Famous Heartbreak Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Killers

by Carl Sandburg
 I AM singing to you
Soft as a man with a dead child speaks;
Hard as a man in handcuffs,
Held where he cannot move:

Under the sun
Are sixteen million men,
Chosen for shining teeth,
Sharp eyes, hard legs,
And a running of young warm blood in their wrists.

And a red juice runs on the green grass;
And a red juice soaks the dark soil.
And the sixteen...Read more of this...

To Walt Whitman In America

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 Send but a song oversea for us,
Heart of their hearts who are free,
Heart of their singer, to be for us
More than our singing can be;
Ours, in the tempest at error,
With no light but the twilight of terror;
Send us a song oversea!

Sweet-smelling of pine-leaves and grasses,
And blown as a tree through and through
With the winds of the keen mountain-passes,
And tender...Read more of this...

Dana

by George William Russell
 I AM the tender voice calling “Away,”
Whispering between the beatings of the heart,
And inaccessible in dewy eyes
I dwell, and all unkissed on lovely lips,
Lingering between white breasts inviolate,
And fleeting ever from the passionate touch,
I shine afar, till men may not divine
Whether it is the stars or the beloved
They follow with rapt spirit. And I weave
My spells at evening, folding...Read more of this...

Trixie

by Robert William Service
 Dogs have a sense beyond our ken -
At least my little Trixie had:
Tail-wagging when I laughed, and when
I sighed, eyes luminously sad.
And if I planned to go away,
She'd know, oh, days and days before:
Aye, dogs I think are sometimes fey,
They seem to sense our fate in store.

Now take the case of old Tome Low;
With flowers each week he'd call...Read more of this...

The Wee Shop

by Robert William Service
 She risked her all, they told me, bravely sinking
The pinched economies of thirty years;
And there the little shop was, meek and shrinking,
The sum of all her dreams and hopes and fears.
Ere it was opened I would see them in it,
The gray-haired dame, the daughter with her crutch;
So fond, so happy, hoarding every minute,
Like artists, for the final tender touch.

The...Read more of this...

The Auction Sale

by Robert William Service
 Her little head just topped the window-sill;
She even mounted on a stool, maybe;
She pressed against the pane, as children will,
And watched us playing, oh so wistfully!
And then I missed her for a month or more,
And idly thought: "She's gone away, no doubt,"
Until a hearse drew up beside the door . . .
I saw a tiny coffin carried out.

And after...Read more of this...

325. Song—What can a Young Lassie do wi' an Auld Man?

by Robert Burns
 WHAT can a young lassie, what shall a young lassie,
 What can a young lassie do wi’ an auld man?
Bad luck on the penny that tempted my minnie
 To sell her puir Jenny for siller an’ lan’.
Bad luck on the penny that tempted my minnie
 To sell her puir Jenny for siller an’ lan’!


He’s always compleenin’ frae mornin’ to...Read more of this...

Irish Love Song

by Margaret Widdemer
 Well, if the thing is over, better it is for me, 
The lad was ever a rover, loving and laughing free, 
Far too clever a lover not to be having still 
A lass in the town and a lass by the road and a lass by the farther hill -- 
Love on the field and love on the path...Read more of this...

Dream Song 5: Henry sats in de bar and was odd

by John Berryman
 Henry sats in de bar & was odd,
off in the glass from the glass,
at odds wif de world & its god,
his wife is a complete nothing,
St Stephen
getting even.

Henry sats in de plane & was gay.
Careful Henry nothing said aloud
but where a Virgin out of cloud
to her Mountain dropt in light,
his thought made pockets & the plane buckt.
'Parm me, lady.'...Read more of this...

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