Do you ever wonder if anyone else feels the same heavy ache you carry or searches for words to match the sorrow you feel?
Poetry lets us glimpse into the hearts of others and helps us find comfort in shared sadness, especially when we feel most alone.
Here are 10 of the saddest poems chosen for miserable women who want to see their pain reflected, understood, and honored in verse.
Let’s dive in!
My favorite saddest poem for miserable women
#1 “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-awakened 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 remembered kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned
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!
Whenever I read “Tears, Idle Tears,” it feels like someone finally gets what I’m going through.
Tennyson puts into words that heavy, confusing sadness that just shows up in my chest for no clear reason.
He talks about missing the past—those moments we wish we could have back, even if we don’t really understand why, something a lot of times have happened to me.
9 more saddest poems for miserable women
#2 “When Love Becomes a Stranger” by Elsa Gidlow
When Love becomes a stranger
In the temple he has built
Of remembered nights and days,
When he sighs and turns away
From the altar in the temple
With unreturning feet,
When the candles flicker out
And the magical-sweet incense
Vanishes . . .
Do you think there is grief born
In any god’s heart?
#3 From “A Suicide—A Vision” by John Thomas Boyle
Tired of the world’s corroding cares,
Its pleasures and deluding snares,
I sought my couch. ‘Twas midnight, and
The storm-king reigned o’er sea and land,
Quaking the earth with thunders dire,
Emblazoning the air with fire,
And torturing to deeds of death
Old ocean with his cycloned breath.
I sought my couch my mind oppressed
With fancies which my soul depressed ,
And which, like furies, racked my brain
Until my spirit writhed in pain
And drove my vagrant thoughts insane.
I wished to dream, and, dreaming, yield
My spirit to the unrevealed,
And in the silent halls of sleep
Forever dwell in slumbers deep.
While thus revolving in my mind
The means t’attain the end designed,
Uprose, I thought, from out the sea
Of troubles which environed me
A monster, fearful in its mien,
Which waking eye had never seen!
#4 “Will you come to my grave” by John Pepper of Chicago
Will you come to my grave
When my spirit is fled,
And beneath the cold sod
I am laid with the dead,
And the heart that once loved you
Is turning to clay,
As in Calvary’s cold ground
I am passing away?
#5 “A Cry” by Herbert Edwin Clarke
Lo, I am weary of all,
Of men and their love and their hate;
I have been long enough Life’s thrall
And the toy of a tyrant Fate.
I would have nothing but rest,
I would not struggle again;
Take me now to thy breast,
Earth, sweet mother of men.
Hide me and let me sleep;
Give me a lonely tomb
So close and so dark and so deep
I shall hear no trumpet of doom.
There let me lie forgot
When the dead at its blast are gone;
Give me to hear it not,
But only to slumber on.
This is the fate I crave,
For I look to the end and see
If there be not rest in the grave
There will never be rest for me.
#6 “Despair” by Madison Julius Cawein
Shut in with phantoms of life’s hollow hopes,
And shadows of old sins satiety slew,
And the young ghosts of the dead dreams love knew,
Out of the day into the night she gropes.
Behind her, high the silvered summit slopes
Of strength and faith, she will not turn to view;
But towards the cave of weakness, harsh of hue,
She goes, where all the dropsied horror ropes.
There is a voice of waters in her ears,
And on her brow a wind that never dies:
One is the anguish of desired tears;
One is the sorrow of unuttered sighs;
And, burdened with the immemorial years,
Downward she goes with never lifted eyes.
#7 “Dead Love” by Sara Teasdale
God let me listen to your voice,
And look upon you for a space,
And then he took your voice away,
And dropped a veil before your face.
God let me look within your eyes,
And touch for once your clinging hand,
And then he left me all alone,
And took you to the Silent Land.
I cannot weep, I cannot pray,
My heart has very silent grown,
I only watch how God gives love,
And then leaves lovers all alone.
#8 “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.
#9 “I Felt A Funeral In My Brain” by Emily Dickinson
I felt a funeral in my brain,
And mourners, to and fro,
Kept treading, treading, till it seemed
That sense was breaking through.
And when they all were seated,
A service like a drum
Kept beating, beating, till I thought
My mind was going numb.
And then I heard them lift a box,
And creak across my soul
With those same boots of lead, again.
Then space began to toll
As all the heavens were a bell,
And Being but an ear,
And I and silence some strange race,
Wrecked, solitary, here.
#10 “Song” by Christina Rossetti
When I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tree:
Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet;
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.
I shall not see the shadows,
I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on, as if in pain:
And dreaming through the twilight
That doth not rise nor set,
Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget.