Have you ever felt the heavy weight of missing someone you once loved?
Love and loss can be incredibly complex emotions, often intertwined in ways that are hard to understand.
Here are 10 melancholic poems that beautifully express the pain of missing an ex and the bittersweet memories that linger.
Let’s dive right in!
My favorite missing my ex poems
#1 “The Garden Of Memory” by Justin Huntly McCarthy
There is a certain garden where I know
That flowers flourish in a poet’s spring,
Where aye young birds their amorous matins sing,
And never ill wind comes, nor any snow.
But if you wonder where so fair a show,
Where such eternal pleasure may be seen,
I say, my memory keeps that garden green,
Wherein I loved my first love long ago.
I love this poem because it shows the feelings of missing someone and remembering past love.
The garden stands for happy memories and makes me think of my own relationships.
The poet creates a warm feeling, reminding us that love can last forever, even as time goes by.
9 more missing my ex poems
#2 “I Close Mine Eyes” by Katharine Forrest Hamill
I close mine eyes, and see you dear
As in the dear, dead days;
The tender grace, and strength of poise,
Marking you from the rest apart.
And oh! it seems as if I must
Enfold you to my heart.
I close mine eyes, and see you dear
As in the dear, dead days;
The hair’s soft fall over the brow,
Within your eyes love’s ardent light,
It cannot be! it cannot be!
My day has turned to night.
I close mine eyes, and see you dear
As in the dear, dead days;
Before love’s bitter aftermath
Whose penalty ’tis mine to know.
Oh! come to me from out its void!
I need you so! I need you so.
#3 “Buried Love” by Sara Teasdale
I have come to bury Love
Beneath a tree,
In the forest tall and black
Where none can see.
I shall put no flowers at his head,
Nor stone at his feet,
For the mouth I loved so much
Was bittersweet.
I shall go no more to his grave,
For the woods are cold.
I shall gather as much of joy
As my hands can hold.
I shall stay all day in the sun
Where the wide winds blow,—
But oh, I shall cry at night
When none will know.
#4 “Remembrance” by Jean Blewett
“Once they were lovers,” says the world, “with young hearts all aglow;
They have forgotten,” says the world, “forgotten long ago.”
Between ourselves – just whisper it – the old world does not know.
They walk their lone, divided ways, but ever with them goes
Remembrance, the subtle breath of love’s sweet thorny rose.
#5 “Enough” by Sara Teasdale
It is enough for me by day
To walk the same bright earth with him;
Enough that over us by night
The same great roof of stars is dim.
I do not hope to bind the wind
Or set a fetter on the sea—
It is enough to feel his love
Blow by like music over me.
#6 “Song at Capri” by Sara Teasdale
When beauty grows too great to bear
How shall I ease me of its ache,
For beauty more than bitterness
Makes the heart break.
Now while I watch the dreaming sea
With isles like flowers against her breast,
Only one voice in all the world
Could give me rest.
#7 “Regrets” by Alice Meynell
As, when the seaward ebbing tide doth pour
Out by the low sand spaces,
The parting waves slip back to clasp the shore
With lingering embraces,—
So in the tide of life that carries me
From where thy true heart dwells,
Waves of my thoughts and memories turn to thee
With lessening farewells;
Waving of hands; dreams, when the day forgets;
A care half lost in cares;
The saddest of my verses; dim regrets;
Thy name among my prayers.
I would the day might come, so waited for,
So patiently besought,
When I, returning, should fill up once more
Thy desolated thought;
And fill thy loneliness that lies apart
In still, persistent pain.
Shall I content thee, O thou broken heart,
As the tide comes again,
And brims the little sea-shore lakes, and sets
Seaweeds afloat, and fills
The silent pools, rivers and rivulets
Among the inland hills?
#8 “The Philosopher” by Edna St. Vincent Millay
And what are you that, wanting you,
I should be kept awake
As many nights as there are days
With weeping for your sake?
And what are you that, missing you,
As many days as crawl
I should be listening to the wind
And looking at the wall?
I know a man that’s a braver man
And twenty men as kind,
And what are you, that you should be
The one man in my mind?
Yet women’s ways are witless ways,
As any sage will tell,—
And what am I, that I should love
So wisely and so well?
#9 “Sonnet II” 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!
#10 “Love’s Longings” by Ĉelakowksy (Sir J. Bowring, Translator)
Far, far beyond the gloomy grove,
Far, far art thou removed, my love!
Far, far away! Ye rocks, divide!
Ye vales! be level as a plain;
Fall down, ye woods, my love that hide,
And let me see her face again;
And bless me with one living glance
Of that enrapturing countenance.