students, and the priests, masturbate,
and the creatures fornicate outright,
and the bees smell of blood, and the flies madly buzz,
and boy and girl cousins play oddly together,
and doctors stare in fury at the young patients husband,
and the morning hours in which the professor, as if to pass the time,
performs his marriage duties, and breakfasts,
and moreover, the adulterers, who love each other truly
on beds as high and deep as ocean liners:
finally, eternally surrounding me
is a gigantic forest breathing and tangled
with gigantic flowers like mouths with teeth
and black roots in the shape of hooves and shoes.
Sonnet XXX: Love is Not All by Edna St. Vincent Millay
Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,
Or nagged by want past resolution’s power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It well may be. I do not think I would.
You Left Me by Emily Dickinson
You left me—Sire—two Legacies—
A Legacy of Love
A Heavenly Father would suffice
Had He the offer of—
You left me Boundaries of Pain—
Capacious as the Sea—
Between Eternity and Time—
Your Consciousness—and Me—
Tonight I Can Write The Saddest Lines by Pablo Neruda
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
Write, for example, ‘The night is shattered
and the blue stars shiver in the distance.’
The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.
Through nights like this one I held her in my arms
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.
She loved me sometimes, and I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.
To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.
What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is shattered and she is not with me.
This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
My sight searches for her as though to go to her.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.
The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.
I no longer love her, that’s certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.
Another’s. She will be another’s. Like my kisses before.
Her voice. Her bright body. Her infinite eyes.
I no longer love her, that’s certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.
Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.
A Farewell To False Love by Walter Raleigh
Farewell, false love, the oracle of lies,
A mortal foe and enemy to rest,
An envious boy, from whom all cares arise,
A bastard vile, a beast with rage possessed,
A way of error, a temple full of treason,
In all effects contrary unto reason.
A poisoned serpent covered all with flowers,
Mother of sighs, and murderer of repose,
A sea of sorrows whence are drawn such showers
As moisture lend to every grief that grows;
A school of guile, a net of deep deceit,
A gilded hook that holds a poisoned bait.
A fortress foiled, which reason did defend,
A siren song, a fever of the mind,
A maze wherein affection finds no end,
A raging cloud that runs before the wind,
A substance like the shadow of the sun,
A goal of grief for which the wisest run.
A quenchless fire, a nurse of trembling fear,
A path that leads to peril and mishap,
A true retreat of sorrow and despair,
An idle boy that sleeps in pleasure’s lap,
A deep mistrust of that which certain seems,
A hope of that which reason doubtful deems.
Sith then thy trains my younger years betrayed,
And for my faith ingratitude I find;
And sith repentance hath my wrongs bewrayed,
Whose course was ever contrary to kind:
False love, desire, and beauty frail, adieu.
Dead is the root whence all these fancies grew.
May by Sara Teasdale
The wind is tossing the lilacs,
The new leaves laugh in the sun,
And the petals fall on the orchard wall,
But for me the spring is done.
Beneath the apple blossoms
I go a wintry way,
For love that smiled in April
Is false to me in May.
I Made A Mistake by Charles Bukowski
I reached up into the top of the closet
and took out a pair of blue panties
and showed them to her and
asked “are these yours?”
and she looked and said,
“no, those belong to a dog.”
she left after that and I haven’t seen
her since. she’s not at her place.
I keep going there, leaving notes stuck
into the door. I go back and the notes
are still there. I take the Maltese cross
cut it down from my car mirror, tie it
to her doorknob with a shoelace, leave
a book of poems.
when I go back the next night everything
is still there.
I keep searching the streets for that
blood-wine battleship she drives
with a weak battery, and the doors
hanging from broken hinges.
I drive around the streets
an inch away from weeping,
ashamed of my sentimentality and
possible love.
a confused old man driving in the rain
wondering where the good luck
went.
At Last by Elizabeth Akers Allen
At last, when all the summer shine
That warmed life’s early hours is past,
Your loving fingers seek for mine
And hold them close—at last—at last!
Not oft the robin comes to build
Its nest upon the leafless bough
By autumn robbed, by winter chilled,—
But you, dear heart, you love me now.
