49 Stinging Poems About Missing Someone (+ My #1 Favorite)

Experience the ache of longing and the bittersweet memories that come with missing someone with this collection of the best poems about missing someone.

From works that capture the pain of separation from a loved one to pieces that reflect on the loss of someone who has passed away, these poems offer a glimpse into the many ways in which we experience and cope with missing someone.

Featuring works by some of the greatest poets of all time, as well as contemporary voices that capture the modern-day experience of missing someone, this collection showcases the enduring power of poetry to capture the human experience in all its beauty and pain.

Whether you’re seeking solace in the words of others who have felt the same pain or simply looking to reflect on the complexity of human relationships, these poems are sure to resonate with you on a deep level.

Let’s dive into it!

My #1 Favorite Poem About Missing Someone

“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.

Poems About Missing a Loved One

“A Memory” by Lola Ridge

I remember
The crackle of the palm trees
Over the mooned white roofs of the town…
The shining town…
And the tender fumbling of the surf
On the sulphur-yellow beaches
As we sat… a little apart… in the close-pressing night.

The moon hung above us like a golden mango,
And the moist air clung to our faces,
Warm and fragrant as the open mouth of a child
And we watched the out-flung sea
Rolling to the purple edge of the world,
Yet ever back upon itself…
As we…

Inadequate night…
And mooned white memory
Of a tropic sea…
How softly it comes up
Like an ungathered lily.

“Sonnet 97” by William Shakespeare

How like a winter hath my absence been
From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!
What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!
What old December’s bareness every where!
And yet this time remov’d was summer’s time;
The teeming autumn, big with rich increase,
Bearing the wanton burden of the prime,
Like widow’d wombs after their lords’ decease:
Yet this abundant issue seem’d to me
But hope of orphans and unfather’d fruit;
For summer and his pleasures wait on thee,
And, thou away, the very birds are mute:
Or, if they sing, ’tis with so dull a cheer,
That leaves look pale, dreading the winter’s near.

“If I Could Hold Your Hands” by Anonymous

If I could hold your hands to-night,
Just for a little while, and know
That only I, of all the world,
Possessed them so.

A slender shape in that old chair,
If I could see you here to-night,
Between me and the twilight pale—
So light and frail.

Your cool white dress, its folding lost
In one broad sweep of shadow grey;
Your weary head just drooped aside,
That sweet old way.

Bowed like a flower-cup dashed with rain,
The darkness crossing half your face,
And just the glimmer of a smile
For one to trace.

If I could see your eyes that reach
Far out into the farthest sky,
Where past the trail of dying suns
The old years lie.

Or touch your silent lips to-night,
And steal the sadness from their smile,
And find the last kiss they have kept
This weary while!

If it could be—Oh, all in vain
The restless trouble of my soul
Sets, as the great tides of the moon,
Toward your control!

In vain the longings of the lips,
The eye’s desire and the pain;
The hunger of the heart—O love,
Is it in vain?

“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.

“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.

“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!

“In All Loveliness” by Winifred M. Letts

I love you in all loveliness, sweetheart.
Skies, stars and flowers speak of you to me
And every season is your emissary
Lest I forget you now we are apart.
The tracery of leafless trees inset
Upon a saffron sky: warm nights in June
When corncrakes shout beneath a full low moon;
September mornings in a world dew-wet;
Dim harvest fields at dusk: tree-shadowed lawns,
A garden sweet with lavender and stocks;
Pale flowers by twilight, jessamine and phlox;
The ring-doves’ soft complain in summer dawns;
The scent of cowslips, violets white and blue—
These are the embassies that speak of you!

“Sonnet 122” by William Shakespeare

Thy gift, thy tables, are within my brain
Full character’d with lasting memory,
Which shall above that idle rank remain
Beyond all date, even to eternity;
Or at the least, so long as brain and heart
Have faculty by nature to subsist;
Till each to razed oblivion yield his part
Of thee, thy record never can be miss’d.
That poor retention could not so much hold,
Nor need I tallies thy dead love to score;
Therefore to give them from me was I bold,
To trust those tables that receive thee more:
To keep an adjunct to remember thee
Were to import forgetfulness in me.

