Famous Short Sad Poems

Famous Short Sad Poems. Short Sad Poetry by Famous Poets. A collection of the all-time best Sad short poems

 How happy I was if I could forget
To remember how sad I am
Would be an easy adversity
But the recollecting of Bloom

Keeps making November difficult
Till I who was almost bold
Lose my way like a little Child
And perish of the cold.

To Jennie

by Mark Twain

 Good-bye! a kind good-bye,
I bid you now, my friend,
And though 'tis sad to speak the word,
To destiny I bend

And though it be decreed by Fate
That we ne'er meet again,
Your image, graven on my heart,
Forever shall remain.


Aye, in my heart thoult have a place,
Among the friends held dear,-
Nor shall the hand of Time efface
The memories written there.

Goodbye,
S.
L.
C.

Dirge of the Three Queens

by William Shakespeare

 URNS and odours bring away! 
 Vapours, sighs, darken the day! 
Our dole more deadly looks than dying; 
 Balms and gums and heavy cheers, 
 Sacred vials fill'd with tears, 
And clamours through the wild air flying! 

 Come, all sad and solemn shows, 
 That are quick-eyed Pleasure's foes! 
 We convent naught else but woes.

For A Favorite Granddaughter

by Dorothy Parker

 Never love a simple lad,
Guard against a wise,
Shun a timid youth and sad,
Hide from haunted eyes.


Never hold your heart in pain
For an evil-doer;
Never flip it down the lane
To a gifted wooer.


Never love a loving son,
Nor a sheep astray;
Gather up your skirts and run
From a tender way.


Never give away a tear,
Never toss a pine;
Should you heed my words, my dear,
You're no blood of mine!

The Sad Mother

by Gabriela Mistral

 Sleep, sleep, my beloved,
without worry, without fear,
although my soul does not sleep,
although I do not rest.


Sleep, sleep, and in the night
may your whispers be softer
than a leaf of grass,
or the silken fleece of lambs.


May my flesh slumber in you,
my worry, my trembling.

In you, may my eyes close
and my heart sleep.

Flower-Gathering

by Robert Frost

 I LEFT you in the morning,
And in the morning glow,
You walked a way beside me
To make me sad to go.

Do you know me in the gloaming,
Gaunt and dusty gray with roaming?
Are you dumb because you know me not,
Or dumb because you know?

All for me And not a question
For the faded flowers gay 
That could take me from beside you
For the ages of a day?
They are yours, and be the measure
Of their worth for you to treasure,
The measure of the little while
That I've been long away.

Be Not Sad

by James Joyce

 Be not sad because all men 
Prefer a lying clamour before you: 
Sweetheart, be at peace again -- - 
Can they dishonour you? 

They are sadder than all tears; 
Their lives ascend as a continual sigh.
 
Proudly answer to their tears: 
As they deny, deny.

Autumn Song

by Sarojini Naidu

 Like a joy on the heart of a sorrow,
 The sunset hangs on a cloud;
A golden storm of glittering sheaves,
Of fair and frail and fluttering leaves,
 The wild wind blows in a cloud.


Hark to a voice that is calling
 To my heart in the voice of the wind:
My heart is weary and sad and alone,
For its dreams like the fluttering leaves have gone,
 And why should I stay behind?

The Night

by Alexander Pushkin

 My voice that is for you the languid one, and gentle,
Disturbs the velvet of the dark night's mantle,
By my bedside, a candle, my sad guard,
Burns, and my poems ripple and merge in flood --
And run the streams of love, run, full of you alone,
And in the dark, your eyes shine like the precious stones,
And smile to me, and hear I the voice:
My friend, my sweetest friend.
.
.
 I love.
.
.
 I'm yours.
.
.
 I'm yours!

To One Departed

by Edgar Allan Poe

 Seraph! thy memory is to me
Like some enchanted far-off isle
In some tumultuous sea -
Some ocean vexed as it may be
With storms; but where, meanwhile,
Serenest skies continually
Just o'er that one bright island smile.
 
For 'mid the earnest cares and woes
That crowd around my earthly path,
(Sad path, alas, where grows
Not even one lonely rose!)
My soul at least a solace hath
In dreams of thee; and therein knows
An Eden of bland repose.

Tower Of Light

by Pablo Neruda

 O tower of light, sad beauty
that magnified necklaces and statues in the sea,
calcareous eye, insignia of the vast waters, cry
of the mourning petrel, tooth of the sea, wife
of the Oceanian wind, O separate rose
from the long stem of the trampled bush
that the depths, converted into archipelago,
O natural star, green diadem,
alone in your lonesome dynasty,
still unattainable, elusive, desolate
like one drop, like one grape, like the sea.