Though there are shadows on my brow
And furrows on my cheek, in truth,—
The marks where Time’s remorseless plough
Broke up the blooming sward of Youth,—
Though fled is every girlish grace
Might win or hold a lover’s vow,
Despite my sad and faded face,
And darkened heart, you love me now!
I count no more my wasted tears;
They left no echo of their fall;
I mourn no more my lonesome years;
This blessed hour atones for all.
I fear not all that Time or Fate
May bring to burden heart or brow,—
Strong in the love that came so late,
Our souls shall keep it always now!
In The Orchard by Muriel Stuart
“I thought you loved me.” “No, it was only fun.”
“When we stood there, closer than all?” “Well, the harvest moon
“Was shining and queer in your hair, and it turned my head.”
“That made you?” “Yes.” “Just the moon and the light it made
“Under the tree?” “Well, your mouth, too.” “Yes, my mouth?”
“And the quiet there that sang like the drum in the booth.
“You shouldn’t have danced like that.” “Like what?” “So close,
“With your head turned up, and the flower in your hair, a rose
“That smelt all warm.” “I loved you. I thought you knew
“I wouldn’t have danced like that with any but you.”
“I didn’t know. I thought you knew it was fun.”
“I thought it was love you meant.” “Well, it’s done.” “Yes, it’s done.
“I’ve seen boys stone a blackbird, and watched them drown
“A kitten … it clawed at the reeds, and they pushed it down
“Into the pool while it screamed. Is that fun, too?”
“Well, boys are like that … Your brothers…” “Yes, I know.
“But you, so lovely and strong! Not you! Not you!”
“They don’t understand it’s cruel. It’s only a game.”
“And are girls fun, too?” “No, still in a way it’s the same.
“It’s queer and lovely to have a girl…” “Go on.”
“It makes you mad for a bit to feel she’s your own,
“And you laugh and kiss her, and maybe you give her a ring,
“But it’s only in fun.” “But I gave you everything.”
“Well, you shouldn’t have done it. You know what a fellow thinks
“When a girl does that.” “Yes, he talks of her over his drinks
“And calls her a—” “Stop that now. I thought you knew.”
“But it wasn’t with anyone else. It was only you.”
“How did I know? I thought you wanted it too.
“I thought you were like the rest. Well, what’s to be done?”
“To be done?” “Is it all right?” “Yes.” “Sure?” “Yes, but why?”
“I don’t know. I thought you were going to cry.
“You said you had something to tell me.” “Yes, I know.
“It wasn’t anything really … I think I’ll go.”
“Yes, it’s late. There’s thunder about, a drop of rain
“Fell on my hand in the dark. I’ll see you again
“At the dance next week. You’re sure that everything’s right?”
“Yes.” “Well, I’ll be going.” “Kiss me…” “Good night.” …
“Good night.”
Die Lorelei by Heinrich Heine
I know not if there is a reason
Why I am so sad at heart.
A legend of bygone ages
Haunts me and will not depart.
The air is cool under nightfall.
The calm Rhine courses its way.
The peak of the mountain is sparkling
With evening’s final ray.
The fairest of maidens is sitting
So marvelous up there,
Her golden jewels are shining,
She’s combing her golden hair.
She combs with a comb also golden,
And sings a song as well
Whose melody binds a wondrous
And overpowering spell.
In his little boat, the boatman
Is seized with a savage woe,
He’d rather look up at the mountain
Than down at the rocks below.
I think that the waves will devour
The boatman and boat as one;
And this by her song’s sheer power
Fair Lorelei has done.
A Sad Love Story by Asif Andalib
Her spouse is a little bit physically unfit
So she wanted my body –
I wanted her heart because I was not so smart
Then couple of years later she found a partner
And lost interest in me
Now I need her body
As the earth needs the sky
As the hungry ones need the food
But she has found a partner
Now she doesn’t need me anymore!
The Kiss by Sara Teasdale
I hoped that he would love me,
And he has kissed my mouth,
But I am like a stricken bird
That cannot reach the south.