“That Lady of All Gentle Memories” by Dante Alighieri

That lady of all gentle memories
Had lighted on my soul;—whose new abode
Lies now, as it was well ordained of God,
Among the poor in heart, where Mary is.
Love, knowing that dear image to be his,
Woke up within the sick heart sorrow-bow’d,
Unto the sighs which are its weary load
Saying, ‘Go forth.’ And they went forth, I wis;
Forth went they from my breast that throbbed and ached;
With such a pang as oftentimes will bathe
Mine eyes with tears when I am left alone.
And still those sighs which drew the heaviest breath
Came whispering thus: ‘O noble intellect!
It is a year to-day that thou art gone.’

“The Day Is Gone, and All Its Sweets Are Gone” by John Keats

The day is gone, and all its sweets are gone!
Sweet voice, sweet lips, soft hand, and softer breast,
Warm breath, light whisper, tender semitone,
Bright eyes, accomplished shape, and lang’rous waist!
Faded the flower and all its budded charms,
Faded the sight of beauty from my eyes,
Faded the shape of beauty from my arms,
Faded the voice, warmth, whiteness, paradise!
Vanished unseasonably at shut of eve,
When the dusk holiday—or holinight—
Of fragrant-curtained love begins to weave
The woof of darkness thick, for hid delight;
But, as I’ve read love’s missal through today,
He’ll let me sleep, seeing I fast and pray.

“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!

“A Poet’s Wife” by Alice Christiana Thompson Meynell

Alice Christiana Thompson Meynell
I saw a tract of ocean locked in-land
Within a field’s embrace–
The very sea! Afar it fled the strand
And gave the seasons chase,
And met the night alone, the tempest spanned,
Saw sunrise face to face.

O Poet, more than ocean, lonelier!
In inaccessible rest
And storm remote, thou, sea of thoughts, dost stir,
Scattered through east to west,–
Now, while thou closest with the kiss of her
Who locks thee to her breast.

“A Rainy Day” by Richard Le Gallienne

The beauty of this rainy day,
All silver-green and dripping gray,
Has stolen quite my heart away
From all the tasks I meant to do,
Made me forget the resolute blue
And energetic gold of things . . .
So soft a song the rain-bird sings.

Yet am I glad to miss awhile
The sun’s huge domineering smile,
The busy spaces mile on mile,
Shut in behind this shimmering screen
Of falling pearls and phantom green;
As in a cloister walled with rain,
Safe from intrusions, voices vain,
And hurry of invading feet,
Inviolate in my retreat:
Myself, my books, my pipe, my fire –
So runs my rainy-day desire.

Or I old letters may con o’er,
And dream on faces seen no more,
The buried treasure of the years,
Too visionary now for tears;
Open old cupboards and explore
Sometimes, for an old sweetheart’s sake,
A delicate romantic ache,
Sometimes a swifter pang of pain
To read old tenderness again,
As though the ink were scarce yet dry,
And She still She and I still I.

What if I were to write as though
Her letter came an hour ago!
An hour ago! – This post-mark says . . .
But out upon these rainy days!
Come tie the packet up again,
The sun is back – enough of rain.

“Go From Me. Yet I Feel That I Shall Stand” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand
Henceforward in thy shadow. Nevermore
Alone upon the threshold of my door
Of individual life, I shall command
The uses of my soul, nor lift my hand
Serenely in the sunshine as before,
Without the sense of that which I forbore,—
Thy touch upon the palm. The widest land
Doom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mine
With pulses that beat double. What I do
And what I dream include thee, as the wine
Must taste of its own grapes. And when I sue
God for myself, He hears that name of thine,
And sees within my eyes the tears of two.