Rondeau

by James Henry Leigh Hunt

 Jenny kiss'd me when we met,
Jumping from the chair she sat in;
Time, you thief, who love to get
Sweets into your list, put that in!
Say I'm weary, say I'm sad,
Say that health and welth have miss'd me,
Say I'm growing old, but add,
Jenny kiss'd me.

Letters

by Spike Milligan

 I was thinking of letters,
We all have a lot in our life
A few good - a few sad
But mostly run of the mill-
I suppose that's my fault
For writing to run of the mill people.

I've never had a letter
I really wanted
It might come one day
But then, it will be just too late,
And that's when I don't want it.

An Evening

by William Allingham

 A sunset's mounded cloud; 
A diamond evening-star; 
Sad blue hills afar; 
Love in his shroud.
 

Scarcely a tear to shed; 
Hardly a word to say; 
The end of a summer day; 
Sweet Love dead.

Art

by Herman Melville

 In placid hours well-pleased we dream 
Of many a brave unbodied scheme.
 
But form to lend, pulsed life create, 
What unlike things must meet and mate: 
A flame to melt--a wind to freeze; 
Sad patience--joyous energies; 
Humility--yet pride and scorn; 
Instinct and study; love and hate; 
Audacity--reverence.
 These must mate, 
And fuse with Jacob's mystic heart, 
To wrestle with the angel--Art.

The Mad Yak

by Gregory Corso

 I am watching them churn the last milk they'll ever get
from me.

They are waiting for me to die;
They want to make buttons out of my bones.

Where are my sisters and brothers?
That tall monk there, loading my uncle, he has a new cap.

And that idiot student of his--
I never saw that muffler before.

Poor uncle, he lets them load him.

How sad he is, how tired!
I wonder what they'll do with his bones?
And that beautiful tail!
How many shoelaces will they make of that!

Sin (II)

by George Herbert

 O that I could a sin once see! 
We paint the devil foul, yet he
Hath some good in him, all agree.

Sin is flat opposite to th' Almighty, seeing
It wants the good of virtue, and of being.


But God more care of us hath had: 
If apparitions make us sad, 
By sight of sin we should grow mad.

Yet as in sleep we see foul death, and live: 
So devils are our sins in perspective.

For A Sad Lady

by Dorothy Parker

 And let her loves, when she is dead,
Write this above her bones:
"No more she lives to give us bread
Who asked her only stones.
"

About Tu Fu

by Li Po

 I met Tu Fu on a mountaintop
in August when the sun was hot.


Under the shade of his big straw hat
his face was sad--

in the years since we last parted,
he'd grown wan, exhausted.


Poor old Tu Fu, I thought then,
he must be agonizing over poetry again.

Refrain

by Allen Ginsberg

 The air is dark, the night is sad,
I lie sleepless and I groan.

Nobody cares when a man goes mad:
He is sorry, God is glad.

Shadow changes into bone.


Every shadow has a name;
When I think of mine I moan,
I hear rumors of such fame.

Not for pride, but only shame,
Shadow changes into bone.


When I blush I weep for joy,
And laughter drops from me like a stone:
The aging laughter of the boy
To see the ageless dead so coy.

Shadow changes into bone.

Echoes

by Emma Lazarus

 THE MIGHT that shaped itself through storm and stress
In chaos, here is lulled in breathing sweet;
Under the long brown ridge in gentleness
 Its fierce old pulses beat.



Quiet and sad we go at eve; the fire
That woke exultant in an earlier day
Is dead; the memories of old desire
 Only in shadows play.



We liken love to this and that; our thought
The echo of a deeper being seems:
We kiss, because God once for beauty sought
 Within a world of dreams.

A Very Short Song

by Dorothy Parker

 Once, when I was young and true,
Someone left me sad-
Broke my brittle heart in two;
And that is very bad.


Love is for unlucky folk,
Love is but a curse.

Once there was a heart I broke;
And that, I think, is worse.

When I am dead my dearest

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.

A Thunderstorm In Town

by Thomas Hardy

 (A Reminiscence, 1893)

She wore a 'terra-cotta' dress,
And we stayed, because of the pelting storm,
Within the hansom's dry recess,
Though the horse had stopped; yea, motionless
 We sat on, snug and warm.


Then the downpour ceased, to my sharp sad pain,
And the glass that had screened our forms before
Flew up, and out she sprang to her door:
I should have kissed her if the rain
 Had lasted a minute more.

All Day I Hear the Noise of Waters

by James Joyce

 All day I hear the noise of waters 
Making moan, 
Sad as the sea-bird is when, going 
Forth alone, 
He hears the winds cry to the water's 
Monotone.
 

The grey winds, the cold winds are blowing 
Where I go.
 
I hear the noise of many waters 
Far below.
 
All day, all night, I hear them flowing 
To and fro.