Heartbreak is one of the most universal human experiences. Whether born of lost love, separation, death, or disappointment, it leaves emotional marks that often find their most powerful expression in poetry. Across centuries, poets have turned to verse to explore sorrow, longing, regret, and the enduring ache of love undone.
This article presents fifteen of the most famous poems about heartbreak. From Shakespeare to Plath, these works offer insight into grief and the resilience of the human spirit. Each poem reflects a different tone, style, and voice, reminding us that pain, though deeply personal, also connects us across time and space.
15 Famous Poems About Heartbreak
1. “When You Are Old” by W.B. Yeats (1893)
In this haunting poem, Yeats addresses the woman he loved—likely Maud Gonne—with a sense of mournful nostalgia. He reflects on love unreturned and imagines her old and full of regret.
“But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled…”
Yeats laments a love that was sincere but not reciprocated. The poem contrasts fleeting physical beauty with the enduring pain of emotional neglect.
Source: The Rose (1893)
2. “Remember” by Christina Rossetti (1862)
Rossetti’s sonnet gently expresses heartbreak from the perspective of someone anticipating death. It’s a plea for remembrance but also a tender release from grief.
“Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.”
The speaker chooses love over selfishness, showing how heartbreak can be tempered with grace.
Source: Goblin Market and Other Poems (1862)
3. “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” by John Donne (1633)
Donne writes of temporary separation, yet his poem resonates with emotional heartbreak. His metaphysical conceits make love seem unbreakable, even in distance.
“Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to airy thinness beat.”
This poem offers a different kind of heartbreak: separation without despair, grounded in spiritual unity.
Source: Poems (1633)
4. “After Great Pain, a Formal Feeling Comes” by Emily Dickinson (c. 1862)
Dickinson captures the numbing aftermath of emotional trauma. Her stark imagery and clipped rhythm reflect the paralysis of sorrow.
“The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs –
The stiff Heart questions ‘was it He, that bore,’
And ‘Yesterday, or Centuries before’?”
Her poem gives shape to the empty stillness that often follows heartbreak.
Source: Poem 372, The Poems of Emily Dickinson (1955, Johnson edition)
5. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T.S. Eliot (1915)
Though modernist in form, Eliot’s poem is intensely personal. Prufrock, the speaker, reveals his fear of love, rejection, and emotional exposure.
“I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.”
The heartbreak here is existential—a deep loneliness bred by alienation and inaction.
Source: Poetry Magazine, 1915
6. “I Am!” by John Clare (1835)
Clare, writing from an asylum, voices isolation and longing with heartbreaking purity. The poem reflects a desire for peace and the ache of being forgotten.
“I long for scenes where man has never trod—
A place where woman never smiled or wept—
There to abide with my Creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept.”
Heartbreak in Clare’s work is not only romantic but deeply spiritual.
Source: The Midsummer Cushion (1835, posthumously published)
7. “Mad Girl’s Love Song” by Sylvia Plath (1953)
This villanelle, written before Plath’s most famous work, dives into the confusion of mental illness and lost love.
“I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)”
The surreal, repetitive form mirrors obsession and emotional disintegration.
Source: Mademoiselle magazine, 1953
8. “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe (1845)
While best known as a Gothic narrative, Poe’s “The Raven” is deeply embedded in heartbreak and mourning.
“Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken!—quit the bust above my door!”
Grief over the lost Lenore becomes madness, the raven its haunting symbol.
Source: The Raven and Other Poems (1845)
9. “When We Two Parted” by Lord Byron (1816)
This poem captures the quiet devastation of secret love lost. Byron speaks with cold precision about betrayal and silence.
“They name thee before me,
A knell to mine ear;
A shudder comes o’er me—
Why wert thou so dear?”
The heartbreak is raw, unhealed, and still resonant.
Source: Poems on Various Occasions (1816)
10. “Surprised by Joy” by William Wordsworth (1815)
Wordsworth reflects on the moment he forgets his grief—only to remember it again, making it all the more painful.
“Surprised by joy—impatient as the wind
I turned to share the transport—Oh! with whom
But Thee, deep buried in the silent tomb…”
This poignant sonnet captures grief that lingers beneath even fleeting happiness.
Source: Poems in Two Volumes (1815)
11. “He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven” by W.B. Yeats (1899)
Another poem to Maud Gonne, this short piece is filled with yearning. The heartbreak lies in the offering of love that goes unclaimed.
“But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.”
Few lines in English poetry express vulnerability so completely.
Source: The Wind Among the Reeds (1899)
12. “Love and a Question” by Robert Frost (1915)
This lesser-known Frost poem tells of a bridegroom torn between romantic love and human compassion. The conflict becomes a quiet, internal heartbreak.
“A stranger came to the door at eve,
And he spoke the bridegroom fair.
He bore a green-white stick in his hand,
And, for all burden, care.”
The poem ends in uncertainty, underscoring love’s tension with moral duty.
Source: A Boy’s Will (1915)
13. “One Art” by Elizabeth Bishop (1976)
Bishop’s villanelle ironically treats loss as a skill to be mastered. The final stanza reveals the true depth of emotional suffering.
“—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.”
The tone shifts from playful to devastating, with heartbreak breaking through the form.
Source: Geography III (1976)
14. “Annabel Lee” by Edgar Allan Poe (1849)
This romantic yet tragic poem narrates eternal love disrupted by death. The speaker mourns but refuses to let go.
“And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,
In her sepulchre there by the sea—
In her tomb by the sounding sea.”
Heartbreak turns into haunting devotion.
Source: The Southern Literary Messenger, posthumously published (1849)
15. “Funeral Blues” by W.H. Auden (1938)
Perhaps one of the most quoted poems about loss, this piece evokes the all-consuming nature of grief.
“He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.”
Auden’s restrained language makes the grief more powerful.
Source: Collected Poems (1945)
Conclusion
These fifteen poems span eras, countries, and poetic movements, yet all speak to the universal condition of heartbreak. They do not offer easy answers or simple relief. Instead, they provide company in sorrow and beauty in pain. From Dickinson’s stunned detachment to Auden’s emotional wreckage, from Byron’s betrayed ache to Yeats’s wistful dreams, these poems remind us that heartbreak—though it can crush—also connects, deepens, and humanizes.
In reading and rereading these poems, we realize that while love may fade or break, its poetic residue remains. These verses give shape to the inexpressible, and in doing so, help us endure.
