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Famous Pining Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Spenser, Edmund
...our fair eyes these fearful lines shall read,
Deign to let fall one drop of due relief,
That may recure my heart's long pining grief,
And shew what wondrous power your beauty hath,
That can restore a damned wight from death....Read more of this...



by Nash, Ogden
...g she is thirty. 

Shining like the morning star, 
Like the twilight shining, 
Haunted by a calendar, 
Miranda is a-pining. 

Silly girl, silver girl, 
Draw the mirror toward you; 
Time who makes the years to whirl 
Adorned as he adored you. 

Time is timelessness for you; 
Calendars for the human; 
What's a year, or thirty, to 
Loveliness made woman? 

Oh, Night will not see thirty again, 
Yet soft her wing, Miranda; 
Pick up your glass and tell me, then-- 
How o...Read more of this...

by Bronte, Anne
...s hand,
His elbow on his knee. 
Turned he his thoughts to future times
Or are they backward cast?
For freedom is he pining now
Or mourning for the past?

No, he has lived so long enthralled
Alone in dungeon gloom
That he has lost regret and hope,
Has ceased to mourn his doom.

He pines not for the light of day
Nor sighs for freedom now;
Such weary thoughts have ceased at length
To rack his burning brow.

Lost in a maze of wandering thoughts
He sits unmoving there;...Read more of this...

by Amjad, Majeed
...her lips,

Why her gaze sparkles and smiles ?

 

Leaping over islands of silence

And wastelands of sealed lip pining,

When the silhouettes of desire

Come waltzing in

To nestle in an intimate moment’s nest,

Why her gaze sparkles and smiles ?

 

Her soul, that Sprite-Princess,

Neither lifts her veil

Nor voices her song

And when her heart’s ballad

Passes through distant, unexplored worlds

As the faint, lingering sounds of a flute …

Wh...Read more of this...

by Bronte, Anne
...trife;
I've done with joy, and hope and love
And all the bustling world above. 
Long have I dwelt forgotten here
In pining woe and dull despair;
This place of solitude and gloom
Must be my dungeon and my tomb.

No hope, no pleasure can I find:
I am grown weary of my mind;
Often in balmy sleep I try
To gain a rest from misery,

And in one hour of calm repose
To find a respite from my woes,
But dreamless sleep is not for me
And I am still in misery.

I dream of libe...Read more of this...



by Spenser, Edmund
...our fair eyes these fearful lines shall read,
Deign to let fall one drop of due relief,
That may recure my heart's long pining grief,
And shew what wondrous power your beauty hath,
That can restore a damned wight from death....Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...ll had cheer'd — 
To Brusa's walls for safety sent, 
Awaited'st there the field's event. 
Haroun, who saw my spirit pining 
Beneath inaction's sluggish yoke, 
His captive, though with dread, resigning, 
My thraldom for a season broke, 
On promise to return before 
The day when Giaffir's charge was o'er. 
'Tis vain — my tongue can not impart 
My almost drunkenness of heart, 
When first this liberated eye 
Survey'd Earth, Ocean, Sun and Sky, 
As if my spirit pierced the...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...charge thee by my love," and so the boy, 
Sweet mother, neither clomb, nor brake his neck, 
But brake his very heart in pining for it, 
And past away.' 

To whom the mother said, 
'True love, sweet son, had risked himself and climbed, 
And handed down the golden treasure to him.' 

And Gareth answered her with kindling eyes, 
'Gold?' said I gold?--ay then, why he, or she, 
Or whosoe'er it was, or half the world 
Had ventured--HAD the thing I spake of been 
Mere gold--...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...tress each was lord, 
In word and deed obey'd, in soul abhorr'd. 
Thus Lara had inherited his lands, 
And with them pining hearts and sluggish hands; 
But that long absence from his native clime 
Had left him stainless of oppression's crime, 
And now, diverted by his milder sway, 
All dread by slow degrees had worn away; 
The menials felt their usual awe alone, 
But more for him than them that fear was grown; 
They deem'd him now unhappy, though at first 
Their evil judgm...Read more of this...

by Bronte, Anne
...ink rapture from her soft dark eye,
And sunshine from her heavenly smile;
On wings of bliss their moments fly,
And I am pining here the while!

Oh! tell me, does she never give --
To my distress a single sigh?
She smiles on them, but does she grieve
One moment, when they are not by?

When she beholds the sunny skies,
And feels the wind of heaven blow;
Has she no tear for him that lies
In dungeon gloom, so far below?

While others gladly round her press
And at her side their h...Read more of this...

by Bronte, Anne
...hted hope and burning woe
Have ploughed that marble brow.

'What waste of youth, what hopes destroyed,
What days of pining care,
What weary nights of comfort void
Art thou condemned to bear!

