Have you ever felt a deep ache in your heart for someone who is no longer by your side?
Express your longing and nostalgia through poetry and find the solace you need as your wait for the time to be with the one you miss the most.
Here are 10 poignant poems that beautifully articulate the bittersweet experience of missing someone dear.
Let’s get straight to it!
My favorite poem about missing someone
#1 “The Half-Moon Westers Low, My Love” by Alfred Edward Housman
The half-moon westers low, my love,
And the wind brings up the rain;
And wide apart lie we, my love,
And seas between the twain.
I know not if it rains, my love,
In the land where you do lie;
And oh, so sound you sleep, my love,
You know no more than I.
There’s something hauntingly beautiful about the lines, “The half-moon westers low, my love.”
What draws me to this piece is its exploration of love intertwined with sorrow; it reminds us that even in solitude, our thoughts can bridge vast distances.
It made me think of the people I am far from, both those that I can still be with someday and those that I never will, the yearning and the sorrow evoked on the poem made it more relatable for me.
9 more poems about missing someone
#2 “Absence” by Walter Savage Landor
Here, ever since you went abroad,
If there be change no change I see:
I only walk our wonted road,
The road is only walk’d by me.
Yes; I forgot; a change there is,
Was it of that you bade me tell?
I catch at times, at times I miss
The sight, the tone, I know so well.
Only two months since you stood here?
Two shortest months? Then tell me why
Voices are harsher than they were,
And tears are longer ere they dry.
#3 “A Memory” by Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
Amid my treasures once I found
A simple faded flower;
A flower with all its beauty fled,
The darling of an hour.
With bitterness I gazed awhile,
Then flung it from my sight;
For with it all came back to me
the pain and heedless blight.
But, moved with pity and regret
I took it up again;
For oh, so long and wearily
In darkness it had lain.
Ah, purple pansy, once I kissed
Your dewy petals fair;
For then, indeed, I had no thought
Of earthly pain or care.
Your faded petals now I touch
With sacred love and awe;
For never will my heart kneel down
To earthly will or law.
Your velvet beauty still is dear,
Though faded now you seem;
You drooped and died, yet still you are
The symbol of my dream.
Sweet, modest flower, tinged with gold,
A lesson you have said;
Your purple glory, like my love,
Is faded now, and dead.
#4 “Absence” by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Good-night, my love, for I have dreamed of thee
In waking dreams, until my soul is lost—
Is lost in passion’s wide and shoreless sea,
Where, like a ship, unruddered, it is tost
Hither and thither at the wild waves’ will.
There is no potent Master’s voice to still
This newer, more tempestuous Galilee!
The stormy petrels of my fancy fly
In warning course across the darkening green,
And, like a frightened bird, my heart doth cry
And seek to find some rock of rest between
The threatening sky and the relentless wave.
It is not length of life that grief doth crave,
But only calm and peace in which to die.
Here let me rest upon this single hope,
For oh, my wings are weary of the wind,
And with its stress no more may strive or cope.
One cry has dulled mine ears, mine eyes are blind,—
Would that o’er all the intervening space,
I might fly forth and see thee face to face.
I fly; I search, but, love, in gloom I grope.
Fly home, far bird, unto thy waiting nest;
Spread thy strong wings above the wind-swept sea.
Beat the grim breeze with thy unruffled breast
Until thou sittest wing to wing with me.
Then, let the past bring up its tales of wrong;
We shall chant low our sweet connubial song,
Till storm and doubt and past no more shall be!
#5 “Longing” by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
I envy seas whereon he rides,
I envy spokes of wheels
Of chariots that him convey,
I envy speechless hills
That gaze upon his journey;
How easy all can see
What is forbidden utterly
As heaven, unto me!
I envy nests of sparrows
That dot his distant eaves,
The wealthy fly upon his pane,
The happy, happy leaves
That just abroad his window
Have summer’s leave to be,
The earrings of Pizarro
Could not obtain for me.
I envy light that wakes him,
And bells that boldly ring
To tell him it is noon abroad, —
Myself his noon could bring,
Yet interdict my blossom
And abrogate my bee,
Lest noon in everlasting night
Drop Gabriel and me.
#6 “If She but Knew” by Arthur William Edgar O’Shaughnessy
If she but knew that I am weeping
Still for her sake,
That love and sorrow grow with keeping
Till they must break
My heart that breaking will adore her,
Be hers and die;
If she might hear me once implore her,
Would she not sigh?
If she did but know that it would save me
Her voice to hear,
Saying she pitied me, forgave me,
Must she forbear?
If she were told that I was dying,
Would she be dumb?
Could she content herself with sighing
Would she not come?
#7 “If You Were Coming In The Fall” by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
If you were coming in the fall,
I’d brush the summer by
With half a smile and half a spurn,
As housewives do a fly.
If I could see you in a year,
I’d wind the months in balls,
And put them each in separate drawers,
Until their time befalls.
If only centuries delayed,
I’d count them on my hand,
Subtracting till my fingers dropped
Into Van Diemen’s land.
If certain, when this life was out,
That yours and mine should be,
I’d toss it yonder like a rind,
And taste eternity.
But now, all ignorant of the length
Of time’s uncertain wing,
It goads me, like the goblin bee,
That will not state its sting.
#8 “Good-Bye.” by Nora Pembroke (Margaret Moran Dixon McDougall)
(To Miss E E.)
I cannot write, my tears are flowing fast,
Yet weeping is unnatural to me;
Oh! that this hour of bitterness was past–
The parting hour with all I love and thee
If I had never met or loved thee so,
To part would not have caused me this sharp pain;
Parting so oft occurring here below,
And they who part so seldom meet again.
Yet over land or sea, where’er I go,
My home, my friends, shall flit before my eyes–
And oft I anxiously shall wish to know,
If in thy bosom thoughts of me arise.
Oh, I will think of bygone days of glee,
Though on each point of bitter sorrow driven;
I will not bid thee to remember me,
But oh! see to it that we meet in Heaven.
#9 “The Lover in Winter Plaineth for the Spring” by Anonymous
O western wind, when wilt thou blow
That the small rain down can rain?
Christ, that my love were in my arms
And I in my bed again!
#10 “A Leave-Taking.” by James Whitcomb Riley
She will not smile;
She will not stir;
I marvel while
I look on her.
The lips are chilly
And will not speak;
The ghost of a lily
In either cheek.
Her hair – ah me!
Her hair – her hair!
How helplessly
My hands go there!
But my caresses
Meet not hers,
O golden tresses
That thread my tears!
I kiss the eyes
On either lid,
Where her love lies
Forever hid.
I cease my weeping
And smile and say:
I will be sleeping
Thus, some day!