For though I know he loves me,
To-night my heart is sad;
His kiss was not so wonderful
As all the dreams I had.
The Sick Rose by William Blake
O Rose, thou art sick!
The invisible worm
That flies in the night,
In the howling storm,
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.
The Sad Truth Is That Love Does Not End by Gert Strydom
The sad truth is
that love does not end
when its dream still lingers
and it is never spent,
if it was really true
and although it flows
like sand through fingers
falling to bits and pieces
it never really decreases
as the thing of you and me
and even treason is forgiven
in the coming and going of seasons
and feelings are indeterminably extended
in the hope of it been mended.
I Cannot Live With You by Emily Dickinson
I cannot live with You –
It would be Life –
And Life is over there –
Behind the Shelf
The Sexton keeps the Key to –
Putting up
Our Life – His Porcelain –
Like a Cup –
Discarded of the Housewife –
Quaint – or Broke –
A newer Sevres pleases –
Old Ones crack –
I could not die – with You –
For One must wait
To shut the Other’s Gaze down –
You – could not –
And I – could I stand by
And see You – freeze –
Without my Right of Frost –
Death’s privilege?
Nor could I rise – with You –
Because Your Face
Would put out Jesus’ –
That New Grace
Glow plain – and foreign
On my homesick Eye –
Except that You than He
Shone closer by –
They’d judge Us – How –
For You – served Heaven – You know,
Or sought to –
I could not –
Because You saturated Sight –
And I had no more Eyes
For sordid excellence
As Paradise
And were You lost, I would be –
Though My Name
Rang loudest
On the Heavenly fame –
And were You – saved –
And I – condemned to be
Where You were not –
That self – were Hell to Me –
So We must meet apart –
You there – I – here –
With just the Door ajar
That Oceans are – and Prayer –
And that White Sustenance –
Despair –
A Fallen Leaf by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
A trusting little leaf of green,
A bold audacious frost;
A rendezvous, a kiss or two,
And youth for ever lost.
Ah, me!
The bitter, bitter cost.
A flaunting patch of vivid red,
That quivers in the sun;
A windy gust, a grave of dust,
The little race is run.
Ah, me!
Were that the only one.
Love’s Saddest Loss by Denis Martindale
She stood there, standing at the door,
Like other ladies would,
Yet she an angel to adore,
Because she looked that good…
And while she spoke, I watched her lips,
As if now hypnotised,
She thrilled me to my fingertips,
More than I realised…
It didn’t matter what she said,
I’d listen still all day,
Yet my heart felt a sense of dread,
For soon she’d walk away…
And I’d be left to pine and pine,
For days, perhaps a week,
In hopes she’d be my Valentine,
For she was quite unique…
And soon she walked and left the street,
To leave the heart that yearned,
Because no more the chance to meet
The girl who’d not returned…
She was life’s highlight I recall,
The one who stole my heart,
The one I hoped to give my all,
A family to start…
The days passed by and love’s sweet dream
Became a memory,
Like apple pie without the cream,
Not something meant to be…
Though I endure this loneliness,
She’ll find somebody else,
Some guy to love, some guy to bless,
Some day with wedding bells…
But I’ll be here each Christmas Day,
Alone without her love,
Alone because she walked away,
Thought me not good enough…
I know not how to pray for him,
The day he weds the one
That turned my heart from glad to grim
And yet, God’s will be done…
Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe
It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.
I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea,
But we loved with a love that was more than love—
I and my Annabel Lee—
With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven
Coveted her and me.
And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsmen came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.
The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,
Went envying her and me—
Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.
But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we—
Of many far wiser than we—
And neither the angels in Heaven above
Nor the demons down under the sea
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,
In her sepulchre there by the sea—
In her tomb by the sounding sea.
You Are Tired, (I Think) by E. E. Cummings
You are tired,
(I think)
Of the always puzzle of living and doing;
And so am I.
Come with me, then,
And we’ll leave it far and far away —
(Only you and I, understand!)
You have played,
(I think)
And broke the toys you were fondest of,
And are a little tired now;
Tired of things that break, and —
Just tired.
So am I.
But I come with a dream in my eyes tonight,
And knock with a rose at the hopeless gate of your heart —
Open to me!