Belovèd, my Belovèd, when I think
That thou wast in the world a year ago,
What time I sate alone here in the snow
And saw no footprint, heard the silence sink
No moment at thy voice,—but, link by link,
Went counting all my chains, as if that so
They never could fall off at any blow
Struck by thy possible hand—why, thus I drink
Of life’s great cup of wonder! Wonderful,
Never to feel thee thrill the day or night
With personal act or speech,—nor ever cull
Some prescience of thee with the blossoms white
Thou sawest growing! Atheists are as dull,
Who cannot guess God’s presence out of sight.

“A Song” by Virna Sheard

Love maketh its own summer time,
‘Tis June, Love, when we are together,
And little I care for the frost in the air,
For the heart makes its own summer weather.

Love maketh its own winter time,
And though the hills blossom with heather,
If you are not near, ’tis December, my dear,
For the heart makes its own winter weather.

Beautiful lady in a long blue dress on the shore of a forest lake

“When We Two Parted” by George Gordon Byron

When we two parted
In silence and tears,
Half broken-hearted
To sever for years,
Pale grew thy cheek and cold,
Colder thy kiss;
Truly that hour foretold
Sorrow to this.

The dew of the morning
Sunk chill on my brow—
It felt like the warning
Of what I feel now.
Thy vows are all broken,
And light is thy fame;
I hear thy name spoken,
And share in its shame.

They name thee before me,
A knell to mine ear;
A shudder comes o’er me—
Why wert thou so dear?
They know not I knew thee,
Who knew thee too well—
Long, long shall I rue thee,
Too deeply to tell.

In secret we met—
In silence I grieve,
That thy heart could forget,
Thy spirit deceive.
If I should meet thee
After long years,
How should I greet thee?—
With silence and tears.

“A Photograph” by John Charles McNeill

When in this room I turn in pondering pace
And find thine eyes upon me where I stand,
Led on, as by Enemo’s silken strand,
I come and gaze and gaze upon thy face.

Framed round by silence, poised on pearl-white grace
Of curving throat, too sweet for beaded band,
It seems as if some wizard’s magic wand
Had wrought thee for the love of all the race.

Dear face, that will not turn about to see
The tulips, glorying in the casement sun,
Or, other days, the drizzled raindrops run
Down the damp walls, but follow only me,
Would that Pygmalion’s goddess might be won
To change this lifeless image into thee!

“Longing” by Matthew Arnold

Come to me in my dreams, and then
By day I shall be well again!
For so the night will more than pay
The hopeless longing of the day.

Come, as thou cam’st a thousand times,
A messenger from radiant climes,
And smile on thy new world, and be
As kind to others as to me!

Or, as thou never cam’st in sooth,
Come now, and let me dream it truth,
And part my hair, and kiss my brow,
And say, My love why sufferest thou?

Come to me in my dreams, and then
By day I shall be well again!
For so the night will more than pay
The hopeless longing of the day.

Poems About Missing Someone Who Is Far Away

beautiful woman in a spring garden looking faraway

“A Girl’s Faith” by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Across the miles that stretch between,
Through days of gloom or glad sunlight,
There shines a face I have not seen
Which yet doth make my world more bright.

He may be near, he may be far,
Or near or far I cannot see,
But faithful as the morning star
He yet shall rise and come to me.

What though fate leads us separate ways,
The world is round, and time is fleet.
A journey of a few brief days,
And face to face we two shall meet.

Shall meet beneath God’s arching skies,
While suns shall blaze, or stars shall gleam,
And looking in each other’s eyes
Shall hold the past but as a dream.

But round and perfect and complete,
Life like a star shall climb the height,
As we two press with willing feet
Together toward the Infinite.
And still behind the space between,
As back of dawns the sunbeams play,
There shines the face I have not seen,
Whose smile shall wake my world to-day.

“A Late Good Night” by Robert Fuller Murray

My lamp is out, my task is done,
And up the stair with lingering feet
I climb. The staircase clock strikes one.
Good night, my love! good night, my sweet!

