Have you ever felt the crushing weight of abandonment?
Poetry has a unique way of expressing that deep sorrow, capturing the silent cries of those left behind and finding solace in the shared experience of loss and yearning
These are 10 melancholic poems that resonate with the pain and longing of abandoned souls, each one offering a glimpse into the heart of loneliness.
Let’s dive into these poems now!
My favorite poem about being abandoned
#1 “Alone” by Lennox Amott
Alone in my chamber, forsaken, unsought,
My spirit’s enveloped in shadows of night,
Is there no one to give me a smile or a thought?
Is there none to restore to me faded delight?
The zephyrs disport with a light-bosomed song,
And the joy-laden songsters flit over the lea–
Yet the hours of the spring as they hurry along
Bring nothing but sadness and sighing to me!
There were friends–but their love is departed and dead,
And alone must the tear-drop disconsolate start,
All the beauty of Life, all its sweetness is fled,
Oh, who shall unburden this weight at my heart!
They capture the heart-wrenching feeling of being left alone, where every joy seems to vanish.
I feel the weight of abandonment in those words, as if they perfectly express my own struggles with loneliness whenever I find myself left alone with no one to count on, especially in times of challenges.
With this poem, I can say that being abandoned by people you love is a kind of death that will have you grieve for a long time.
9 more poems about being abandoned
#2 “When Love Went” by Susan Coolidge (Sarah Chauncey Woolsey)
What whispered Love the day he fled?
Ah! this was what Love whispered;
“You sought to hold me with a chain;
I fly to prove such holding vain.
“You bound me burdens, and I bore
The burdens hard, the burdens sore;
I bore them all unmurmuring,
For Love can bear a harder thing.
“You taxed me often, teased me, wept;
I only smiled, and still I kept
Through storm and sun and night and day,
My joyous, viewless, faithful way.
“But, dear, once dearest, you and I
This day have parted company.
Love must be free to give, defer,
Himself alone his almoner.
“As free I freely poured my all,
Enslaved I spurn, renounce my thrall,
Its wages and its bitter bread.”
Thus whispered Love the day he fled!
#3 “Quite Forsaken” by D. H. Lawrence
What pain, to wake and miss you!
To wake with a tightened heart,
And mouth reaching forward to kiss you!
This then at last is the dawn, and the bell
Clanging at the farm! Such bewilderment
Comes with the sight of the room, I cannot tell.
It is raining. Down the half-obscure road
Four labourers pass with their scythes
Dejectedly;—a huntsman goes by with his load:
A gun, and a bunched-up deer, its four little feet
Clustered dead.—And this is the dawn
For which I wanted the night to retreat!
#4 “Forsaken And Forlorn” by D. H. Lawrence
The house is silent, it is late at night, I am alone.
From the balcony I can hear the Isar moan,
Can see the white
Rift of the river eerily, between the pines, under a sky of stone.
Some fireflies drift through the middle air Tinily.
I wonder where
Ends this darkness that annihilates me.
#5 “Left Alone” by John Clare
Left in the world alone,
Where nothing seems my own,
And everything is weariness to me,
‘T is a life without an end,
‘T is a world without a friend,
And everything is sorrowful I see.
There’s the crow upon the stack,
And other birds all black,
While bleak November’s frowning wearily;
And the black cloud’s dropping rain,
Till the floods hide half the plain,
And everything is dreariness to me.
The sun shines wan and pale,
Chill blows the northern gale,
And odd leaves shake and quiver on the tree,
While I am left alone,
Chilled as a mossy stone,
And all the world is frowning over me.
#6 “Abandoned” by Joseph Auslander
Vacant and ghostly and content with death,
Once a man’s hearthtree; now the haunt of bats;
Once a cradle creaked upstairs and someone sang
The terribly beautiful songs young mothers know.
It is hard, even though you hold your breath,
To step without disturbing the loosened slats
And livid plaster…. Go! for a whisper rang
Through the bleak rafters: Take up your things and go!
#7 “If You Should Go” by Countee Cullen
Love, leave me like the light,
The gently passing day;
We would not know, but for the night,
When it has slipped away.
Go quietly; a dream,
When done, should leave no trace
That it has lived, except a gleam
Across the dreamer’s face.
#8 “Alone In The House” by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
I am all alone in the house to-night;
They would not have gone away
Had they known of the terrible, bloodless fight
I have held with my heart to-day.
With the old sweet love and the old fierce pain
I have battled hour by hour;
But the fates have willed that the strife is vain.
Alone in the hour my thoughts have reign,
And I yield myself to their power.
Yield myself to the old time charm
Of a dream of vanished bliss,
The thrill of a voice, and the fold of an arm,
And a red lip’s lingering kiss.
It all comes back like a flowing tide;
That brief, but beautiful day.
Though it oft is checked by the dam of pride,
Till the waters flow back to the other side,
To-night it has broken away.
I gave you all that I had to give,
O love, the lavish whole.
And you threw it away, and now I live
A starved and beggared soul.
And I feed on crumbs that memory throws
From her table over-filled,
And I lay awake when others repose,
And slake my thirst when no one knows,
With the wine that she has spilled.
I go my way and I do my part
In the world’s great scene of strife,
But I do it all with an empty heart,
Dead to the best of life.
And ofttimes weary and tempest tossed,
When I am not ruled by pride,
I wish ere the die was throne and lost,
Ere I played for love without counting the cost,
That I, like my heart, had died.
#9 “When Love Goes” by Sara Teasdale
I
O mother, I am sick of love,
I cannot laugh nor lift my head,
My bitter dreams have broken me,
I would my love were dead.
“Drink of the draught I brew for thee,
Thou shalt have quiet in its stead.”
II
Where is the silver in the rain,
Where is the music in the sea,
Where is the bird that sang all day
To break my heart with melody?
“The night thou badst Love fly away,
He hid them all from thee.”
#10 “You Will Not Come Again” by Dora Sigerson Shorter
The green has come to the leafless tree,
The earth brings forth its grain;
The flower has come for the honey bee:
You will not come again.
The birds have come to the empty nest,
All winter full of rain;
So music has come where the silence was:
You will not come again.
Love will come for the weak lambs’ cry;
Alas for my heart’s dull pain!
In the cycle of change I alone am lone:
You will not come again.