Love can be a beautiful journey, but it often leads us through the shadows.
Whether you’re nursing a broken heart or simply seeking to understand the complexities of love, poetry has a way to comfort you.
Here are 10 crushing dark poems about love that dive deep into heartbreak, longing, and loss, allowing us to reflect on our darkest hours.
Let’s dive right in!
My favorite dark poem on love
#1 “The Night has a thousand Eyes” by Francis W. Bourdillon
The night has a thousand eyes,
And the day but one;
Yet the light of the bright world dies
With the dying sun.
The mind has a thousand eyes,
And the heart but one;
Yet the light of a whole life dies
When love is done.
I love it because it paints such a vivid picture of longing and loss.
The idea that while the night is full of countless eyes, the day only offers one perspective speaks to how complex love can be.
It reminds me that our hearts can feel so much, yet they seem so fragile.
9 more dark poems on love
#2 “Severed Selves” by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Two separate divided silences,
Which, brought together, would find loving voice;
Two glances which together would rejoice
In love, now lost like stars beyond dark trees;
Two hands apart whose touch alone gives ease;
Two bosoms which, heart-shrined with mutual flame,
Would, meeting in one clasp, be made the same;
Two souls, the shores wave- mocked of sundering seas:—
Such are we now. Ah! may our hope forecast
Indeed one hour again, when on this stream
Of darkened love once more the light shall gleam? —
An hour how slow to come, how quickly past,
Which blooms and fades, and only leaves at last,
Faint as shed flowers, the attenuated dream.
#3 “Not Thou but I” by Philip Bourke Marston
It must have been for one of us, my own,
To drink this cup and eat this bitter bread.
Had not my tears upon thy face been shed,
Thy tears had dropped on mine; if I alone
Did not walk now, thy spirit would have known
My loneliness ; and did my feet not tread
This weary path and steep, thy feet had bled
For mine, and thy mouth had for mine made moan:
And so it comforts me, yea, not in vain,
To think of thine eternity of sleep;
To know thine eyes are tearless though mine weep :
And when this cup’s last bitterness I drain,
One thought shall still its primal sweetness keep, —
Thou hadst the peace and I the undying pain.
#4 “Love and Death” by Margaret Deland
Alas! that men must see
Love, before Death!
Else they content might be
With their short breath;
Aye, glad, when the pale sun
Showed restless day was done,
And endless Rest begun.
Glad, when with strong, cool hand
Death clasped their own,
And with a strange command
Hushed every moan;
Glad to have finished pain,
And labor wrought in vain,
Blurred by Sin’s deepening stain.
But Love’s insistent voice
Bids self to flee
“Live that I may rejoice,
Live on, for me!”
So, for Love’s cruel mind,
Men fear this Rest to find,
Nor know great Death is kind!
#5 “Early Death” by Hartley Coleridge
She passed away like morning dew
Before the sun was high;
So brief her time, she scarcely knew
The meaning of a sigh.
As round the rose its soft perfume,
Sweet love around her floated ;
Admired she grew—while mortal doom
Crept on, unfeared, unnoted.
Love was her guardian Angel here,
But Love to Death resigned her;
Though Love was kind, why should we fear
But holy Death is kinder?
#6 “Love, Time And Death” by Frederick Locker-Lampson
Ah me, dread friends of mine, —Love, Time, and Death:
Sweet Love, who came to me on shining wing,
And gave her to my arms,—her lips, her breath,
And all her golden ringlets clustering:
And Time, who gathers in the flying years,
He gave me all, but where is all he gave?
He took my love and left me barren tears;
Weary and lone I follow to the grave.
There Death will end this vision half-divine.
Wan Death, who waits in shadow evermore,
And silent , ere he give the sudden sign;
Oh, gently lead me through thy narrow door,
Thou gentle Death, thou trustieth friend of mine—
Ah me, for Love—will Death my Love restore?
#7 “Dead Love” by Algernon Charles Swinburne
Dead love, by treason slain, lies stark,
White as a dead stark-stricken dove:
None that pass by him pause to mark
Dead love.
His heart, that strained and yearned and strove
As toward the sundawn strives the lark,
Is cold as all the old joy thereof.
Dead men, re-arisen from dust, may hark
When rings the trumpet blown above:
It will not raise from out the dark
Dead love.
#8 “Ashes of Life” by Edna St. Vincent Millay
Love has gone and left me and the days are all alike;
Eat I must, and sleep I will,—and would that
night were here!
But ah!—to lie awake and hear the slow hours
strike!
Would that it were day again !—with twilight
near!
Love has gone and left me and I don’t know what
to do;
This or that or what you will is all the same
to me;
But all the things that I begin I leave before I’m
through,—
There’s little use in anything as far as I can see.
Love has gone and left me, —and the neighbors
knock and borrow,
And life goes on forever like the gnawing of a
mouse,—
And to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow and
to-morrow
There’s this little street and this little house.
#9 “Is the grave deep, Dear?” by Richard Realf
Is the grave deep, dear? Deeper still is Love.
They cannot hide thee from thy Father’s heart.
Thou liest below, and I stand here above,
Yet we are not apart….
Mine eyes ache for thee; God’s heaven is so high
We cannot see its singers; when thou dost
With thy lark’s voice make palpitant all the sky,
I moan and pain the most.
#10 “Death-in-Love” by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Τhere came an image in Life’s retinue
That had Love’s wings and bore his gonfalon:
Fair was the web, and nobly wrought thereon,
O soul-sequestered face, thy form and hue!
Bewildering sounds, such as Spring wakens to,
Shook in its folds; and through my heart its
Sped trackless as the immemorable hour
When birth’s dark portal groaned and all was new.
But a veiled woman followed, and she caught
The banner round its staff, to furl and cling, —
Then plucked a feather from the bearer’s wing,
And held it to his lips that stirred it not,
And said to me, ‘Behold, there is no breath:
I and this Love are one, and I am Death.’