My solitary room I gain.
A single star makes incomplete
The blackness of the window pane.
Good night, my love! good night, my sweet!

Dim and more dim its sparkle grows,
And ere my head the pillows meet,
My lids are fain themselves to close.
Good night, my love! good night, my sweet!

My lips no other words can say,
But still they murmur and repeat
To you, who slumber far away,
Good night, my love! good night, my sweet!

“A Mother To The Sea” by Charles Hamilton Musgrove

You are blue, you are blue like the sky,
Cruel and cold and blue,
And I turn from you, voiceless sea,
To a sky that is voiceless, too.

Upward the vast blue arch,
Downward the blue abyss,
With a line of foam where your lips
Meet in a passionless kiss.

But the silence is breaking my heart,
And tears cannot comfort me
With God in His cold blue sky,
And my boy in the cold blue sea.

“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.

“To a Stranger” by Walt Whitman

Passing stranger! you do not know how longingly I look upon you,
You must be he I was seeking, or she I was seeking, (it comes to me
as of a dream,)
I have somewhere surely lived a life of joy with you,
All is recall’d as we flit by each other, fluid, affectionate,
chaste, matured,
You grew up with me, were a boy with me or a girl with me,
I ate with you and slept with you, your body has become not yours
only nor left my body mine only,
You give me the pleasure of your eyes, face, flesh, as we pass, you
take of my beard, breast, hands, in return,
I am not to speak to you, I am to think of you when I sit alone or
wake at night alone,
I am to wait, I do not doubt I am to meet you again,
I am to see to it that I do not lose you.

“Day And Night” by Sara Teasdale

In Warsaw in Poland
Half the world away,
The one I love best of all
Thought of me to-day;
I know, for I went
Winged as a bird,
In the wide flowing wind
His own voice I heard;
His arms were round me
In a ferny place,
I looked in the pool
And there was his face
But now it is night
And the cold stars say:
“Warsaw in Poland
Is half the world away.”

“Dark House” by Alfred Lord Tennyson

Dark house, by which once more I stand
Here in the long unlovely street.
Doors, where my heart was used to beat
So quickly, waiting for a hand.

A hand that can be clasped no more,
Behold me, for I cannot sleep,
And like a guilty thing I creep
At earliest morning to the door.

He is not here; but far away
The noise of life begins again,
And ghastly thro the drizzling rain
On the bald street breaks the blank day.

“Longing” by Sara Teasdale

I am not sorry for my soul
That it must go unsatisfied,
For it can live a thousand times,
Eternity is deep and wide.

I am not sorry for my soul,
But oh, my body that must go
Back to a little drift of dust
Without the joy it longed to know.

Poems About Missing Someone Who Died

“Farewell” by Alice Dunbar-Nelson

Farewell, sweetheart, and again farewell;
To day we part, and who can tell
If we shall e’er again
Meet, and with clasped hands
Renew our vows of love, and forget
The sad, dull pain.

Dear heart, ’tis bitter thus to lose thee
And think mayhap, you will forget me;
And yet, I thrill
As I remember long and happy days
Fraught with sweet love and pleasant memories
That linger still

You go to loved ones who will smile
And clasp you in their arms, and all the while
I stay and moan
For you, my love, my heart and strive
To gather up life’s dull, gray thread
And walk alone.

Aye, with you love the red and gold
Goes from my life, and leaves it cold
And dull and bare,
Why should I strive to live and learn
And smile and jest, and daily try
You from my heart to tare?

Nay, sweetheart, rather would I lie
Me down, and sleep for aye; or fly
To regions far
Where cruel Fate is not and lovers live
Nor feel the grim, cold hand of Destiny
Their way to bar.

I murmur not, dear love, I only say
Again farewell. God bless the day
On which we met,
And bless you too, my love, and be with you
In sorrow or in happiness, nor let you
E’er me forget.

“A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” by John Donne

As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
“The breath goes now,” and some say, “No,”

So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;
‘Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.