For I will show you the places Nobody knows,
And, if you like,
The perfect places of Sleep.
Ah, come with me!
I’ll blow you that wonderful bubble, the moon,
That floats forever and a day;
I’ll sing you the jacinth song
Of the probable stars;
I will attempt the unstartled steppes of dream,
Until I find the Only Flower,
Which shall keep (I think) your little heart
While the moon comes out of the sea.
Love by Pablo Neruda
Because of you, in gardens of blossoming
Flowers I ache from the perfumes of spring.
I have forgotten your face, I no longer
Remember your hands; how did your lips
Feel on mine?
Because of you, I love the white statues
Drowsing in the parks, the white statues that
Have neither voice nor sight.
I have forgotten your voice, your happy voice;
I have forgotten your eyes.
Like a flower to its perfume, I am bound to
My vague memory of you. I live with pain
That is like a wound; if you touch me, you will
Make to me an irreperable harm.
Your caresses enfold me, like climbing
Vines on melancholy walls.
I have forgotten your love, yet I seem to
Glimpse you in every window.
Because of you, the heady perfumes of
Summer pain me; because of you, I again
Seek out the signs that precipitate desires:
Shooting stars, falling objects.
After Love and Fear, There’s Pride by Nicholas Gordon
After love and fear, there’s pride;
After tears, the night;
After all the words are gone,
A chair with just one light.
After memories, the dream
That you will come home safe;
After sleep, another day
Of waiting for my life.
After hope, the happiness
Of thinking of your love;
After moments of despair,
A stone no thought can move.
After all the sacrifice,
The hunger and the pain,
The passions and the promises,
The losses and the gains,
There’s nothing but my love for you,
Which waits upon the wind
To bring you from the barricades
That now you must defend.
After You Leave, I Will Become A Tree by Nicholas Gordon
After you leave, I will become a tree
Alone on a hillside, loving wind and sun,
Waiting for you to return home to me
Though centuries of lonely stars may run.
I’ll grow tall and give lots of shade,
Sheltering birds and other bright-eyed things.
Pleased with all the progress that I’ve made,
I’ll spread my leafy branches out like wings.
But oh! Every moment of every day
I’ll miss you with the passion of the wind,
Gazing endlessly upon the way
That without you must empty, empty wind.
Do Not Love Me Yet by Nicholas Gordon
Do not love me yet, for I
Am still a slender moon,
A scimitar about the heart
Too sharp to touch too soon.
Before I’m touched I need to grow
More full in golden light;
I need to smile upon my earth
And rule some patch of night.
I need to know what roads and fields
Lie in my domain
And dull my brand new ecstasies
With sophomoric pain.
I need the love of some blank boy
As cold and dark as me,
That we might grope in ignorance
And fear of what might be.
And then, when I’m a silver bowl
And know what I can hold,
Then, then, perhaps, we could try love
If you are not too old.
Tears Idle Tears by Alfred Lord Tennyson
Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy Autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.
Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,
That brings our friends up from the underworld,
Sad as the last which reddens over one
That sinks with all we love below the verge;
So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.
Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns
The earliest pipe of half-awakened birds
To dying ears, when unto dying eyes
The casement slowly grows a glimmering square;
So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.
Dear as remembered kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned
On lips that are for others; deep as love,
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;
O Death in Life, the days that are no more!
Remember by Christina Rossetti
Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you plann’d:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.
How Happy I Was If I Could Forget by Emily Dickinson
How happy I was if I could forget
To remember how sad I am
Would be an easy adversity
But the recollecting of Bloom
Keeps making November difficult
Till I who was almost bold
Lose my way like a little Child
And perish of the cold.
To Jennie by Mark Twain
Good-bye! a kind good-bye,
I bid you now, my friend,
And though ’tis sad to speak the word,
To destiny I bend
And though it be decreed by Fate
That we ne’er meet again,
Your image, graven on my heart,
Forever shall remain.
Aye, in my heart thoult have a place,
Among the friends held dear,-
Nor shall the hand of Time efface
The memories written there.
