According to John Steinbeck, “All great and precious things are lonely.” Loneliness is a tough emotion, but ultimately, poetry can help us remember that everything we feel, from loneliness to heartbreak, is a normal human emotion that other people are also feeling as we speak.
These poems about loneliness are a great reminder that we all feel lonesome sometimes. Despite the unpleasant feelings that accommodate solitude, something beautiful, such as a great poem, can come from them.
William Wordsworth’s literary classic, ‘Daffodils,’ also known as ‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud,’ is one of the most popular poems in the English language. It is a quintessential poem of the Romantic movement.
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
‘When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes’ by William Shakespeare is part of the “Fair Youth” sequence of poems. In these poems, the speaker expresses his love and adoration for a young man.
When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
‘O Solitude! if I must with thee dwell’ by John Keats is a fourteen-line sonnet that is contained within one block of text. It expresses the speaker’s intention to find somewhere peaceful, in a valley, amongst trees, bees, and deer to live out his days.
O Solitude! if I must with thee dwell,
Let it not be among the jumbled heap
Of murky buildings; climb with me the steep,—
Nature’s observatory—whence the dell,
‘Alone’ by Maya Angelou is a moving poem. It explores the topics of solitude and loneliness in a way that all readers should be able to relate to.
Lying, thinking
Last night
How to find my soul a home
Where water is not thirsty
Danse Russe by William Carlos Williams is a lighthearted poem in which the poet dances naked before a mirror. The poet, as he dances, admires himself and his own company, relishing his loneliness.
If I when my wife is sleeping
and the baby and Kathleen
are sleeping
and the sun is a flame-white disc
‘Talking in Bed’ by Philip Larkin depicts the difficulties a speaker has talking in bed with his lover. It’s a poem about how loneliness can invade even the most initmate moments.
Talking in bed ought to be easiest,
Lying together there goes back so far,
An emblem of two people being honest.
Yet more and more time passes silently.
‘Acquainted with the Night’ by Robert Frost is a personal poem that deals with themes of depression. It’s told, perhaps, from the poet’s own perspective.
I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.
‘Ode on Solitude’ by Alexander Pope is a beautiful and peaceful poem. It asserts a speaker’s desire to live a good, simple life and go unnoticed by the world.
Happy the man, whose wish and care
A few paternal acres bound,
Content to breathe his native air,
In his own ground.
‘Mr. Flood’s Party’ by Edwin Arlington Robinson describes a man’s later years in life and how lonely he has become. It suggests that a long life is not always a blessing.
Old Eben Flood, climbing alone one night
Over the hill between the town below
And the forsaken upland hermitage
That held as much as he should ever know
Jean Bleakney’s ‘Consolidation’ is a deeply personal poem about the act of rearranging the cowry shells that the speaker and her children gathered in the past.
Some sunny, empty afternoon
I’ll pool our decade’s worth
and more of cowrie shells
gathered from that gravel patch
‘Solitude’ describes how a person can feel content and supported in nature, yet isolated and alone when surrounded by other people.
To sit on rocks, to muse o'er flood and fell,
To slowly trace the forest's shady scene,
Where things that own not man's dominion dwell,
And mortal foot hath ne'er or rarely been;
‘The Young Housewife’ by William Carlos Williams is a short poem that intimately envisions a few moments in the life of a lonely woman confined to her home.
At ten a.m. the young housewife
moves about in negligee behind
the wooden walls of her husband’s house.
I pass solitary in my car.
‘After Killing a Spider’ by Masaoka Shiki is a thoughtful poem. It describes the negative and dark effects of killing a spider.
After killing
a spider, how lonely I feel
‘The childless woman’ by Hattori Ransetsu is a beautifully emotional poem about a childless woman longing to have real children.
The childless woman,
How tender she is
To the dolls!
‘Aunt Helen’ presents a strange elegy that, in a detached tone, paints the world’s indifference instead of lamenting death.
Miss Helen Slingsby was my maiden aunt,
And lived in a small house near a fashionable square
Cared for by servants to the number of four.
Now when she died there was silence in heaven
‘Preludes’ is a chilling exploration of life amidst urban decay, alienation, and absence of meaning in the dark modern world.
The winter evening settles down
With smell of steaks in passageways.
Six o’clock.
The burnt-out ends of smoky days.
‘The Waste Land,’ epitomizing literary modernism, is one of the most important poems of the 20th century portraying its despondent mood in a new form.
April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
‘Everything I touch’ by Kobayashi Issa is a beautiful Japanese haiku written by one of the four great haiku masters. This piece speaks on what one might receive in return when they reach out with tenderness.
Everything I touch
with tenderness, alas,
pricks like a bramble
“The Solitary Reaper” by William Wordsworth is a recollection of the poet’s emotional experience as he listens to a woman singing in the fields.
Behold her, single in the field,
Yon solitary Highland Lass!
Reaping and singing by herself;
Stop here, or gently pass!
‘Dear Dr. Frankenstein’ is a warning against the dangers of scientific and intellectual arrogance told as a letter to the fictional doctor.
I, too, know the science of building men
Out of fragments in little light
Where I'll be damned if lightning don't
‘At that hour when all things have repose’ by James Joyce is a lyrical poem that explores themes of lovelorn solitude and the sublime beauty of music.
At that hour when all things have repose,
O lonely watcher of the skies,
Do you hear the night wind and the sighs
Of harps playing unto Love to unclose
‘New York’ by Léopold Sédar Senghor serves as a call to action for the city’s people to uplift and absorb as a means of rejuvenation its Black citizenry.
New York! At first I was bewildered by your beauty,
Those huge, long-legged, golden girls.
So shy, at first, before your blue metallic eyes and icy smile,
So shy. And full of despair at the end of skyscraper streets
‘She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways’ was written in 1798. This poem is Wordsworth’s best known work from a series of five texts that form his “Lucy” series.
She dwelt among the untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove,
A Maid whom there were none to praise
And very few to love:
‘The Eagle’ is a powerful poem that captures the majesty and strength of the majestic bird, inspiring readers to reach for the heights of their own potential.
He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.
‘I’ll Open the Window’ is a passionate piece written by Anna Swir that offers a raw and natural post romantic breakup statement.
Our embrace lasted too long.
We loved right down to the bone.
I hear the bones grind, I see
our two skeletons.
‘Eleven’ by Tanya Markul is a short but deeply affecting poem that serves as a reminder that human connection is often the difficult but sole way to experience healing.
The pain
that made you
the odd one out
is the story
‘The Double Shame’ by Stephen Spender conveys a depiction of what the world feels like when one loses a very important person in their life. Everything is transformed in a way that makes a living from day to day difficult.
You must live though the time when everything hurts
When the space of the ripe, loaded afternoon
Expands to a landscape of white heat frozen
And trees are weighed down with hearts of stone
‘The Lesson’ by Paul Laurence Dunbar hones in on the power of empathy to soothe not just the woes of others but also ourselves.
My cot was down by a cypress grove,
And I sat by my window the whole night long,
And heard well up from the deep dark wood
A mocking-bird's passionate song.
‘Don’t kill yourself today’ by Hannah Dains is a thoughtful and powerful poem about suicide. The poet explores all the reasons someone has to stay alive and expresses her love for those struggling with depression.
Don’t kill yourself today
Because your Netflix free trial still has a week left.
Don’t kill yourself today
because no one else will finish off the chicken in the fridge.
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