'O! if my love must suffer so --
And wholly for my sake --
What marvel that my tears should flow, --
Or that my heart should break!'...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Mary Darby
...wing Vultures torn, 
Thy meagre limbs with deathless scorpions bound. 
Thy black associates, torpid IGNORANCE, 
And pining JEALOUSY­with eye askance,
With savage rapture execute thy will, 
And strew the paths of life with every torturing ill 

Nor can the sainted dead escape thy rage; 
Thy vengeance haunts the silent grave, 
Thy taunts insult the ashes of the brave; 
While proud AMBITION weeps thy rancour to assuage. 
The laurels round the POET's bust, 
Twin'd by the ...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...e catarrhs, 
Intestine stone and ulcer, colick-pangs, 
Demoniack phrenzy, moaping melancholy, 
And moon-struck madness, pining atrophy, 
Marasmus, and wide-wasting pestilence, 
Dropsies, and asthmas, and joint-racking rheums. 
Dire was the tossing, deep the groans; Despair 
Tended the sick busiest from couch to couch; 
And over them triumphant Death his dart 
Shook, but delayed to strike, though oft invoked 
With vows, as their chief good, and final hope. 
Sight so de...Read more of this...

by Bronte, Anne
...an burst his bonds asunder,
And defy his deadliest frown.

When, from nights of restless tossing,
Days of gloom and pining care,
Pain and weakness, still increasing,
Seem to whisper 'Death is near,'

And I almost bid him welcome,
Knowing he would bring release,
Weary of this restless struggle --
Longing to repose in peace,

Then a glance of fond reproval
Bids such selfish longings flee
And a voice of matchless music
Murmurs 'Cherish life for me!'

Roused to newborn streng...Read more of this...

by Bronte, Anne
...ch bitter tear-floods from the eye, 
Will it behold the suffering
Of struggling, lost humanity?
The torturing pain, the pining grief,
The sin-degraded misery,
The anguish that defies relief?' 

'Look back again ­- What dost thou see?' 

'I see one kneeling on the sod,
With infant hands upraised to Heaven,
A young heart feeling after God,
Oft baffled, never backward driven.
Mistaken oft, and oft astray,
It strives to find the narrow way,
But gropes and toils alone:
That in...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...ll had cheer'd — 
To Brusa's walls for safety sent, 
Awaited'st there the field's event. 
Haroun, who saw my spirit pining 
Beneath inaction's sluggish yoke, 
His captive, though with dread, resigning, 
My thraldom for a season broke, 
On promise to return before 
The day when Giaffir's charge was o'er. 
'Tis vain — my tongue can not impart 
My almost drunkenness of heart, 
When first this liberated eye 
Survey'd Earth, Ocean, Sun and Sky, 
As if my spirit pierced the...Read more of this...

by Stevens, Wallace
...tomtit and the cassia and the rose, 
466 Although the rose was not the noble thorn 
467 Of crinoline spread, but of a pining sweet, 
468 Composed of evenings like cracked shutters flung 
469 Upon the rumpling bottomness, and nights 
470 In which those frail custodians watched, 
471 Indifferent to the tepid summer cold, 
472 While he poured out upon the lips of her 
473 That lay beside him, the quotidian 
474 Like this, saps like the sun, true fortuner. 
475 For ...Read more of this...

by Chatterton, Thomas
...sunk to Vicat's right; 
He saw, he lov'd, and burning with desire, 
Bore the soft maid from brother, sister, sire. 
Pining with sorrow, Nica faded, died, 
Like a fair alow, in its morning pride. 
This brought the warrior to the bloody mead, 
And sent to young Rorest the threat'ning reed. 
He drew his army forth: Oh, need I tell! 
That Nicou conquer'd, and the lover fell; 
His breathless army mantled all the plain; 
And Death sat smiling on the heaps of slain. ...Read more of this...

by Scott, Sir Walter
...its on Neidpath’s tower 
To watch her Love’s returning. 

All sunk and dim her eyes so bright, 
Her form decay’d by pining, 
Till through her wasted hand, at night, 
You saw the taper shining. 
By fits a sultry hectic hue 
Across her cheek was flying; 
By fits so ashy pale she grew 
Her maidens thought her dying. 

Yet keenest powers to see and hear 
Seem’d in her frame residing; 
Before the watch-dog prick’d his ear 
She heard her lover’s riding; 
Ere scarce a di...Read more of this...

by Thomson, James
..., in her silent Walks.

NOW, solitary, and in pensive Guise, 
Oft, let me wander o'er the russet Mead,
Or thro' the pining Grove; where scarce is heard
One dying Strain, to chear the Woodman's Toil:
Sad Philomel, perchance, pours forth her Plaint,
Far, thro' the withering Copse. Mean while, the Leaves, 
That, late, the Forest clad with lively Green,
Nipt by the drizzly Night, and Sallow-hu'd,
Fall, wavering, thro' the Air; or shower amain,
Urg'd by the Breeze, that so...Read more of this...

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Book: Shattered Sighs