Ebb

I know what my heart is like
Since your love died:
It is like a hollow ledge
Holding a little pool
Left there by the tide,
A little tepid pool,
Dying inward from the edge.

Edna St Vincent Millay

I have no Life but this

I have no Life but this—
To lead it here—
Nor any Death—but lest
Dispelled from there—

Nor tie to Earths to come—
Nor Action new—
Except through this extent—
The Realm of you—

Emily Dickinson

Read other beautiful sad breakup poems:

Painful Breakup Poems

Sad Poems about Breakups – Classics

Poems about Breaking Up

Poems about Despair

Poem about the End of a Relationship

Japanese Poems about Breaking Up

Violetta’s Sad Breakup

Sad Poem about Missing Your Lover

Famous Love Poems

Lonely Poems

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

My Heart and I

I.

ENOUGH ! we’re tired, my heart and I.
We sit beside the headstone thus,
And wish that name were carved for us.
The moss reprints more tenderly
The hard types of the mason’s knife,
As heaven’s sweet life renews earth’s life
With which we’re tired, my heart and I.

II.
You see we’re tired, my heart and I.
We dealt with books, we trusted men,
And in our own blood drenched the pen,
As if such colours could not fly.
We walked too straight for fortune’s end,
We loved too true to keep a friend ;
At last we’re tired, my heart and I.

III.
How tired we feel, my heart and I !
We seem of no use in the world ;
Our fancies hang grey and uncurled
About men’s eyes indifferently ;
Our voice which thrilled you so, will let
You sleep; our tears are only wet :
What do we here, my heart and I ?

IV.
So tired, so tired, my heart and I !
It was not thus in that old time
When Ralph sat with me ‘neath the lime
To watch the sunset from the sky.
`Dear love, you’re looking tired,’ he said;
I, smiling at him, shook my head :
‘Tis now we’re tired, my heart and I.

V.
So tired, so tired, my heart and I !
Though now none takes me on his arm
To fold me close and kiss me warm
Till each quick breath end in a sigh
Of happy languor. Now, alone,
We lean upon this graveyard stone,
Uncheered, unkissed, my heart and I.

VI.
Tired out we are, my heart and I.
Suppose the world brought diadems
To tempt us, crusted with loose gems
Of powers and pleasures ? Let it try.
We scarcely care to look at even
A pretty child, or God’s blue heaven,
We feel so tired, my heart and I.

VII.
Yet who complains ? My heart and I ?
In this abundant earth no doubt
Is little room for things worn out :
Disdain them, break them, throw them by
And if before the days grew rough
We once were loved, used, — well enough,
I think, we’ve fared, my heart and I.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Alone

Lying, thinking
Last night
How to find my soul a home
Where water is not thirsty
And bread loaf is not stone
I came up with one thing
And I don’t believe I’m wrong
That nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

There are some millionaires
With money they can’t use
Their wives run round like banshees
Their children sing the blues
They’ve got expensive doctors
To cure their hearts of stone.
But nobody
No, nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Now if you listen closely
I’ll tell you what I know
Storm clouds are gathering
The wind is gonna blow
The race of man is suffering
And I can hear the moan,
‘Cause nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Maya Angelou

Read other beautiful sad breakup poems:

Painful Breakup Poems

Sad Poems about Breakups – Classics

Poems about Breaking Up

Poems about Despair

Poem about the End of a Relationship

Japanese Poems about Breaking Up

Violetta’s Sad Breakup

Sad Poem about Missing Your Lover

Famous Love Poems

Poems about Missing Someone

After great pain, a formal feeling comes-
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs-
The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore,
And Yesterday, or Centuries before?

The Feet, mechanical, go round-
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought-
A Wooden way
Regardless grown,
A Quartz contentment, like a stone-

This is the Hour of Lead-
Remember, if outlived,
As freezing persons, recollect the Snow-
First-Chill-then Stupor- then letting go-

Emily Dickinson

Mother, I cannot mind my wheel;
My fingers ache, my lips are dry;
Oh! If you felt the pain I feel!
But oh, whoever felt as I!

Sappho

My life closed twice before its close-
It yet remains to see
If Immortality unveil
A third event to me

So huge, so hopeless to conceive
All these that twice befell.
Parting is all we know of heaven,
And all we need of hell.

Emily Dickinson

Neutral Tones

We stood by a pond that winter day,

And the sun was white, as though chidden of God,
And a few leaves lay on the starving sod,
–They had fallen from an ash, and were gray.