Moving of the earth brings harms and fears,
Men reckon what it did and meant;
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers’ love
(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
Those things which elemented it.

But we, by a love so much refined
That our selves know not what it is,
Inter-assured of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.

Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion.
Like gold to airy thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two:
Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if the other do;

And though it in the center sit,
Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like the other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.

“Sonnet 33” by William Shakespeare

Full many a glorious morning have I seen
Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye,
Kissing with golden face the meadows green,
Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy;
Anon permit the basest clouds to ride
With ugly rack on his celestial face,
And from the forlorn world his visage hide,
Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace:
Even so my sun one early morn did shine,
With all triumphant splendour on my brow;
But out! alack! he was but one hour mine,
The region cloud hath mask’d him from me now.
Yet him for this my love no whit disdaineth;
Suns of the world may stain when heaven’s sun staineth.

“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!

“Alive” by Winifred M. Letts

Because you live, though out of sight and reach,
I will, so help me God, live bravely too,
Taking the road with laughter and gay speech,
Alert, intent to give life all its due.
I will delight my soul with many things,
The humours of the street and books and plays,
Great rocks and waves winnowed by seagulls’ wings,
Star-jewelled Winter nights, gold harvest days.

I will for your sake praise what I have missed,
The sweet content of long-united lives,
The sunrise joy of lovers who have kissed,
Children with flower-faces, happy wives.
And last I will praise Death who gives anew
Brave life adventurous and love—and you.

“The Voice” by Thomas Hardy

Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me,
Saying that now you are not as you were
When you had changed from the one who was all to me,
But as at first, when our day was fair.

Can it be you that I hear? Let me view you, then,
Standing as when I drew near to the town
Where you would wait for me: yes, as I knew you then,
Even to the original air-blue gown!

Or is it only the breeze in its listlessness
Travelling across the wet mead to me here,
You being ever dissolved to wan wistlessness,
Heard no more again far or near?

Thus I; faltering forward,
Leaves around me falling,
Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward,
And the woman calling.

“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.

“A Promise” by Frances Anne Kemble (Fanny)

In the dark, lonely night,
When sleep and silence keep their watch o’er men;
False love! in thy despite,
I will be with thee then.
When in the world of dreams thy spirit strays,
Seeking, in vain, the peace it finds not here,
Thou shalt be led back to thine early days
Of life and love, and I will meet thee there.
I’ll come to thee, with the bright, sunny brow,
That was Hope’s throne before I met with thee;
And then I’ll show thee how ’tis furrowed now
By the untimely age of misery.
I’ll speak to thee, in the fond, joyous tone,
That wooed thee still with love’s impassioned spell;
And then I’ll teach thee how I’ve learnt to moan,
Since last upon thine ear its accents fell.
I’ll come to thee in all youth’s brightest power,
As on the day thy faith to mine was plighted,
And then I’ll tell thee weary hour by hour,
How that spring’s early promise has been blighted.
I’ll tell thee of the long, long, dreary years,
That have passed o’er me hopeless, objectless;
My loathsome days, my nights of burning tears,
My wild despair, my utter loneliness,
My heart-sick dreams upon my feverish bed,
My fearful longing to be with the dead; –
In the dark lonely night,
When sleep and silence keep their watch o’er men;
False love! in thy despite,
We two shall meet again!

“Farewell” by Anne Brontë

Farewell to thee! but not farewell
To all my fondest thoughts of thee:
Within my heart they still shall dwell;
And they shall cheer and comfort me.
O, beautiful, and full of grace!
If thou hadst never met mine eye,
I had not dreamed a living face
Could fancied charms so far outvie.

If I may ne’er behold again
That form and face so dear to me,
Nor hear thy voice, still would I fain
Preserve, for aye, their memory.

That voice, the magic of whose tone
Can wake an echo in my breast,
Creating feelings that, alone,
Can make my tranced spirit blest.

That laughing eye, whose sunny beam
My memory would not cherish less; —
And oh, that smile! whose joyous gleam
Nor mortal language can express.

