Navigate life’s most difficult goodbyes: 10 evocative poems about losing a loved one

Photo of author
|
Published on
Poems About Losing A Loved One

Losing a loved one can feel like navigating through a storm, leaving us adrift in our emotions.

Grief is a universal experience, yet it can often feel isolating and overwhelming.

Delve into these 10 evocative poems about losing a loved one that resonate with your pain, transforming your sorrow into something beautiful and poignant.

Let’s get right to it!

My favorite poem about losing a loved one

#1 “Song: She’s somewhere in the sunlight strong” by Richard Le Gallienne

Shes

She’s somewhere in the sunlight strong,
Her tears are in the falling rain,
She calls me in the wind’s soft song,
And with the flowers she comes again.
Yon bird is but her messenger,
The moon is but her silver car;
Yea! sun and moon are sent by her,
And every wistful waiting star.

I love that this poem shows us that even when we lose someone forever, their memory lives with us as long as we remember them, even on simplest things.

Through this poem, I realized that even though departed loved ones are not with us anymore physically, but nothing we love is lost and they will be with us as long as we hold them inside our hearts.

9 more poems about losing a loved one

#2 “Resignation” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

And Though

There is no flock, however watched and tended,
But one dead lamb is there!
There is no fireside, howsoe’er defended,
But has one vacant chair!
The air is full of farewells to the dying,
And mournings for the dead;
The heart of Rachel, for her children crying,
Will not be comforted!
Let us be patient! These severe afflictions
Not from the ground arise,
But oftentimes celestial benedictions
Assume this dark disguise.

We see but dimly through the mists and vapors;
Amid these earthly damps
What seem to us but sad, funereal tapers
May be heaven’s distant lamps.
There is no death! What seems so is transition:
This life of mortal breath
Is but a suburb of the life elysian,
Whose portal we call Death.
She is not dead,—the child of our affection,—
But gone unto that school
Where she no longer needs our poor protection,
And Christ himself doth rule.

In that great cloister’s stillness and seclusion,
By guardian angels led,
Safe from temptation, safe from sin’s pollution,
She lives whom we call dead.
Day after day we think what she is doing
In those bright realms of air;
Year after year, her tender steps pursuing,
Behold her grown more fair.
Thus do we walk with her, and keep unbroken
The bond which nature gives,
Thinking that our remembrance, though unspoken,
May reach her where she lives.

Not as a child shall we again behold her;
For when with raptures wild
In our embraces we again enfold her,
She will not be a child:
But a fair maiden, in her Father’s mansion,
Clothed with celestial grace;
And beautiful with all the soul’s expansion
Shall we behold her face.
And though, at times, impetuous with emotion
And anguish long suppressed,
The swelling heart heaves moaning like the ocean,
That cannot be at rest,—
We will be patient, and assuage the feeling
We may not wholly stay;
By silence sanctifying, not concealing,
The grief that must have way.

#3 “Is the Grave deep, Dear?” by Richard Realf

Is The Grave

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.

#4 “Sonnet: Sweet soul, which in the April of thy years” by William Drummond of Hawthornden

Sweet Soul

Sweet soul, which in the April of thy years
So to enrich the heaven mad’st poor this round,
And now with golden rays of glory crown’d
Most blest abid’st above the sphere of spheres;
If heavenly laws, alas! have not thee bound
From looking to this globe that all upbears,
If ruth and pity there above be found,
O deign to lend a look unto these tears.
Do not disdain, dear ghost, this sacrifice,
And though I raise not pillars to thy praise,
Mine offerings take; let this for me suffice,
My heart a living pyramid I raise;
And whilst kings’ tombs with laurels flourish green,
Thine shall with myrtles, and these flow’rs be seen.

#5 “To One Departed” by Edgar Allan Poe

My Soul

Seraph! thy memory is to me
Like some enchanted far-off isle
In some tumultuous sea,
Some ocean vexed as it may be
With storms; but where, meanwhile,
Serenest skies continually
Just o’er that one bright island smile.
For ‘mid the earnest cares and woes
That crowd around my earthly path,
(Sad path, alas, where grows
Not even one lonely rose!)
My soul at least a solace hath
In dreams of thee; and therein knows
An Eden of bland repose.

#6 “Annabel Lee” by Edgar Allan Poe

But Our

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 winged 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 kinsman 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 the sepulchre there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.

#7 “Lenore” by Edgar Allan Poe

From Hell

Ah, broken is the golden bowl! the spirit flown forever!
Let the bell toll! a saintly soul floats on the Stygian river;
And, Guy de Vere, hast thou no tear? weep now or nevermore!
See! on yon drear and rigid bier low lies thy love, Lenore!
Come! let the burial rite be read, the funeral song be sung!
An anthem for the queenliest dead that ever died so young,
A dirge for her the doubly dead in that she died so young.

“Wretches! ye loved her for her wealth and hated her for her pride,
And when she fell in feeble health, ye blessed her, that she died!
How shall the ritual, then, be read? the requiem how be sung
By you- by yours, the evil eye, by yours, the slanderous tongue
That did to death the innocence that died, and died so young?”

Peccavimus; but rave not thus! and let a Sabbath song
Go up to God so solemnly the dead may feel no wrong.
The sweet Lenore hath “gone before,” with Hope, that flew beside,
Leaving thee wild for the dear child that should have been thy bride.
For her, the fair and debonair, that now so lowly lies,
The life upon her yellow hair but not within her eyes
The life still there, upon her hair, the death upon her eyes.

“Avaunt! avaunt! from fiends below, the indignant ghost is riven,
From Hell unto a high estate far up within the Heaven,
From grief and groan, to a golden throne, beside the King of Heaven!
Let no bell toll, then, lest her soul, amid its hallowed mirth,
Should catch the note as it doth float up from the damned Earth!
And I! to-night my heart is light! no dirge will I upraise,
But waft the angel on her flight with a Paean of old days!”

#8 “She died in beauty” by Charles Doyne Sillery

She Died

She died in beauty,—like a rose
Blown from its parent stem;
She died in beauty,—like a pearl
Dropped from some diadem.

She died in beauty,—like a lay
Along a moonlit lake;
She died in beauty,—like the song
Of birds amid the brake.

She died in beauty,—like the snow
On flowers dissolved away;
She died in beauty,—like a star
Lost on the brow of day.

She lives in glory,—like night’s gems
Set round the silver moon;
She lives in glory,—like the sun
Amid the blue of June.

#9 “Epitaph On A Friend” by John Carr (Sir)

By Painful

By painful sickness long severely prest,
Here sinks, on Nature’s sacred lap of rest,
A friend, who, in a life too short, display’d
A mind in virtue bright, without one shade.
Hence with unusual grief is Fondness mov’d,
Hence more than Pity’s sighs for one belov’d;
Unshaken Honour sheds a manly tear,
And weeping Virtue stops, a mourner here.

#10 “Where shall the lover rest” by Sir Walter Scott

Where

Where shall the lover rest,
Whom the fates sever
From his true maiden’s breast,
Parted for ever?
Where, through groves deep and high,
Sounds the far billow,
Where early violets die,
Under the willow.

Eleu loro, Soft shall be his pillow.
There, through the summer day,
Cool streams are laving;
There, while the tempests sway,
Scarce are boughs waving;
There, thy rest shalt thou take,
Parted for ever,
Never again to wake,
Never, O never!

Thank you so much for being here! Share below to inspire others. ❤️