Your eyes on me were as eyes that rove
Over tedious riddles solved years ago;
And some words played between us to and fro–
On which lost the more by our love.

The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing
Alive enough to have strength to die;
And a grin of bitterness swept thereby
Like an ominous bird a-wing….

Since then, keen lessons that love deceives,
And wrings with wrong, have shaped to me
Your face, and the God-curst sun, and a tree,
And a pond edged with grayish leaves.

Thomas Hardy

Read other beautiful sad breakup poems:

Painful Breakup Poems

Poems about Breaking Up

Poems about Despair

Poem about the End of a Relationship

Japanese Poems about Breaking Up

Violetta’s Sad Breakup

Sad Poem about Missing Your Lover

Famous Love Poems

Poems about Missing Someone

Lonely Poems

I Do Not Speak

I do not ask for mercy for understanding for peace
And in these heavy days I do not ask for release
I do not ask that suffering shall cease.

I do not pray to God to let me die
To give an ear attentive to my cry
To pause in his marching and not hurry by.

I do not ask for anything I do not speak
I do not question and I do not seek
I used to in the day when I was weak.

Now I am strong and lapped in sorrow
As in a coat of magic mail and borrow
From Time today and care not for tomorrow.

Stevie Smith

Irreparableness

I HAVE been in the meadows all the day
And gathered there the nosegay that you see
Singing within myself as bird or bee
When such do field-work on a morn of May.
But, now I look upon my flowers, decay
Has met them in my hands more fatally
Because more warmly clasped,–and sobs are free
To come instead of songs. What do you say,
Sweet counsellors, dear friends ? that I should go
Back straightway to the fields and gather more ?
Another, sooth, may do it, but not I !
My heart is very tired, my strength is low,
My hands are full of blossoms plucked before,
Held dead within them till myself shall die.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

The Reason

My life is vile
I hate it so
I’ll wait awhile
And then I’ll go.

Why wait at all?
Hope springs alive,
Good may befall
I yet may thrive.

It is because I can’t make up my mind
If God is good, impotent or unkind.

Stevie Smith

Lady Lazarus

I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it—–

A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot

A paperweight,
My featureless, fine
Jew linen.

Peel off the napkin
O my enemy.
Do I terrify?——-

The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.

Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me

And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.

This is Number Three.
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.

What a million filaments.
The Peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see

Them unwrap me hand and foot ——
The big strip tease.
Gentleman , ladies

These are my hands
My knees.
I may be skin and bone,

Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
The first time it happened I was ten.
It was an accident.

The second time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut

As a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I’ve a call.

It’s easy enough to do it in a cell.
It’s easy enough to do it and stay put.
It’s the theatrical

Comeback in broad day
To the same place, the same face, the same brute
Amused shout:

‘A miracle!’
That knocks me out.
There is a charge

For the eyeing my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart—
It really goes.

And there is a charge, a very large charge
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood

Or a piece of my hair on my clothes.
So, so, Herr Doktor.
So, Herr Enemy.

I am your opus,
I am your valuable,
The pure gold baby

That melts to a shriek.
I turn and burn.
Do not think I underestimate your great concern.

Ash, ash—
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there—-

A cake of soap,
A wedding ring,
A gold filling.

Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.

Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.

Sylvia Plath

Not Waving but Drowning

Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he’s dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.

Stevie Smith

Read other beautiful sad breakup poems:

Painful Breakup Poems

Sad Poems about Breakups – Classics

Poems about Breaking Up

Poem about the End of a Relationship

Japanese Poems about Breaking Up

Violetta’s Sad Breakup

Sad Poem about Missing Your Lover

Famous Love Poems

Poems about Missing Someone

Lonely Poems

I wrung my hands under my dark veil…
‘Why are you pale, what makes you reckless?’
Because I have made my loved one drunk
with an astringent sadness.

I’ll never forget. He went out, reeling;
his mouth was twisted, desolate…
I ran downstairs, not touching the banisters,
and followed him as far as the gate.

And shouted, choking: ‘I meant it all
in fun. Don’t leave me, or I’ll die of pain.’
He smiled at me- oh so calmly, terribly-
and said: ‘Why don’t you get out of the rain?’

Anna Akhamotova

Read other beautiful sad breakup poems:

Painful Breakup Poems

Sad Poems about Breakups – Classics

Poems about Breaking Up

Poems about Despair

Japanese Poems about Breaking Up

Violetta’s Sad Breakup

Sad Poem about Missing Your Lover

Famous Love Poems

Poems about Missing Someone

Lonely Poems

I Used Up This Body

I used up this body
longing
for one who does not come,
A deep valley, now,
what once was my heart.

Izumi Shikibu

My Longing for You

My longing for you-
Too strong to keep within bounds,
At least no one can blame me
When I go to you at night
Along the road of dreams.

Ono No Komachi

No Way to See Him

Now way to see him
on this moonless night-
I lie awake longing, burning,
breasts racing fire,
heart in flames.

Ono No Komachi

Read other beautiful sad breakup poems:

Painful Breakup Poems

Sad Poems about Breakups – Classics

Poems about Breaking Up

Poems about Despair

Poem about the End of a Relationship

Violetta’s Sad Breakup

Sad Poem about Missing Your Lover

Famous Love Poems

Poems about Missing Someone

Lonely Poems

This is a selection of painful breakup poems I’ll be adding to.  Use the navigation at the top to find more poems about breaking up.

One Art

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.


–Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied.  It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Elizabeth Bishop

Read other beautiful sad breakup poems:

Sad Poems about Breakups – Classics

Poems about Breaking Up

Poems about Despair

Poem about the End of a Relationship

Japanese Poems about Breaking Up

Violetta’s Sad Breakup

Sad Poem about Missing Your Lover

Famous Love Poems

Poems about Missing Someone

Lonely Poems

Find all the poems about breaking up you need on this site – use the
links above to find categories of poems about breaking up: sad, angry, funny, motivational, inspirational, and classic breakup poems!

‘Living with a loss is what matters, and artists and writers show us the many different ways in which this can be done.’

Psychoanalyst and author, Darian Leader explains how creatve works like poetry, drama and literature can help us get through sad times.  Artists respond to the frustration and sadness of a loss – quotes, movies and poems show
us the universal nature of loss.  In other words show us how we all feel like crap when we breakup!

The night has a thousand eyes,
And the day but one;
Yet the light of the bright world dies
With the dying sun.

The mind has a thousand eyes,
And the heart but one;
Yet the light of a whole life dies
When love is done.

Francis William Bourdillon

Read other beautiful sad breakup poems:

Painful Breakup Poems

Sad Poems about Breakups – Classics

Poems about Despair

Poem about the End of a Relationship

Japanese Poems about Breaking Up

Violetta’s Sad Breakup

Sad Poem about Missing Your Lover

Famous Love Poems

Poems about Missing Someone

Lonely Poems

The most beautiful opera is La Traviata by Verdi- and these are excerpts are the love poems that come out of

Violetta and Alfredo’s relationship demise. These are just beautiful!  I went to a production at Seattle Opera last week, and if you are looking for an introductory opera to go to – I recommend it!  Nothing like beautiful music and tragedy to make you cry.

Violetta is asked by Alfredo’s father to breakup with Alfredo – to save his family’s name (as she is a wanton woman).  She replies:

You cannot know the kind of passion

- Living, overwhelming -
That burns in my heart!
I have no friends, no family still living.
Alfredo swore,
That I should find them all in him.
How should you know that my life
Is threatened by a fell disease?
That already I see the end is near?
If I parted from Alfredo,
My suffering would be so unbearable
That I would rather die,
Why yes, much rather die!

After they have broken up, Violetta sees Alfredo at a party and says to herself:

Ah! I feel like death!

Great heaven,
Have pity on me!

Later at the party Alfredo in a fit of jealousy throws money at Violetta to pay her for the time they had together.  He says to himself:

What have I done? Yes, I despise myself!

Jealous madness, love deceived,
Ravaged my soul, destroyed my reason.
How can I ever gain her pardon?
I would have left her, but I couldn’t;
I came here to vent my anger,
But now I’ve done so, wretch that I am,
I feel nothing but a deep remorse!

Alfredo visits Violetta on her deathbed – he now knows the sacrifice she made for his family breaking up with him:

Alfredo, how should you understand
All the love that’s in my heart?
How should you know that I have proved it,
Even at the price of your contempt?
But the time will come when you will know,
When you’ll admit how much I loved you.
God save you then from all remorse!
Even after death I shall still love you.

Read other beautiful sad breakup poems:

Painful Breakup Poems

Sad Poems about Breakups – Classics

Poems about Breaking Up

Poems about Despair

Poem about the End of a Relationship

Japanese Poems about Breaking Up

Sad Poem about Missing Your Lover

Famous Love Poems

Poems about Missing Someone

Lonely Poems