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Sylvia Plath, 1932 – 1963
Despite being one of America’s most renowned poets and authors, Sylvia Plath had a difficult existence. Ted Hughes, a fellow writer, married her in 1956. Still, their tumultuous relationship was marked by abuse, and he eventually abandoned her.
She was suffering from chronic clinical depression at the time, and she sadly died by suicide in 1963, when she was just 30 years old.
Angela Morgan, 1875 – 1957
Angela Morgan started her literary career as a journalist, the daughter of Northern abolitionist and state lawmaker Albert T. Morgan. Her experiences as a reporter influenced her following poetry, loaded with social satire, and her career grew.
She was the first woman to recite at the Savoy Chapel in London’s Poetry Society. She spent the rest of her life throughout Europe. Despite her fame, she struggled with money issues that haunted her until she died in 1957.
Pablo Neruda, 1904 – 1973
This Nobel Prize-winning Chilean poet, born Ricardo Eliécer Neftal Reyes Basoalto, is better known by his pen name Pablo Neruda.
He started writing at the age of thirteen. Even at that early age, he had a strong interest in history and politics. So much so that he rose to prominence as a politician and diplomat, serving in several countries over his career.
His most noteworthy post was as a senator for the Chilean Communist Party. Still, when communism was banned in 1948, his political ties caused him to flee the country for almost three years.
He was subsequently diagnosed with cancer, but the cause of his death remains unknown, with many suspecting poisoning.
William Blake, 1757 – 1827
This legendary English poet and artist, born in London, is one of the most important personalities in British history.
His works of art and poetry are outstanding examples of the Pre-Romantic and Romantic periods. Even though reviewers adored his work, particularly in his later years, many of his contemporaries thought he was insane because of the mystical and esoteric subjects he explored.
Nonetheless, this legendary writer and artist are still revered today. The BBC ranked him 38th among the 100 Greatest Britons of All Time in a vote.
Charles Bukowski, 1920 – 1994
During his career, this famous German-American author wrote innumerable poems and short tales and several novels.
Many of Bukowski’s poetry and short tales were published in tiny independent literary journals and newspapers. He was highly motivated by the social challenges faced by disadvantaged populations in his hometown of Los Angeles.
He was often seen as a subversive character due to the nature of his work. After his contentious column in the underground publication Open City, Notes of a Dirty Old Man, the FBI even kept a dossier on him.
Emily Dickinson, 1830 – 1886
Now a world-famous figure in American poetry, Emily Dickenson has never been given the credit she deserved during her lifetime.
She was born in Massachusetts and lived a rather lonely existence as a strange and quirky character in her area. Even though she had never married and had few acquaintances, she spent endless hours alone in her room writing. Consequently, she is one of the most prolific poets of her period, having written over 1,800 poems, just 10 of which were ever published.
The world only realized the full extent of her intellect and literary ability after her death when her younger sister Lavinia discovered her enormous secret works.
Edna St. Vincent Millay, 1892 – 1950
Edna St. Vincent Millay was a poet, dramatist, and feminist who started writing early. She rose to prominence as a social and political activist while residing in New York City’s bohemian Greenwich Village. She led a notoriously hedonistic lifestyle.
She became the first woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1923. She created many books under the pen name Nancy Boyd including the celebrated opera The King’s Henchman later in her career.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox, 1850 – 1919
This American poet and novelist published her first piece when she was a teenager. She has committed her life to literature since then.
She was an outspoken character whose work pushed the bounds of what was acceptable at a period when women were held to high standards in terms of their duties and behavior in society.
Wilcox was also interested in spiritualism, and in later life, she wrote a series of pieces on her after-death communication with her husband.
Her autobiography, The Worlds and I was released only one year before her death in 1919.
Sara Teasdale, 1884 – 1933
A poet from St Louis, Missouri, Sarah Teasdale won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for her acclaimed book Love Songs.
Teasdale, like Sylvia Plath, struggled with mental illness, and she tragically committed herself in 1933.
However, although many have assumed that her famous poem “I Shall Not Care” was a suicide note, this is an urban legend since Teasdale wrote it over two decades before she died.
