Famous Heartache Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Heartache poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous heartache poems. These examples illustrate what a famous heartache poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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A Channel Passage

...YOU!
You, you alone could hold my fancy ever!
And with you memories come, sharp pain, and dole.
Now there's a choice -- heartache or tortured liver!
A sea-sick body, or a you-sick soul!

Do I forget you? Retchings twist and tie me,
Old meat, good meals, brown gobbets, up I throw.
Do I remember? Acrid return and slimy,
The sobs and slobber of a last years woe.
And still the sick ship rolls. 'Tis hard, I tell ye,
To choose 'twixt love and nausea, heart and belly....Read more of this...
by Brooke, Rupert


Adams Curse

...rtyrs call the world.' 

And thereupon 
That beautiful mild woman for whose sake 
There's many a one shall find out all heartache 
On finding that her voice is sweet and low 
Replied: 'To be born woman is to know--
Although they do not talk of it at school--
That we must labour to be beautiful.' 

I said, 'It's certain there is no fine thing 
Since Adam's fall but needs much labouring. 
There have been lovers who thought love should be 
So much compounded of high courtesy 
Th...Read more of this...
by Yeats, William Butler

And This Will be All?

...This will be all?

Nothing in the air but songs
And no singers, no mouths to know the songs?
You tell us a woman with a heartache tells you it is so?
 This will be all?...Read more of this...
by Sandburg, Carl

from the Ansty Experience

...urally good as gold - exceptions
to the rule - out of the hearing
and the judgment of their rivals)
the media covet the heartache
and the bile - love the new meteor
can't wait to blast it from the heavens

universities will start the cult
with-it secondary teachers catch
the name on fast - magazines begin
to taste the honey on the plate
and soon another name is buzzing 
round the bars where literary pass-
ons meet to dole out bits of hem
i accept it all - it's not for me

abo...Read more of this...
by Gregory, Rg

From The Flats

...What heartache -- ne'er a hill!
Inexorable, vapid, vague and chill
The drear sand-levels drain my spirit low.
With one poor word they tell me all they know;
Whereat their stupid tongues, to tease my pain,
Do drawl it o'er again and o'er again.
They hurt my heart with griefs I cannot name:
Always the same, the same.

Nature hath no surprise,
No ambuscade of beauty...Read more of this...
by Lanier, Sidney


Miscarriage

...like you did,
when only I could feel
the biding, body, bid
of what was real,

she’s put out with the cur,
the garbage, heartache, cat.
Promise you’ll sing to her.
You owe me that....Read more of this...
by Reeser, Jennifer

Modern Declaration

...en anxious to land a job having diminished them by a
conniving smile; or when befuddled by drink
Jeered at them through heartache or lazily fondled the fingers of
their alert enemies; declare

That I shall love you always.
No matter what party is in power;
No matter what temporarily expedient combination of allied
interests wins the war;
Shall love you always....Read more of this...
by St. Vincent Millay, Edna

Poet-in-residence

...cheques.

I cannot go on loving

The empty air

No matter how many cheques 

That air may bear.

I have a headache

And heartache

Remembering another love

Twenty years ago,

Living and loving and leaving

A city for a cottage

On the moors, the 

Hyaline air, the silence

And the distant stars.

I am your poet

Officially or unofficially

You may not know it

But I am.

From the hilly north

I came and sang.

I found myself

At least half-a-swan.

Through all my rage

You s...Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry

Swing high and swing low

..."

Swing high and swing low
While the breezes they blow -
It's oh for the waiting as weary days go!
And it's oh for the heartache that smiteth me when
I sing my song over and over again:
"Swing high and swing low
While the breezes they blow!"

"Swing high and swing low " -
The sea singeth so,
And it waileth anon in its ebb and its flow;
And a sleeper sleeps on to that song of the sea
Nor recketh he ever of mine or of me!
"Swing high and swing low
While the breezes they blow -...Read more of this...
by Field, Eugene

The Black Cottage

...to her. 
But suppose she had missed it from the Creed 
As a child misses the unsaid Good-night, 
And falls asleep with heartache--how should I feel? 
I'm just as glad she made me keep hands off, 
For, dear me, why abandon a belief 
Merely because it ceases to be true. 
Cling to it long enough, and not a doubt 
It will turn true again, for so it goes. 
Most of the change we think we see in life 
Is due to truths being in and out of favour. 
As I sit here, and oftentimes, I wi...Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert

The Debate Between Villon And His Heart

...l start over—
You're lost—Well I'll go down fighting—
I've nothing more to tell you—I'll survive without it—

I get the heartache, you the injury and pain
If you were just some poor crazy idiot
I'd be able to make excuses for you
You don't even care, all's one to you, foul or fair
Either your head's harder than a rock
Or you actually prefer misery to honor
Now what do you say to that?—
Once I'm dead I'll rise above it—
God, what comfort—What wise eloquence—
I've nothing more ...Read more of this...
by Villon, Francois

The Epochs

...

The love of Petrarch, that all-glorious love,

Was unrequited, and, alas, full sad;

 One long Good Friday 'twas, one heartache drear

But may my mistress' Advent ever prove,

With its palm-jubilee, so sweet and glad,

 One endless Mayday, through the livelong year!

 1807....Read more of this...
by von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang

White Flock

...y recognized - it's that!
He had flown to valley bottom
From the ornate bronze-clad gate.

That the song of parting heartache
In the memory longer lives,
The dark-bodied mother autumn
Brought to me the redding leaves

And she sprinkled on her soles
Where we parted in the sun
And from where for land of shadows
You had left, my soothing one.



x x x

I have visions of hilly Pavlovsk,
Meadow circular, water dead,
With most heavy and most shady,
All of thi...Read more of this...
by Akhmatova, Anna

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