Adieu, but let me cherish, still,
The hope with which I cannot part.
Contempt may wound, and coldness chill,
But still it lingers in my heart.

And who can tell but Heaven, at last,
May answer all my thousand prayers,
And bid the future pay the past
With joy for anguish, smiles for tears?

“Annabel Lee” by Edgar Allan Poe

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.

“The Dead” by William Kerr

How shall the living be comforted for the dead
When they are gone, and nothing’s left behind
But a vague music of the words they said
And a fast-fading image in the mind?

Let no forgetting sully that dim grace;
Our heart’s infirmity is too easily won
To set a new love in the old love’s place
And seek fresh vanity under the sun.

Time brings to us at last, as night the stars,
The starry silence of eternity:
For there is no discharge in our long wars,
Nor balm for wounds, nor love’s security.

Be patient to the end, and you shall sleep
Pillowed on heartsease and forget to weep.

“Days Come And Go” by Madison Julius Cawein

Leaves fall and flowers fade,
Days come and go:
Now is sweet Summer laid
Low in her leafy glade,
Low like a fragrant maid,
Low, low, ah, low.

Tears fall and eyelids ache,
Hearts overflow:
Here for our dead love’s sake
Let us our farewells make
Will he again awake?
Ah, no, no, no.

Winds sigh and skies are gray,
Days come and go:
Wild birds are flown away:
Where are the blooms of May?
Dead, dead, this many a day,
Under the snow.

Lips sigh and cheeks are pale,
Hearts overflow:
Will not some song or tale,
Kiss, or a flower frail,
With our dead love avail?
Ah, no, no, no.

“Tears, Idle Tears” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy Autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.

Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,
That brings our friends up from the underworld,
Sad as the last which reddens over one
That sinks with all we love below the verge;
So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.

Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns
The earliest pipe of half-awaken’d birds
To dying ears, when unto dying eyes
The casement slowly grows a glimmering square;
So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.

Dear as remember’d kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign’d
On lips that are for others; deep as love,
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;
O Death in Life, the days that are no more.

“Maud” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

O that ’twere possible
After long grief and pain
To find the arms of my true love
Round me once again!…

A shadow flits before me,
Not thou, but like to thee:
Ah Christ, that it were possible
For one short hour to see
The souls we loved, that they might tell us
What and where they be….

Half the night I waste in sighs,
Half in dreams I sorrow after
The delight of early skies;
In a wakeful doze I sorrow
For the hand, the lips, the eyes,
For the meeting of the morrow,
The delight of happy laughter,
The delight of low replies.

Famous Poems About Missing Someone

“Longing” by Madison Julius Cawein

When rathe wind-flowers many peer
All rain filled at blue April skies,
As on one smiles one’s lady dear
With the big tear-drops in her eyes;

When budded May-apples, I wis,
Be hidden by lone greenwood creeks,
Be bashful as her cheeks we kiss,
Be waxen as her dimpled cheeks;

Then do I pine for happier skies,
Shy wild-flowers fair by hill and burn;
As one for one’s sweet lady’s eyes,
And her white cheeks might pine and yearn.

“A Widow’s Hymn” by George Wither

How near me came the hand of Death,
When at my side he struck my dear,
And took away the precious breath
Which quicken’d my belovèd peer!
How helpless am I thereby made!
By day how grieved, by night how sad!
And now my life’s delight is gone,
—Alas! how am I left alone!

The voice which I did more esteem
Than music in her sweetest key,
Those eyes which unto me did seem
More comfortable than the day;
Those now by me, as they have been,
Shall never more be heard or seen;
But what I once enjoy’d in them
Shall seem hereafter as a dream.

Lord! keep me faithful to the trust
Which my dear spouse reposed in me:
To him now dead preserve me just
In all that should performèd be!
For though our being man and wife
Extendeth only to this life,
Yet neither life nor death should end
The being of a faithful friend.

“Longing” by George MacDonald

Away from the city’s herds!
Away from the noisy street!
Away from the storm of words,
Where hateful and hating meet!

Away from the vapour grey,
That like a boding of ill
Is blotting the morning gay,
And gathers and darkens still!

Away from the stupid book!
For, like the fog’s weary rest,
With anger dull it fills each nook
Of my aching and misty breast.

Over some shining shore,
There hangeth a space of blue;
A parting ‘mid thin clouds hoar
Where the sunlight is falling through.

The glad waves are kissing the shore
Rejoice, and tell it for ever;
The boat glides on, while its oar
Is flashing out of the river.

Oh to be there with thee!
Thou and I only, my love!
The sparkling, sands and the sea!
And the sunshine of God above!

“To Mary” by Charles Wolfe

If I had thought thou couldst have died,
I might not weep for thee;
But I forgot, when by thy side,
That thou couldst mortal be:
It never through my mind had past
The time would e’er be o’er,
And I on thee should look my last,
And thou shouldst smile no more!

And still upon that face I look,
And think ’twill smile again;
And still the thought I will not brook,
That I must look in vain.
But when I speak—thou dost not say
What thou ne’er left’st unsaid;
And now I feel, as well I may,
Sweet Mary, thou art dead!

If thou wouldst stay, e’en as thou art,
All cold and all serene—
I still might press thy silent heart,
And where thy smiles have been!
While e’en thy chill, bleak corse I have,
Thou seemest still mine own;
But there—I lay thee in thy grave—
And I am now alone!

I do not think, where’er thou art,
Thou hast forgotten me;
And I, perhaps, may soothe this heart
In thinking too of thee:
Yet there was round thee such a dawn
Of light ne’er seen before,
As fancy never could have drawn,
And never can restore!

“Longing” by George MacDonald

My heart is full of inarticulate pain,
And beats laborious. Cold ungenial looks
Invade my sanctuary. Men of gain,
Wise in success, well-read in feeble books,
No nigher come, I pray: your air is drear;
‘Tis winter and low skies when ye appear.

Beloved, who love beauty and fair truth,
Come nearer me; too near ye cannot come;
Make me an atmosphere with your sweet youth;
Give me your souls to breathe in, a large room;
Speak not a word, for, see, my spirit lies
Helpless and dumb; shine on me with your eyes.

O all wide places, far from feverous towns;
Great shining seas; pine forests; mountains wild;
Rock-bosomed shores; rough heaths, and sheep-cropt downs;
Vast pallid clouds; blue spaces undefiled–
Room! give me room! give loneliness and air–
Free things and plenteous in your regions fair!

White dove of David, flying overhead,
Golden with sunlight on thy snowy wings,
Outspeeding thee my longing thoughts are fled
To find a home afar from men of things;
Where in his temple, earth o’erarched with sky,
God’s heart to mine may speak, my heart reply.

O God of mountains, stars, and boundless spaces,
O God of freedom and of joyous hearts,
When thy face looketh forth from all men’s faces,
There will be room enough in crowded marts!
Brood thou around me, and the noise is o’er,
Thy universe my closet with shut door.

Heart, heart, awake! The love that loveth all
Maketh a deeper calm than Horeb’s cave.
God in thee, can his children’s folly gall?
Love may be hurt, but shall not love be brave?–
Thy holy silence sinks in dews of balm;
Thou art my solitude, my mountain-calm!

“Longing” by Paul Laurence Dunbar

If you could sit with me beside the sea to-day,
And whisper with me sweetest dreamings o’er and o’er;
I think I should not find the clouds so dim and gray,
And not so loud the waves complaining at the shore.

If you could sit with me upon the shore to-day,
And hold my hand in yours as in the days of old,
I think I should not mind the chill baptismal spray,
Nor find my hand and heart and all the world so cold.

If you could walk with me upon the strand to-day,
And tell me that my longing love had won your own,
I think all my sad thoughts would then be put away,
And I could give back laughter for the Ocean’s moan!

“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?

“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.